first birthday!

we had peas uncle dave and cousin jake over for a few days and the plan was that his auntie lorraine will visit for peas birthday too. but when they came back from the airport also granma and grampa flew over from the uk for a surprise birthday visit!!!

it was a really nice surprise but unfortunately i had to prepare everything for the evening and didn't have a lot of time... but the main thing was that they could spend peas birthday with him which was lovely!

first thing i did in the morning was inflating 50 balloons... i wanted to fill his cot with balloons to take a proper birthday picture. it took me more than one attempt but in the end i was really happy with the result!

in the evening also nani and nonno, auntie dani, gotti and götti & jonathan came to celebrate peas first birthday.

our present for pea was a yearly pass for the zoo in zurich. so i thought it's appropriate to have a lot of animals around. spray painted in gold of course... :)

i was thinking about peas cake for quite a while. i wanted him to have a proper cake with frosting he can eat on his first birthday. but i didn't find a recipe i liked as i didn't want him to have a sugar/dairy bomb after a year not having either... so i decided to go with a brioche. i agree that this isn't the most exciting thing to hold a first birthday candle but it seemed right for me and pea liked it nevertheless (he didn't know about our lemon cake and chocolate muffins though...).

i made a collage on the wall with all the pictures i have posted on instagram from peas first year. i thought it looked great and really really loved it!

 i also made two lanterns which i think turned out really cool!

it was a really nice day and we've enjoyed it a lot. although pea didn't realize what it was all about he loved having everyone around and of course all the lovely presents he got.