If you know me even a bit, you probably know that I love to throw a party. I relate to Leslie Knope in this sense – everything should be celebrated! And if your baby girl is turning one?! Well, that calls for an epic cake, a theme that corresponds with her age, and lots of fun activities.

I have always been obsessed with quotes from Alice in Wonderland. Hattie’s nursery was adorned with wildflowers and the quote “Don’t you know she’s a wildflower?” from Alice in Wonderland is displayed on her wall. It’s one of my favorite stories.

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ONEderland Outfit

I designed Hattie’s wonderland outfit and used my Cricut to make her name and a “1” on it. I used silver glitter iron-on from Amazon and ironed it onto a white onesie from Amazon. The skirt was made from pieces of tulle that I cut and tied onto a longer piece. It was really fun making the skirt. I wish I had the time and patience to make an adult-size one so we can have matching ones! I hot-glued black ribbon and a white felt “apron” onto it to match Alice’s outfit. She wore this cute black bow to pull the outfit together.

Mama also wore Cheshire cat ears but my plans for the rest of us to be in Alice in Wonderland-related outfits never came to fruition. Oh well.

ONEderland Cake

I had envisioned a really awesome cake for this party based on everything I’d seen on Pinterest. I mean, y’all… you need to go type in “Alice in wonderland cakes” into the search bar on your Pinterest. There are SO MANY cool cakes. I was all like, yeah, I’m totally awesome and I can make that.

HA HA HA.

Y’all… this cake took literally allllll day. The party was at 11 am on a Sunday and I started making this cake FIRST THING Saturday morning. I left the house briefly for my son’s soccer game but otherwise, I was baking and decorating this cake until 3am. PREGNANT. I was SO nauseous from making this cake – I rarely ate or sat down. (I later miscarried, which you can read about here.)

Anyway, I whipped this three layer cake out and I am SO DANG PROUD of myself. Not only was every single aspect of this cake homemade (except the black fondant – that was the only part I bought) including the cakes, buttercream, and fondant, but it actually looked pretty freaking good when I was finished. And yes, it tasted great – although the chocolate cake part ended up much more moist (*shivers at the word moist*) than the yellow cake, but it was my first time with both recipes so I’ll give myself this one.

So here is my cake in all its glory:

See! It’s actually pretty decent!! And to add to its not-so-terribleness, I was gifted this BEAUTIFUL cake topper from Nutmeg & Tarte a la Carte on Etsy. It worked perfectly with the cake and I was so pleased! She did a beautiful job and I highly suggest you order decor/cake toppers from her!

ONEderland Food

So let’s get to the food. I was pretty slack on this end. I made the party from 11 am to 1 pm because 1. brunch is my favorite meal and 2. I wanted to do some tea party foods mixed with snacks that related to the wonderland theme and this seemed best. But honestly, the real reason was that she naps before and after these times and I made the mistake of scheduling Jude’s first birthday party during his afternoon nap and SHIT HIT THE FAN. Probably literally. I don’t remember much of that day – I try to block out the horrendous tears.

I tried to go easy on myself so I made cucumber sandwiches (so dang last-minute that people were already arriving as I was starting), cheese puffs (caterpillar puffs), chips & dip (because you can’t have a party without either), quiche (because brunch/tea party), muffins (same reasons), veggie tray (rabbit snacks), etc.

ONEderland Decor

I partnered with two really awesome Etsy shops on some of the decor/activities for this party. I mentioned Chrissy’s shop Nutmeg & Tarte a la Carte above for the cake topper, but she also sent me this adorable “ONE” banner for Hattie’s high chair. I had planned on putting some tulle around the high chair first, but for lack of time, I didn’t and I still think it looked SO adorable. The banner was well-made and sturdy and just so dang cute! You can find Chrissy on Facebook and Instagram, too!

Bitter Sweet by Terah is the other shop that helped me out for this party. Not only is the shop owner, Terah, a complete sweetheart, but the “eat me” and “drink me” banners were perfect decorations! She also made these really wonderful photo booth props. I got an Alice in Wonderland backdrop from Amazon and these props went perfectly with it!! Everyone loved taking pictures with them. In addition to all of this awesome-ness, she also made me these ADORABLE Alice in Wonderland gift bags for the kids! I filled them with decks of cards and other small toys. You can find her on Instagram here.

I also bought these grass placemats with pretty flowers on them (very wonderland-ish) from Amazon. I put them in a row to look like a table runner. And of course, there were balloons and bright colors galore adoring our home and outside. Jordan even made these really awesome deck of card soldiers as decoration.

Another fun decoration I made was a banner showing Hattie from newborn to one year old. I can’t believe how fast the year went by. She’s a tiny little thing and sometimes I forget how much she’s really grown in a year. I can’t wait to see how much growth she has in another year.

ONEderland Games & Activities

We knew there would be kids attending the party, so we wanted to be sure we had games for them to play and activities that were Wonderland-related. While I didn’t get any photos of it, I did score this pin the tail on the Cheshire cat game from Amazon that was a hit with my six-year-old. As I mentioned above, we also had a really cool photo booth outside with props from Terah’s shop.

Another fun activity that we had outside was painting the roses red. Jordan worked HARD on creating roses out of posterboard. He then glued them to rods we found at Walmart and stuck them into the ground outside. We had just taken down our pool so it looked like we had planted flowers in the dead grass. The kids got to use washable red paint and paint them all red! We also had a big bucket filled with bubble liquid so the kids could make giant bubbles with two sticks tied to string.

And of course, there were a lot of presents to open! 🙂

It was a great party, Y’all!

I was really pleased with how everything came together. If I had to do her party again, I’d have made her cake in steps over the course of a couple of days rather than rushing to do it on the day before. However, I do work full-time so even that is something that may or may not be possible. Some days I really envy stay at home moms, if only for the fact that I can’t always get my you-know-what together.

This was the perfect theme for our little one-year-old. I know Hattie won’t remember it, but I will always look back on this day and be so happy! She deserves the world. She really does. So if I have to stay up until 3 am to make her a cake, I’m going to do it. 🙂

Thanks to everyone who helped make her day special. We really appreciate the Etsy shops and our family & friends who attended! You guys ROCK!

Did you do a wonderland themed party too? Tell me about it in the comments below!