first birthday fun

 My sweet little Camden turned 1 on June 10.  I can hardly believe how fast this year has flown by.  I rarely find a mom who doesn't say the same thing though!  We had an owl themed party, mostly because this is probably the only year I'll get away with such a thing!!  I managed to make him a banner using my Cricut, proving that with practice, anything is possible :)

 Somehow Camden managed to miss his nap, and was very tired during his party.  He wasn't fussy though!!  Here he is wearing his birthday present from his big brother, Harper.  His very own Red Sox hat.  Now they each have one!

I managed to make cupcakes and frosting from scratch this year, it was much easier then I thought and now I'm not sure why I thought it was so daunting.  It was actually quite fun!!!  These ones are Texas Sheet cake with chocolate frosting.  I found this recipe on Blue Eyed Bakers, a great blog for recipes. I made the little picks with the Cricut as well.  These were so good, and the cake was very moist and delicious.

 These two plates represent the Peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting, and the Texas Sheet cake cupcakes with the peanut butter frosting.  Since Father's day was the following weekend I wanted a special treat for my dad as well.  His personal favorite is the chocolate/peanut butter combination!  The genius of this is that I got four different cupcakes but only made two batches of cupcakes and two batches of frosting! Perfect!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes were especially for Camden.  I used Strawberry jelly and all of the kids loved these cupcakes.  I did, however use all natural peanut butter which caused the frosting to be a little loose, but delicious nonetheless, and it also required about 1 Cup more powdered sugar then the original recipe called for which may have also been due to the all natural peanut butter.  This great recipe is one I found at Brown Eyed Baker, a blog with amazing recipes.  I often check there when I'm looking for something, and even when I am not!

Thanks to my dear friend, Caitlin Foster, who encouraged me to try baking cupcakes on my own and also gave me the great tip of using a zip lock bag with the corner snipped off for frosting, very easy and I can't wait to try it again!