I was so excited to share these photos of my son Wesley’s little first birthday party when I realized – have I even introduced Wes on this corner of the internet?? Not officially at least, so let’s use this as his birth announcement/monthly update/first birthday combo post! Because of Covid we kept the party super small, but I figured I could at least share it with all my blogosphere friends to relive the cuteness. Ever since I started this blog I have gotten comments on how epic my future kids’ birthday parties would be, and although it may not have been the party we imagined for him, I think I at least lived up to my reputation as far as the desserts and decorations were concerned!

I have to give credit to my friend Kristen for her idea for the theme – “How the WESt was ONE”!! I mean, how freakin’ perfect and adorable is that!?!? I went WILD, WILD WES with the theme (oh god I can’t even stand myself) and included all sorts of cow print, bandanas, and blue buffalo check. Of course I had to make some themed sugar cookies and opted for a set of decorated #1’s and some sheriff badges too. Turns out cow print isn’t very complicated to make, and I opted to use an edible black marker color over a solid white royal icing background. It took a few coats, but I love the end result.

I wish I took better close up photos of the smash cake, but here you can see it below in its glory! I was so happy with how it turned out, as was Wes of course. I used Sally’s recipe for apple spice cake and baked two 6″ rounds and then 7 cupcakes for the rest of the guests. The frosting is cream cheese frosting that I piped in a cow pattern. I used basically an entire bottle of black food coloring for the black cream cheese frosting which in retrospect, I totally should have started with a chocolate base to get to the black color more easily. The black frosting ended up tasting horrible with so much coloring and I was worried about Wes permanently staining himself, so I ended up scraping off most of the black frosting before serving it to him! It made for a somewhat sloppy looking smash cake, but he didn’t mind one bit. He ended up going face first into it, which was the cutest thing ever!!

No official recipe to share with this post (total blogger fail – I guess I’ll just give up that title for now), but happy to have these images permanently live on the blog and hopefully create some inspiration for another fun party! Happy 1st Birthday Wesley George, we love you!!

Stay Home Sugar Cookie Houses

Ok I may have gone off the deep end with these, but I’ve been home out of work the past 2 weeks and wanted to do something fun and intricate to...

Today marks the 10th (!!!) anniversary of my first blog post here on Erica’s Sweet Tooth. Let’s not focus on the fact that this is also my first blog post of...

My intention was to get this post up before Halloween since Reese’s Pieces colors go very well with Halloween themes, but luckily peanut butter never goes out of style and we’re...

Watermelon Sugar Cookies

With only a few weeks left of summer, it’s about time I posted something to commemorate my favorite season! We had a particularly rainy weekend recently and I was in the...

Unicorn Oreos

Last weekend kicked off the 2018 wedding season for Ryan and I – we have a lot of close friends getting married this year so it’s sure to be a fun...

Almond Joy Biscotti

When there’s a special occasion, I always want to bake (duhh) for the people I love. But I don’t like baking just anything if I’m giving something as a present or celebrating something...

Reindeer Cupcakes

I have been a baking machine the past few weeks, but you wouldn’t know it based on this blog! This is high season for baking, and I’ve certainly been keeping my...

Monster Eye Pretzel Bites

I was scrolling through my blog’s Pinterest page last week and got an overwhelming feeling of sadness. I’m so proud of all the content I’ve created over the past EIGHT years...

Peach Crumb Bars

Every July I celebrate the abundance of peaches and nectarines with a complete over-indulgence of all stone fruits for as many weeks as possible. But somehow there are very few peach...