Mommy, Candice Siege, opted for a Cat in The Hat party for little Daniel’ first birthday and it was just tooo lovilee! If you’ve never read a Dr Seuss book, you need to find one right now! They are such great books for kids and even better for a birthday celebration. Johannesburg based lifestyle photographer, Tracey Kelsey was there to capture these precious memories!
About the Cat in the Hat party celebrations as told by Candice
We celebrated Daniel’s birthday monthly for the 1st 12 months and I photographed him at home. It was thus only fair to throw a major bash for the last monthly birthday before it became a yearly occurrence. The truth is that I did it all myself, the party, the organising, décor, everything! I spent hours pinning ideas, cutting & pasting, shopping and sourcing. I roped my husband in to make the kites and few other bits and bobs, but did everything else myself at night after Daniel went to sleep.
How did you decide on the theme?
The Dr Seuss Cat in the Hat theme started with Daniels room and just grew! My baby shower was Cat in the Hat theme and things just continued from there. I am actually ObSeussed with stripes too! I thought it was quite unique theme and loved the bright colours and quirky characters from Dr Seuss’ stories. The repetition & rhyming of his stories are great learning tools for kids and make it fun to read and easy to learn.
About the décor
I reused a lot of things from our wedding like the paper lanterns, the stalks for the truffula trees, the candy buffet jars, the heart pegs and also some elements from my friend Renata Jessiman’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s hens party I threw, which was a bonus as I hate wasting. I decided that I would do the truffula trees instead of having flowers on the tables for only 3 hours, I reused glass jars which I collected from my cooking escapades and just wrapped them with red wrapping to house the truffula trees.
Daniel doesn’t have any friends younger than 2 years old so I aimed to keep the kiddies busy with some Dr Seuss colour in pages while we waited for breakfast. I ordered a custom made piñata in the shape of the Hat which proved great fun for the kids to let go of some energy stored up from the candy buffet.
Instead of doing party packs filled with sweets and silly games that last less than a few hours, I decided to get some custom made Cat in the Hat themed cookies for everyone to enjoy on Monday morning and reflect on the great Sunday morning spent with our special man.
I made the cupcakes and smash cake myself using Pillsbury Red Velvet and Vanilla mix (yes I used a box cake…they truly are the best tasting), but truth be told I was having a meringue frosting melt down the day before, not knowing that using Woolworths egg whites to make meringue would not work, after the 2nd attempt I did it the traditional separate your eggs way and got a beautiful fluffy white frosting but had run out of red colouring so had to settle with the first batch for the red, non the less it was ok!
I commissioned someone to make an outfit for him pre & post smash cake but he was so gentle with his cake that we didn’t have the need to change into the second outfit anyway, I will use it for his 12 month photo.
Suppliers that made the day possible included:
Venue: Mike’s Kitchen Parktown
Birthday cake: Tania Whitely from Allthingsnice
Party pack cookies: Alison from Fun in the kitchen
Daniel’s outfit: Ursh the Seamstress (contact details on request)
Transfer prints: self designed and printed
Material & trimmings: Chamdor
Tomy Shoes: Self painted and shoes from Oriental Plaza
Ribbons: Chamdor, Oriental Plaza & Party Spot
Balloons, sweets & candies & popcorn boxes: Party Spot in Woodmead
Piñata: Piñata Africa
Invite and menu designs: Renata Jessiman
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