DIY First Birthday Cake Smash Session

I don’t typically scrimp in the photo department but when it came to the new craze of a “cake smash”…I wasn’t on board. I just couldn’t see paying a couple hundred bucks to watch my kid POSSIBLY eat cake. Like what if she doesn’t like it? What if she cries? What if she sits there and stares at it and we have to force her to play in it?

So I decided I was going to create my own cake smash. Was it perfect? No. Does my backdrop have wrinkles in it? Yes. But was it the most fun way to spend her actual birthday, just the 3 of us, eating cake on the kitchen floor? Heck yes! And in hindsight it was perfect for us because she very neatly (and almost uneventfully) ate her cake. Mostly off the end of the decorations ha ha.

So here’s how it all went down:

Lighting

The back of our house gets full sun for most of the day and we have a double sliding door that lets a lot of light into the kitchen. I pushed the kitchen table back so that we weren’t in the direct sunlight but it was still very bright.

Backdrop

I ironed an old white sheet and draped it over the side of the kitchen table, setting some heavy books on top to hold it down. Putting two kitchen chairs on either side of the sheet, I tied a fabric banner from one to the other and it draped across the sheet. My sister had actually made this one for her baby shower and I held on to it 🙂 But here is one that you can order.

I wanted to add a little extra something to the banner so I bought a kit from Michael’s craft store with pink pendants and sticky gold letters to spell out the number “ONE” and attached them with small little pink clothes pins.

   

Props

Pretty much everything I used came from Hobby Lobby. And if you don’t have a Hobby Lobby near you…well first off, I’m sorry…ha ha….and I have linked a few similar items below from Amazon. I snagged this gorgeous small gold cake stand that was the perfect size for a little smash cake. And I just threw this large number “one” on top of it. The pink puff decoration was just something random I grabbed to give her something to play with. And the gorgeous gold letter typically hangs on the wall in her room, but I needed something substantial to offset the other side and it fit the color scheme.

4. Outfits: I wanted a few cute pictures with her in a festive outfit before she got naked. And in typical Meghan fashion, I waited till the last minute but it worked in my favor. I stumbled upon the MOST adorable small, handmade shop that just happens to be in St Louis. Karen was beyond sweet and put together this adorable getup in 2 days. And Parker loved it!! She was fascinated with the pom poms.

When it was time for the cake smash I definitely didn’t want to ruin this adorable outift. So we switched into a tulle skirt. This was another prop I hoarded from one of my baby showers, it was actually decoration around the diaper cake. (I love repurposing stuff. Makes me feel like it didn’t go to waste. Especially when people we love spend so much time making things). Snag a similar tutu here.

 

I have to share this sweet little story with you guys. So the day before her birthday, again, I was running around last minute trying to put it all together. And I popped into our local cake shop. I had intentions of just buying a large cupcake and calling it a day. At this point, I didn’t expect anyone to make a cake for me in one day. So as I’m looking for cupcakes the girl asked what I needed and I told her it was for a cake smash but I was late to the party and just needed to grab ANYTHING they had. She proceeds to tell me that some lady had ordered a cake smash cake and called just a few hours prior to cancel the order…but they already made it. The girl says “are pink polka dots ok?”….UMMMM YES PLEASE! This fits our little “theme” perfectly. They had this cake in the freezer still and were going to throw it away at the end of the night. So she took the initials off, covered it with white icing, and off we went…..for FIVE DOLLARS!! Needless to say, I then placed a massive order for a gazillion cupcakes for her birthday party a few weeks later 😉

 

 

So there we were, right after nap time, just me, Tom, Parker, and Charlie, with our makeshift photo studio eating cake on the kitchen floor. And it was perfect!! Tom videoed and I took pictures 🙂 And poor Charlie waiting like the best boy, so patiently, until we let him “lick the plate clean” at the end.

If y’all have any questions please leave them in the comments below 😉

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