first birthday party

saturday was the birthday girl's big party. i made a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and eleanor really enjoyed it (video to come, i hope!). to go along with the pink and green theme, if colors can be a theme, i also made one of these for dessert (photo to come, again, i hope! my inspiration came from this blog entry).

the balloons took up the entire backseat of the civic, but they sure were festive. e had a great time shaking the boxes of plastic cutlery when i got home from the store.
rob grilled burgers, brats and hot dogs and we had delicious watermelon, corn casserole and strawberry pretzel salad provided by the grandmas.
eleanor got to spend quite a bit of time with her cousin clara this weekend. both girls wore pink to the party and they played nicely (that is, eleanor didn't step on clara) adjacent to each other in the port-a-crib. i'm excited to watch these two grow up together.
after lunch came presents. here's the lovely chenille quilt joyce made. she scouts antique sales for blankets and then works them into a new creation.
with some help from russell, eleanor got down from the couch to put baby doll into the new wooden cradle made by grandpa bill complete with doll-sized bedding sewed and crocheted by grandma kathie. bill also made the little step-stool in the foreground. the shopping cart is from my parents and goes with some cut-apart wooden food (my favorite!).

i think eleanor had a fun time at her first birthday party. she's a sociable little thing and doesn't really have any stranger anxiety (yet), so having lots of people around is her cup of tea. we've been playing with all of her new toys, but in typical baby/toddler fashion, her very favorites are a little green plastic water bottle from grammie jean and a dorothy parker finger puppet/ magnet from grandma sue (she's a companion for our frank lloyd wright finger puppet/magnet--long story).

after the party, rob and i realized how few photos we took. we were both pretty preoccupied, though rob did get a lot of video of the day. if we get some pictures from relatives who were using their cameras a bit more, we'll post them!