Oliver's Monster-Themed Birthday Party

It's hard to believe that my little man turned 1 last month.  Everyone tells you that time flies when you're a parent and man is it true!

I had so much fun planning his monster party.  The menu included:

Veggies and hummus
Ham and Cheese sliders
Mac and Cheese bites
Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets
Fruit Skewers
Chocolate Chip Cookies (the best recipe ever)
Vanilla cupcakes
Banana smash cake and cake pops
Sugar cookie pops (obvi!)

Everyone raved about the ham and cheese sliders.  I'll definitely be making those again!  And of course, the Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets were gobbled up in about 10 minutes.  Who doesn't love those!?

The invitations and party printables were all ordered from The Trendy Butterfly on Etsy.  They did an amazing job!  We had a cute picture of our little monster in his Halloween costume for the invite :)

I guess it's not too surprising that I went kind of crazy with desserts for his party.  I don't decorate many cakes, but I did manage to make the monster smash cake with some cake pop eye balls.

I iced these monster cupcakes with the #233 (grass) tip and #18 (star) tip and my husband made their faces with sour gummy strips.  The eye balls were made with gummy lifesavers and chocolate chips that were held together with royal icing.  The cute polka dot cupcake liners were a score at Home Goods!

These chocolate chip cookies are seriously the best.  The NY Times recipe is awesome.

Oliver's smash cake was made with a family-favorite banana cake recipe.  I had a little leftover after shaping the monster head, so the extra went toward cake pops!  The pops were stuck into a piece of floral Styrofoam that I covered with scrap paper.

I wanted to make cookie bouquets to decorate the table with, so I made lots of monster and #1 cake pops.  The orange monster cookies were created with Karen's Cookies baby cookie cutter.  For the blue guys, I used an egg cookie cutter from this set.  And the green monsters that matched the invitation were created with a teddy bear cutter.  Here's another pic of the green monsters:

The blue eye ball monsters were my first attempt at air brushing a stencil pattern, and the blotchy result goes to show I need a lot more practice!  Oh well :(

Oliver had a great time playing with his friends and family at his birthday party.  And he LOVED his banana cake :)

Happy Birthday Oliver!  We love you so much.  The past year has definitely been the best ever :)