First birthday party

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Let's bring a glimpse of a blooming meadow to November!

Daisy, a delicate flower, just like our Donatella, was the inspiration for the 1st birthday theme.

narrow letters, that works well on almost every site.

Get inspired by this little galllery

Story about one little cake

I wanted Donatella's mom to make a cake for her first birthday, to remember every daisy I cut and painted by hand. Even the unexpected situation when the key ingredient for making daisies was missing the day before the birthday, which was not enough, was not lacking in improvisation during the cake-making process. That's how I went from thinking "I'll just buy fondant" to a situation where I almost gave up on making the cake, but in the end everything turned out better than expected. It's no coincidence that we ordered cookies decorated with a daisy motif from a pastry shop. When my husband went to get the cookies, I asked the kind owner on my cellphone if she had some of the white fondant that I was missing. I could even "see" a smile on my cellphone that could only mean one thing: they had white fondant!

How to make daisy flowers from fondant ?

The process of making daisy flowers is very simple. Sprinkle the white fondant with a little powdered sugar so that it does not stick to the surface and roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 1cm. Then, using various sized daisy flower cutters*, cut out the rolled out fondant. Arrange the cut flowers on the surface and draw a pistil in the middle of each one with edible yellow paint.

*The flower cutters were purchased on the Temu website

Making biscuits for a cake

I love spending time in the kitchen, so Donatella is often with me on the countertop, while we prepare meals together. While I was making the sponge cake for her cake, she, as usual, sat next to me, holding a spatula in her hand. Let's start making the padišpanj!

Padišpanj, my favorite cake, and actually an ordinary old-fashioned sponge cake, served as the base for the cake. This simple and easy cake made of flour, eggs and sugar, comes from the Spanish pan di spagna, which translates to Spanish bread, and was served as a wedding cake in the past. The traditional Dalmatian cake, which many associate with the cuisine of their mothers and grandmothers, and which was once an indispensable dessert on the holiday table, has now also enriched Donatella's birthday table.

Recipe for sponge cake

Ingredients

15 dkg sugar
3 eggs
12 dkg plain flour
3 lemons for lemon zest
1 dcl rum
pinch of salt

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
Beat the whole eggs and sugar and mix for about 15 minutes until the sugar dissolves, or when you feel the sugar granules under your fingers, you will know that the sugar has completely dissolved. Add a pinch of salt, rum and grated lemon zest to the mixture and mix everything well.
Slowly add the sifted flour to the mixture, mixing by hand with a spatula. When you have mixed all the flour, pour the mixture into a greased and floured mold and put it in the oven.
After about 15 minutes, increase the oven temperature to 170 degrees and continue baking at that temperature for 30 minutes.
Check with a toothpick to see if the cake is cooked by inserting it into the center of the cake. If the toothpick comes out dry, it is cooked.
Remove the cake from the pan and leave it on a wire rack to cool.

Making the cake

To make a small, tall cake from a 26 cm round cake tin, I cut out 3 smaller circles of the same size. I stacked them on top of each other, securing each layer with a few toothpicks to make the cake stable. I covered it with whipped mascarpone cheese so that the cut-out fondant flowers would stick better. I improvised and hoped for the best, that it would last until tomorrow's party and the blowing out of the candles. Stacking daisies of different sizes, in no particular order, I filled every void in the cake, using a sushi stick to secure each flower. I would lightly pierce the place where the pistil was, thus adding three-dimensionality to each flower, because the petals of the larger flowers would protrude slightly. They flowed down the cake, carelessly and like a waterfall of daisies.

Watching Donatella remove the daisies from the cake with her hands meant more to me than I could have imagined, because creating something so "small" for such a big day creates special memories.

Story about one tiny party

In my search for themed party decorations, I couldn't find anything exactly like I had imagined, so what else could I do but make them myself!

We wanted Donatella to join us in creating a "meadow" in the apartment.

The procurement of all the necessary elements for making the caps, garlands, flags, balloons, and cake began a few months before the birthday.

*I ordered all the props for making them through the Temu app.

While Donatella flipped through the pages of her story, the rest of the team was busy making decorations for the upcoming party. With the radio playing in the background, we sang, decorated hats, glued daisies to jute flags, made flowers from paper rolls, and blew up balloons, all while wearing daisies-shaped sunglasses!

Is there a better introduction to the party of the year?!

Daisy bday caps

I ordered plain white, caps, daisy-shaped confetti and double-sided tape to make caps filled with flowers. Shape the cap as shown in the instructions and then stick double-sided tape on each confetti and stick it randomly on the cap. Repeat the process until you fill the cap with flowers.

What is “Brač helium”?

Since I'm partly from the island of Brač, and the islanders have a saying that "they have a snake in their pocket (ha ha)", I joked that in the absence of helium, I came up with Brač helium for balloons. I didn't know that there was a difference between which balloons can go in helium and which can't, so instead of with puma and helium, my husband came back from the specialized balloon store empty-handed. You guessed it, I ordered balloons that can't go in helium. But I imagined floating balloons to float around the apartment, and since tomorrow is a holiday, it wasn't possible to order the ones with helium. In the absence of something and with a little resourcefulness, good ideas always come up! Blow up the balloons, tie them with ribbon, stick tape on the top and stick the balloon to the ceiling. And so the balloons floated without helium!

Gifts for guests

I wanted everyone to take home a piece of the flower meadow, but also a memento of Donatella's first birthday. Each guest received a personalized jute bag containing a daisy-shaped key chain. To remind them of that wonderful day, and to thank them for being a part of it and making it beautiful!

Wall baloon decoration

I always strive for everything I do to be unique and non-uniform, so that's how I approached arranging a balloon meadow. I chose the wall behind the dining table, where a futuristic painting with clouds is hung, which has a special sentimental meaning for us, to be the focal point around which I would stick balloons and thus create a meadow under the clouds. Completely carelessly, without order, and actually thoughtfully, we lined up balloons of different sizes around the painting. We filled every gap, even the smallest with an inflated balloon, to make the space as small as possible. Don't bother where, how, or which balloon to put, let your hands string them together as they come to hand and a special creation will emerge. Let's step back and say, all we have to do is tie long ribbons to the bottom rows of balloons to create the illusion that they are flying in the air!

Custom online invitation

A font that stood out and a background full of daisy flowers. As soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect invitation to send through mobile phones to all of our guests.