First birthdays are such an exciting milestone! It’s like your “babies” are still your babies, but they are on the verge of being toddlers. Their personalities are really starting to blossom and they truly are becoming so much fun at one!

I will cut to the chase and share some of the details about Graysie’s ‘Fancy 1st Unicorn Birthday Party’!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about different things so I figured this would be the easiest way to share! Her party was actually inspired by the mint colored tutu she is wearing below! I bought it for her when she was just a few months old. Of course it was big at the time, but it was on sale for under $11 at Target. It’s Cat and Jack and was bought last year; so I am guessing they no longer carry it. It’s mint with gold specs all throughout it with a little gold bow around the waistline. I just knew I wanted her to wear it and thankfully a year later it fit!

I wasn’t quite sure what party theme I wanted to go with. If you know me, you know I love planning and decorating. Pinterest of course helped me out a ton, and I decided on a unicorn theme. It wasn’t full blown unicorn, so I don’t feel like it was over done in unicorns, but I was going for more of a whimsical unicorn let’s add in a rainbow and call it a party. Ha.

With the mint skirt being my inspiration I wanted to add in gold for sure and a pale pink. I looked on Etsy to find her a onesie and found the absolute perfect one. I’ll link it here. I also looked for a unicorn headband and ended up buying this one. I bought them both the same day and literally they matched absolutely perfect, colors and all! I’ll link the headband here.

 

A fancy 1st birthday isn’t complete without a gold sequin tablecloth! I found the tablecloth on Amazon. It was under $20 and is great quality. I’m definitely saving it for any future parties! You can find the tablecloth and gold confetti balloons here. 

We hosted her party at a local winery. Yes, my daughter will be able to say her first birthday was at a winery. LOL. They had a large open room for us to use. It was perfect because our family is big and we needed the space!

We had her party after lunch and opted to do a dessert bar. I made all the desserts and my aunt decorated the unicorn cake for me.

I found these super cute plates and napkins at Party City. They are on Amazon, but were cheaper at Party City. They were the perfect touch!

I was finally able to put my Pioneer Woman cake stand to use!

We got a little front heavy with the icing on the front of the cake, but hey it was still cute!

Okay, and these cake pops. Seriously stop buying cake pops from Starbucks and make these yourself they are SO easy and seriously delicious! I made mine on Thursday and kept in the Friday until Saturday. I am sure there are other ways to do it, but here is how I did mine. This is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve made cake pops. The first time I used confetti cake mix. For these ones below I used a box of Betty Crocker white cake mix.

Cake Pops:

1 Box Betty Crocker White Cake Mix
1 Tub of Cream Cheese Icing
1 Package White Almond Chocolate Bark
Cake Pop Sticks
Sprinkles

1. Cook the box of cake mix as directed on box.

2. Once the cake is cooked, let cool and then crumble up into a bowl.

3. Add about half the tub of icing to the bowl of crumbled cake and stir until it looks as if you can start to form a ball (You can add less icing to start with and then add more as you go along. The first time I ever made them I used a whole tub and it was a little too sweet. A half tub worked out perfect!)

4. Form the mixture into balls. (Don’t make too big or they are too heavy and may fall off of the stick.)

5. Melt your chocolate in a double broiler.

6. Dip your cake pop stick into the melted chocolate about an inch and then place into the center of the cake pop. Do this for all of the balls.

7. I like to then set them on a cook sheet and place in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to harden up a little. This will also allow the stick to adhere to the inside of the ball so when you dip it holds better.

8. Once they have had time to set, start dipping your cake pops into the melter chocolate. This step you have to play around with a little and find the easiest way to work. I turned my double broiler to the side so I could roll the cake pop into the chocolate so the top would be covered then I gently spun the stick to let the excess chocolate drip off.

9. I set back down on the cookie sheet and sprinkled with sprinkles on the top. My cake pops clearly were not round balls since I set them flat, but this is what worked best for me. I’m no baker, so they weren’t perfect, but they were pretty good looking and tasted amazing!

10. Once I did all of the cake pops I set back in freezer to finish setting then I placed them sideways in a pan and covered with press and seal and put in the fridge until party time!

 

This little white cake stand above I got in the $1-$5 section at Target! Same for these Happy Birthday cups! I loved that the Happy Birthday was in gold. I bought them not sure what I was going to put in them, and then I made this unicorn bark and put small pieces in them!

Unicorn Bark:

White Chocolate
Pink Food Coloring
Rainbow Sprinkles
Fruit Loops
Marshmallows from Lucky Charms
Sour Rainbow Strips

1. Melt white chocolate in a double broiler and pour out onto parchment paper. (It works best if parchment paper is on a cookie sheet of some type.)

2. Once you have poured the chocolate out I used the Wilton brand icing color. I stuck a toothpick into the gel color and swirled into the chocolate then took a fork and swirled it all around until it looked how I wanted it to.

3. I topped the chocolate with rainbow sprinkles, fruit loops, the marshmallows from Lucky Charms, and then I cut up pieces of sound sour strips. Unicorn Bark it is!

4. I popped the sheet in the fridge for about 15 minutes then broke the chocolate into pieces. I used a large knife to start breaking it into pieces.

5. I didn’t store this in the fridge because I didn’t want the toppings to be too hard.

Instead of making a large fruit pizza I thought it would be fun to make sugar cookies with cream cheese icing and let people top their own cookies! The fruit gave the table a little bit of a rainbow touch and broke up some of the sweetness from the table. I love this cream cheese frosting for fruit pizza.

Cream Cheese Icing:

8 oz. Cream Cheese
1/4 cup Butter 1/2 stick, unsalted
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar

1. Mix all ingredients together in a mixer (you can start with about 2 cups of powered sugar and continue adding as much as you need until you get to the consistency you like.)

2. Refrigerate until read to use.

These cute little wafers I just dipped into the rest of my white chocolate from the cake pops and topped with sprinkles!

I am not a huge hot chocolate fan, but after I tried this recipe I couldn’t wait to make it. This one is thick and creamy and made in the crockpot. I hate how most hot chocolates taste like chocolate water. Here is the recipe I used. My favorite raspberry punch is linked here. I couldn’t find any raspberry sherbert so I used rainbow sherbert, it was alright, well the entire bowl was gone so I take it, it was good.

Raspberry Sherbert Punch:

2 Cartons of Raspberry Sherbert
1 2 Liter of Ginger Ale
2 Small Cans of Pineapple Juice (Optional)

I made this cute little ONE decoration for the highchair for her cake smash, but she hated the cake and cried!

This ballon arch was absolutely perfect for what I had envisioned. I had everyone who came to the party get a picture with Graysie under the rainbow so I can print off and put in this little rainbow book I bought that everyone signed!

I had some help making the arch. I bought an assorted package of balloons on Amazon and we used a hand pump to blow up the balloons. We then started tying two of each ballon color together. I then took two sets of the same color and twisted them together, So there were 4 of the same color balloons together. I was going to use wire to hook the balloons onto, to try and help give the arch shape, but was afraid it might poke a ballon on the way and decided to use twine. I just ran twine between the balloons. I did 8 of each color and once they were all around the twine I used tape and just taped the balloons to the wall to hold the arch shape. Ta-da!

Gold confetti filled balloons were also from Amazon. I put a smidge of water in all of the confetti balloons so that the confetti would stick to the sides and not just sit in the bottom! The YAY balloons were from Target!

Graysie had a very perfect Fancy 1st Unicorn Birthday! She is the sweetest! Party planning can be stressful when you are a perfectionist like me, but at the end of day, I love doing these special things for my children!