Backyard Beach -1yr- Splash Party Cakes

For my son's first birthday, we had a backyard beach party. We knew kids of all ages would be there, including our three-year-old daughter, and wanted to choose a theme that would be entertaining to everyone. We told everybody to wear their bathing suits.

We set up a table in the backyard with a white tablecloth and decorated it with a paper palm tree, shells, small balloons, and bright yellow streamers. We had a sand bucket holding the forks and spoons and bright yellow and lime green plastic plates.

We had two cakes, one of them was a sand box cake(an idea I got off Nickjr.com). I made an 8" cake, cut out the middle, about an inch deep,and four inches wide, filled it with vanilla pudding and topped with crushed vanilla wafers for "sand". I iced the rest of the cake with white icing and applied fruit leather. I cut off the bottom of six ice cream cones, and iced two of them white, then rolled them in crushed vanilla wafers, and placed them in the "sand" upside down to resemble a "sandcastle". I then iced the other four cones bright colors, (these would be the "sand pails"), and filled them with "sand". I used sour straw candy for the handles.(you can also use licorice laces.) I placed one "sand pail" in the "sand" and the others around the cake, two of them "spilled over". For the shovels, I cut gumdrops in half and attached them to pretzel sticks. I then lined pretzel sticks along the edges of the cake. This was really an adorable cake. 

The other cake was a smiley face sun. I used a stainless steel bowl, that you can use in the oven, to bake this cake. This made the cake round, my sister decorated it bright yellow, put bright orange sunglasses on it, a candle for the nose, and piped a big smiley face on it. For the rays we inserted sugar cone ice cream cones all around it. This was really cute and we allowed my son to "dig in". The kids really enjoyed eating the ice cream cones filled with cake. We served ice cream out of a medium sized sand pail using the shovel for a scooper. We also topped the ice cream with crushed vanilla wafers.

For other snacks, we had fruit kabobs,(sliced summer fruit on toothpicks, Kiwi, pineapple, strawberries, and cherries.) I made blue jello in a round dish, put a plastic palm tree and vanilla wafers in the middle and teddy grahams around it with gummi rings and gum balls. I made it look like an island with little bears swimming around it with beach balls and swim rings and gum sticks for lawn chairs.

For drinks, we had grape soda with little umbrellas.(I planned to make lime slushes, but ran out of time.) In the backyard, we had a swimming pool, a slip-n-slide, a sandbox, lots of water balloons, and plenty of outside toys. Instead of a goody bag, each child got a water gun, a pair of sunglasses, and a lei, which made adorable pictures to keepsake my sons first birthday party.

All the kids had a blast, all too busy for games. (Other than the water balloon fight, which even the adults participated in.)The birthday boy loves water and loves playing outside so it turned out a perfect party for him.