Plaid Party- Baby's 1st Birthday

Plaid Party

For our son's first birthday, which is in September, we went all out with a Buffalo Plaid/Lumberjack theme. The cake, the cookies, the guests- all plaid! It was adorable!!!

Decor:
I had bolts of plaid fabric that i used for tablecloths, but i also hung plaid pinwheels and plaid bunting from our ceilings, scattered silk leaves that i already had from a craft store, a tiny lantern for effect, and vases of sunflowers.

We purchased these perfect cookies from For The Love of Cookies on Etsy.

Didi worked with me to alter her plaid cookie patterns to include some patterns from another designer on etsy who wasn't available for my timeframe. They were made to order, packaged individually, and mailed to arrive a 1-2 days before the party.
*Note: custom cookies require a lot of notice to order, and they're going to cost you ~$3/cookie with a minimum order of 2 dozen cookies. This was a special day, and i thought it was worth it.

We purchased plaid cups, plates, napkins, and decorations from Wholesale Party Supplies

Our party favors were steel "Mountain Mugs" (purchase wholesale from ebay) filled with individual bottles of maple syrup, tree crayons, hot cider mix, and woodland rings, and one of those pretty cookies (which came wrapped individually). We served chili and corn muffins. I also put out a dish of maple candy, which i love!

I spent painstaking hours making a plaid cake that looked like a tree stump.

•  I made 6 cakes in 3 colors- red velvet, chocolate, and vanilla with red food coloring, and made my own 5 ring template (most checkered cake dividers are for 3-4 rings. For buffalo plaid, you need 5). Normally, i make everything from scratch, but with the project already a little intimidating, I added extra vanilla and a dash of cinnamon to box cake mixes to make them taste homemade. 

• The 12" cake was 4 layers deep, so i essentially had 2 extra cakes, which i layered with pudding in a trifle dish. There were 2 layers of (3 velvet rings with 2 chocolate rings) and 2 layers of (3 red rings with 2 velvet rings).*You could divide 1 box of chocolate between 2 smaller pans, just make sure the pan is the same as the ring it needs to fill.

• i made the bark by crinkling up waxed paper, laying it flat, and spreading melted chocolate over it. When it was hard, i cut a line down the middle, so the bottom edges would fit the plate and the top edges would be rough. I gave it some contrast by brushing on powdered sugar, and pressed it onto the sides of an iced cake (i made chocolate frosting and dyed it black).
• i used a fork dipped in chocolate to make rings on the top of the "treestump" cake. I made a practice cake before i made the real deal (and used my extra cake batter for cupcakes!), and i liked a lighter chocolate icing on top than i ultimately used. i drew a "crack" in the top and added a foam hatchet (i may be talented, but gum paste and fondant are not my thing, thank you very much)

I made the smaller practice cake for our son's *actual* birthday. His party was 2 days later. He had a lot of fun digging in.
I had tried to make his practice cake with just red velvet and chocolate, and 4 rings instead of 5, and it was checkered, but not plaid.

We had a maple leaf notepad where guests could decorate a tree with well wishes for our little man.

*We had supplies for s'mores and had originally planned for the party to be outdoors with a firepit, but the day came cold, windy, and rainy and we moved it inside. I've seen lumberjack parties where s'mores kits and hot cocoa mix were the party favors, or pre-made s'mores were one of the party treats.