August 18, 2012 was a marvelous, joyous day because Annika finally was born! One year has flown by, except for the crazy months when she didn't sleep and screamed all the time! How did we survive?
A pinwheel theme seemed like the perfect way to celebrate Annika's first birthday. I read that for the Chinese New Year people will write hopes and dreams for the year on pinwheel points so that as the pinwheel spins, they go off into the world to come true.
On her birthday we ate salami, tomato, and cucumber pinwheel roll-ups. A huge hit with both girls! That night for dinner Aunt Susan came over and we gobbled up
smitten kitchen's heavenly chocolate cake roll for dessert. Annika seemed surprised at first to be offered so much of such a tasty thing! She opened a couple of token presents from her godfather, great grandma and us. (We are trying to keep the first 5 years fair between the girls. Starting this year for Emma we are sticking to useful or experiential presents only. It's only fair that Annika have some books from her parents until she turns 6!)
But we do want to hold true to the mantra "less is more" while keeping the amount of stuff in our house down to a minimal. Such a hard task with kids and society and stuff! So instead of presents we asked guests to bring a hope or wish for Annika. They wrote it on an unfolded pinwheel, folded it up and pinned it to a pennant on a banner made the night before. The pennant banners will be for decoration in Annika's room to be somehow incorporated into a quilt at some point. Lots of good wishes came with guests on Saturday August 24th. Wishes came in the mail from family, too.
The party had pinwheels everywhere! Lots of spinning ones outside, inside, on the cake and in the form of games and activities. Annika had one on her shirt, her bib, and on her headband (all made by me just for the occasion.). Although Emma was the one who added sequins and ribbon to the head band first; she would want me to say that.
We played Pinwheel the Cupcake (like pin the tail games), find the one matching pinwheel out of the 20 or so around, draw a pinwheel competition with sidewalk chalk, color a pinwheel in the cool of the house with crayons, make a pinewheel, and a homemade pull string piñata. It was so much fun! Annika really seemed to enjoy herself, too. She was all smiles as she was passed from person to person. Annika even put a pinwheel on the cupcake! With Auntie Em's help.
For food we had Glass Nickle pizza, a rainbow fruit "pizza", raw veggies and ranch dip displayed in a gigantic hollowed out zucchini, and pinwheel cookies. I am so bummed that we don't have any pictures of the fruit and veggies! We had mason jars with cute fabric name tags and paper straws in raspberry and purple to drink up root beer and pink lemonade. (Beer was also served.) For the birthday song Aunt Susan made a fantastic three layer cake with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry layers. It was Neapolitan! So we also had the same ice cream flavors. And of course the cake was decorated with pinwheels plus a mini pennant banner made from scrap melted crayon
decorations and affixed with the letters in Annika. (The stained glass buntings made by following idea from artful parent.com were hanging around the house.)
It was just so much fun having everyone gather together to celebrate! Guests: Tom and Karen, Aunt Chenoa, Maddison and Audrey, Auntie Em and Ian, the Gletty-syoen family, the Montague family, and aunt Susan.
Annika loved her cake! And the no gift thing worked great; we did say guests could bring their favorite candy for the piñata if they wanted and many did! Annika pulled strings, too. But none of the strings actually opened it up! Oops! My efforts to secure the ribbon were not good enough. Bt the kids all laughed and were happy to take turns hitting it with the baseball bat.
Happy birthday, dear sweet baby!
