The Bernardo Family: Frankie's First Birthday Party

This weekend we threw a big party for our birthday boy. I had been thinking about his first birthday party for months, and I found a really cute cookie monster cake on a local bakery's website and decided I wanted that to be the theme. After a lot of hours searching on Pinterest and Etsy, I decided not to buy the original cookie monster cake and instead to do a milk and cookies/cookie monster hybrid theme and to have a cookie buffet featuring some super cute cookie monster cookies that I found on a random blog. I was feeling very creative and decided to make the invitations, all the cookies, the cake, the door sign, and all of the decorations, except for the cute banners that my friend Katie made for me. I absolutely loved how everything all came together. I was up late baking several nights and I spent a lot of hours making the invitations and decorations, but it was so worth it to make Frankie's first birthday special!

Almost 40 people came to Frankie's party, including 11 of Frankie's friends. We were so happy that so many of our friends and family came out to celebrate with us. Frankie had an absolute blast, and he was not phased by all of the people and he liked playing with all of the other kids. He also loved playing with the balloons. The highlight of the party was definitely the cake smash. Frank did not want to do it, but I told him that we had to. Frankie started off slowly, just picking up the cookie pieces on the cake. But after we sang "Happy Birthday," he went CRAZY and started banging the cake, throwing icing, and shoving huge handfuls of cake into his mouth. He absolutely loved it!!! But he made a huge mess and we had to take him upstairs for an impromptu bath in the middle of the party.

I owe a huge thank you to my entire family for all of their help with setting up for the party. I could not have done it without them! We worked really hard on Friday night and Saturday morning, but we were able to enjoy the party without any stress or complications, which was nice. We had a huge amount of cookies left over after the party, but everyone seemed to enjoy them. I think the favorite was the pumpkin white chocolate chip cookies, which I had never made before. Here are a bunch of pictures from Frankie's big party:

cookie buffet and cookie monster sugar cookies