My Little Sunshine Tahlia turns one

On a beautifully hot Melbourne day in Australia, we celebrated my daughter Tahlia’s first birthday.

This past year has simply flown and my baby girl is now a walking, talking toddler!

In fact, it was so hot on the day of the party I had to set-up the dessert table inside as I feared my buttercream frosting and birthday cake would simply melt away.

I have been a little obsessed with chevron prints since I discovered them about 18 months ago. I just cannot get enough of that print! It brings a smile to my face every time I see it.

Anyway, the idea for the theme for the party came to me while I was sunbaking on the beaches of the Greek Islands back some five months ago.

Tahlia is always smiling so it just clicked that I would style a ‘my little sunshine’ party for her first birthday.

Sweets on the dessert table included:

-          A Lemon Delicious birthday cake

-          Caramel mudcake cupcakes

-          Banana babycakes

-          Vanilla cookies

-          Coconut Ice

-          Sunshine cake pops

-          Chocolate bars

-          An assortment of lollies and lollipops

-          Traditional lemonade

Other sunshiny details at the party included:

-        A drinks table outdoors

-     A sun piñata

-          Chevron favour tote bags plus copies of Little Miss Sunshine and Mr Happy books

-     The word 'one' covered in chevron print paper with balloons attached.

-          A sweet felt party hat for the birthday girl

-          A paper bunting for the highchair

-          Chevron paper bitty bags filled with lemon jellybeans

Tahlia's first taste of a cake pop. She enjoyed it so much in fact, she ate two.

My two gorgeous girls sharing a lollipop at the party.

The complete range of My Little Sunshine Party Printables will be available for purchase later this week.

 A big thank you to all the various suppliers and vendors who I sourced products from for this little party.

Party printables, cake stand, sweets & styling – Eye Candy Events

Chevron backdrop – Theodore Made

Party hat – Sweet Tashie

Chevron tote bags - Mon Tresor

Chevron bitty bags, wooden spoons, ice-cream cups, name stamp - Sweet Style

Lollipops, drink dispenser - The Little Big Company

Tissue paper pompoms - Ah-Tissue

Lastly, I am absolutely thrilled to see Tahlia's first birthday party featured on Amy Atlas Events today. Such an honour as always to be included among such amazing talent.

To see more photos of all the details of the party, visit the Eye Candy Events Facebook page.

Saskia's babushka doll birthday party

So my firstborn, Saskia, has turned three. It's unbelievable how quickly time flies when you've got kids.

Ever since Saskia was born my nickname for her has been 'babushka'. And as she’s not into princesses or fairies (well, so I thought until one of her little friends gave her a set of Disney princesses as a present!) I still wanted her to have a party that was girly and feminine. So I set about creating a Babushka doll inspired birthday party. And the babushka theme seemed perfect as she has always loved playing with them.

I asked Saskia what she wanted at her birthday party and she told me she wanted orange balloons, an orange cake and orange lollipops, so I used that as a starting point. She really enjoyed being involved in all the party planning - particularly helping with pasting the pinata!

I knew that Sarah at Style Me Gorgeous had been working on a babushka set of party printables so I had her custom match all the elements to my colour theme and then based all the sweets and decorations around the design.

The other themed features of the party included:
- Hand-made babushka favour boxes for the guests to take home plus babushka pencils and keyrings to match - A babushka colouring-in sheet from Style Me Gorgeous.
- A babushka piñata that Saskia and I made ourselves. This was a huge hit with the three-year-olds and it certainly copped a good battering! Although, it took a few good whacks from the adults in the end to smash it open!

- A babushka party hat made from felt for the birthday girl

- A pin the smile on the babushka doll game. I enlarged the colouring-in sheet from Style Me Gorgeous and then printed off clip-art smiles for the kids to stick on.

And on the dessert table, the sweets included:

- Vanilla shortbread Babushka biscuits


- Strawberry and cream cupcakes
- Chocolate covered Oreos
- Milk chocolate bars
- Babushka cake pops
- Cookie pops
- Strawberry bonbon lollies
- A raspberry swirl birthday cake
- Caramel popcorn
- Fruit juice, orange mineral water and apple & pink grapefruit mineral water
- Lime, cotton candy and orange flavoured rock candy swizzle sticks

And the party was the perfect opportunity to debut the Eye Candy Events range of candy-coloured cake stands. Available soon. More about that later.

But I couldn't have put together such a super-sweet party without goodies from the following people:
Favour boxes – Myfantastictoys.com
Printables – Style Me Gorgeous for Boutique Printables
Party hat – Sweet Tashie
Drink dispenser, rock candy, babushka pencil and keyrings, wooden spoons, striped straws - The Little Big Company
Ice-cream tubs - Sweet Style
Pompoms - Ah-Tissue
I should also say thank-you to Linda of Bubble and Sweet for the fantastic babushka cookie tutorial - I used it as the basis to design my little babushka cookies and cupcakes.

Finally, a big thank-you to Amy Atlas for featuring the party on her blog today. I greatly appreciate it.

To see more of the party photos, visit the Eye Candy Events Facebook page.

Now to start planning my baby girl, Tahlia's first birthday party in three weeks!