Ren’s First Birthday Party & Campout Camo Cake!

I wanted to share a few photos from Ren’s birthday party. He had such a good time!

We kept the party small (if that’s possible with the size of our family), inviting immediate family and a few close friends. It was just right!

I had TONS of decoration and activity ideas in my head for his party theme, “Cowboy Campout” but before I knew it, I was running around the day of his party throwing together the details. Life, I tell ya!

I made the cakes, and set up a cute table to represent his theme. I think it turned out just fine! 🙂

The cake had a small campfire made of pretzel sticks and candles, and a tent made from wooden skewers and fabric scraps.

I thought the campfire turned out really cute when lit!

The finished product turned out pretty cute but it was a bit ugly getting there. Haha!

I thought, “I’ll save some money and make his cake.”

“It will be fun and I have the perfect idea!”

“It will be easy and who cares if it isn’t perfect!”

Ha! Apparently I cared if it wasn’t perfect after almost ending up in tears (okay, maybe I had a couple tears) over my cakes falling apart on Saturday morning! I had some icing issues! It seems silly now but at the time I really wanted everything to be just perfect for his birthday and I felt a little guilty about getting my act together at the last minute!

Why are we so hard on ourselves?!

Anyway, that’s another blog post. Back to the party!

On Friday night I did my baking and I tried my hand at a camo cake. I just made a batch of chocolate cake and a batch of white. Then I took the white and separated it into three bowls applying food coloring until I reached two different hues of green.

*Gel food coloring would work much better. I used almost an entire bottle trying to get dark green! 

Then I added each color to the cake pan one small scoop at a time, placing them randomly.

Scoop, scoop, scoop…

Layer, layer, layer…

Waa, waa, waa…

Ma, ma, ma…

Ren wasn’t too happy with the process. 

There was a lot of cake batter so I baked one large cake for the party and two smash cakes. One for pictures and one for the party!

I don’t know if you could call the finished product “camo” cake but it was something different and looked like a marble cake perfect for a little boy’s party!

Maybe next time I would be a little more careful with the size of my spoonfuls and have a treat for Ren so I can concentrate! 😉

The party turned out perfect! It was Ren’s first birthday party!

A day full of laughter, 

friendship, family, 

memories, and love!

And CAKE!

And I know it was his best-ever birthday! 😉

Thanks for visiting!

-Lauren