Here's one more shot of it:
The favors in the basket to the right are sugar cookies made using a recipe and cookie cutters from my great-grandmother (Cate's great-great-grandmother) on my dad's side. Aunt Dale gave the cookie cutters and the recipe to Cate when she was born.
My mom and I made this banner for Cate. I hope she likes it, because I really want to have a family tradition of making all of our kids birthday banners for their first birthdays and then putting them up every year. (If Baby is a girl we are probably going to name her Elisabeth, but while sewing this banner I started to wonder if maybe we should limit our name choices to four-letter names.)
I made this party wreath for the door:
(Some cameras make things look better in pictures than in real life. My camera is not one of them. This looks better in real life than in this photo.)We hung the cutest balloons from the ceiling in the kitchen but I didn't take any pictures at all!
Cate got the hang of opening presents:
So that by Christmas she was really in the swing of things:
More Christmas photos and stories to come, but in the meantime, here is our Cate working on her very own 6-in cinnamon strawberry cake made by her favorite pastry chef. (My mom was appalled that she did this shirtless. I suppose I could have at least put her in a onesie, but ... too late now!)
