John Deere Party

It's the little guys first birthday!  What better way to celebrate a little boys 1st birthday who has a half Mennonite Daddy?  John Deere of course!

  

We kept it simple and just decorated with a few bunches of helium balloons.  I could not find any John Deere themed balloons so I got generic yellow and lime green balloons and wrote JOHN DEERE on them with permanent marker and decorated them with tractor stickers!  (this trick works great, I once threw the Hubby a Tom Tom party and wrote TOM TOM, LEFT and RIGHT on the balloons and it made great conversation pieces... a Tom Tom is a GPS by the way!)

 

We bought pre done invites because they were a really good deal.  I still wanted to customise them a bit so I printed a really cute One Year poem on Vellum and pasted it in.  Here it is below, I think it is so adorable!

A year's gone by

Oh how time has flown,

We can't believe

How Oliver has grown!

He's such a joy

And so much fun,

Oh my! Our baby boy

is turning One!

I also printed the info on vellum and layered it on top of the printed prefixes to make it look like it was all printed inside and then I didn't have to hand write them all!

Oliver sporting his Birthday hat!

We lucked out at a party store in Groove City when we were on a weekend trip and found everything we could possibly need for a John Deere themed party, which is also where we got the invitations and thank-you cards.  I think the table looks awesome all Decked Out in John Deere print!

Oliver's cousins also sporting their party hats!

the Dinner Table

Gotta love plastic table cloths!  I know their bad for the environment but just roll them up and gone is the mess!  And look how great the table looks with all those tractors...

the Dessert Table! YUM

Cake for the Adults!

Healthy cake for the Kiddies!

The most important part to any birthday, but especially for a 1st birthday, is the cake!  Of course! 

For Oliver and the kids I made a rice flour cake sweetened with maple syrup.  The frosting was cream cheese also whipped with maple syrup.  Click the above picture for the recipe.  I was going for a muddy tire to tie in with the John Deere theme.  Once I iced the cake I placed a cup in the centre and covered the icing with cocoa.  I used a wooden spoon handle to notch ruts around the edge.  Then I cut the same size circle out of a piece of paper and placed it on top of the cake and sprinkled the hole (in the centre) with yellow sugar sprinkles. 

For the adults I decided to try cake balls!  I did a double chocolate version, click the picture to view the recipe.  I covered them with yellow and green chocolate and drizzled some with the contrasting coloured chocolate and sprinkled the rest with various yellow and green sprinkles.  I was very thrilled with how they turned out and they were fairly easy too. 

Both the cakes were a huge success among the adult and miniature guests.  And Oliver was completely thrilled with digging his hands into a slice.

Oliver ultimately enjoying his 1st Birthday Cake!

Oliver suiting got a John Deere tractor as a birthday present from his Nana and Papa.  So I took him and the tractor to Zehrs (that was an interesting trek) and got some pictures done.  The one I used for the back of the Thank-you card was my favourite!  It really captures his charm!

So Oliver had a fantastic 1st Birthday!  We sent the Thank-you cards out and we have tons of great memories!

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