I apparently missed the memo on how cake smashing is all the rage these days for baby's first birthday. After Henry's birthday, my friend Theresa started asking for cake and prop ideas and she sent me to all of these cute photo shoots online. Argh! How did I miss this?!?
Then I decided that there was no shame in having a second birthday cake for Henry and trying to get him to smash into it! Second child, second chance cake - makes total sense! (Theresa's youngest, Meredith, turned one in the mean time and the photos Theresa got were so awesome - way to set the bar so high, dear friend!) So after some plotting and planning, we gave it a go this weekend:
I debated the most over color choices, and settled on something colorful - it is almost spring after all! And I figured soft and tasty was the best call for icing, so I made a cream cheese icing for his yellow cake - yum!
As soon as we plopped him down, he got his foot in the cake. Icing all over the toes! He immediately reached for the icing. I was pumped, this was going to be the best cake smash!
Ummm....
Or not. He took off!
We picked him up and put him back. I had read several places that people had trouble getting their kids to even try the cake, but once they had - they tore into their cake!
So I scooped up a bit of icing and put it in Henry's mouth. He looked a little confused as to what was going on. And took off again...
This time when we put him back, he accidentally got his hand in the cake. Oh surely this will lead to more smashing!
Nope.
As you can tell by the floor, it mostly led to finger painting with the icing. Maybe if we gave him a fork? He doesn't generally use one, but maybe...?
Nope.
I didn't want Thomas to feel left out, so I made him his own tiny cake too. Maybe if we let Thomas show his younger brother how to do it, Henry would go after it!
Instead, Henry went after Thomas' cake. I'm sure you can imagine how well that went over with Thomas - you might notice he's pushing his cake out of Henry's reach. :)
We told Thomas he was welcome to smash into his cake. We even told him there was a surprise in the middle (strawberries!) My mother-in-law gave me these cool mini cake pan that you can use to make a cake with an indention in the center. I was going to use two pans to do a double layer with a big cavity in the center, but ran out of batter, so he just got a single layer... Sorry Thomas!
Thomas declined to get messy with his cake - he's a pretty tidy little guy, so I wasn't all that surprised. He was pretty excited about the strawberries in the center though!
Henry is now making a bigger mess with the icing, but still no eating. I decided to cut a piece of the cake out to see if that would help. Maybe he was just having trouble breaking through to grab cake. You can see it off to the side of the cake where Henry just ignored it.
Then we had the brilliant idea to take his fork away, so he would pay more attention to the cake!
He was not impressed with that idea! Poor guy was devastated without his fork!!
We obviously gave it back after that reaction! And I pretty much gave up on him eating his cake. As long as he was having fun, it was a win in my book!
And he certainly had fun playing in his icing! He had bits of orange icing smeared all over himself and the floor.
And possibly he was enjoying smearing it on the backdrop as well. His finger painting skills are improving, no matter the medium of choice. ;)
Now there's a happy Henry! I should also point out that some of those finger paintings are in chocolate icing - he did manage to lay hands on his brother's cake at one point. Our baby wrangling skills weren't quite up to par today... whoops!
Oh and he is a standing up pro these days! He even took a few steps to me at daycare the other day. I was crouched down as he was walking while holding the gate in his room, then he just let go and kept walking. I didn't even realize what he was doing at first because he was so steady! He only made about 4 steps, but I was still super excited! Yay for Henry!
Off to the bath with you, little man! You may not have tried your cake, but you certainly accomplished the messy part of it. Happy Birthday again - you really are growing up too fast!
That's the end of the fancy photos! Theresa posted a few behind the scene photos on her post, so I thought I would do the same. It really was an entertaining photography "session"! But if you just visit my blog for cute photos of the kiddos, it's ok to stop here. ;)
The backdrop. I originally was going to go with plain white and ran out of time to order a fancy vinyl backdrop online. So I went to Michael's to see if they had any large rolls of white paper. They didn't, but I found some wrapping paper I could splice together to make a wide enough span. But then I found poster paper rolls and this super cool cloud pattern! I thought that would be way more fun!
Until I unwrapped it this afternoon and realized my clouds were sideways to the direction I needed. Argh! Turns out I was going to get to splice paper anyway. Luckily the width was perfect that the splice ended up right at the floor and not visible in most of the photos. (The photo above is pre-splicing, the final product reached down to the floor and out about four feet.)
I didn't have any fancy frames or stands to use the paper with, but I realized that the upper counter in our kitchen was about the same height, so I taped it up there instead. It was perfect for the lighting and I had plenty of room to maneuver around with the table out of the way.
I had a lot of late nights this week with work, so I hadn't had a chance to make the cakes until last night and they weren't iced. So when I put the boys down for a nap, I had to make the backdrop, the banner and ice the cakes. And as soon as I started, I realized I didn't have enough powdered sugar! Double argh!!
Luckily I read somewhere that you can make your own by blending the sugar until it is the same powdery consistency. I've never done it, but figured if anything could do it, the Vitamix could. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn close! Whew!
There might have been a mini-bundt cake for the adults. I conned Heather, Brittney, and Duncan into coming over for the cake smash, so I figured I should have a cake for them that wasn't covered in baby or toddler germs. This thing got devoured!
Brittney helping with cake placement. We thought moving it closer would entice him to eat it.
Duncan returning the runaway Henry. I can neither confirm nor deny if this was right before Henry's hand landed in the icing... ;)
Henry near the end of the session. He was must more interested in attacking the paper than the cake. You can see the seam in this photo right at his knee level. It would be easy enough to edit it out in Lightroom, but it was pretty unobtrusive it was for the most part. I might edit it out for photos if I was printing them out. And the nice part about it being paper was that clean-up took seconds. It took longer for me to get Henry clean than for Heather and Brittney to clean up the whole area.
Thanks for all of the help, I don't think it would have been possible without you all! :)