February 23, 2020
Happy first birthday to my little angel girl. Today’s post is going to be a little sappy, but also lot of fun because I’m sharing Caroline’s DIY smash cake photo shoot.
One year ago today Milton and I woke up early in the morning and drove to the hospital to have Caroline. I turned on Kacey Musgraves and did the best I could to stay calm knowing that my life was about to change forever in just a few hours. It was the best day of my life. You can read her birth story here.
When you have a baby everyone tells you that it goes by fast. “Savor every moment”, “Take lots of pictures”. It really does go by fast, though. I have had quite a few different jobs over the years, but being Caroline’s mom is my all time favorite. She fulfills every part of my being. During her first few days I would tell Milton and my mom, “I just love her so much,” while looking at her tiny face crying tears of overwhelming joy.
OKAY THAT’S ENOUGH OF THE FEELS! Let’s talk about this smash cake photo sesh.
Smash Cake Photos
I was not planning on doing these photos with Caroline until a few days ago. My Gran (Caroline’s Great Gran) came in town last week and we went shopping for Caroline’s birthday. Gran wanted to buy her a new dress. We went to Gracie’s on the Strand after lunch to find the perfect birthday dress. Within minutes of being in the store Gran made friends with two other women that were shopping. The woman doesn’t know a stranger. She told them it was Caroline’s first birthday in a few days. We went our separate ways in the store, but just minutes later one of the sweet ladies walked up to us holding this rainbow tutu and insisted that we buy it for Caroline’s birthday. So here we are wearing the rainbow tutu and eating birthday cake.
Not to put any photographers out of business ((I’m no Amy Cole when it comes to editing)), but these pictures were not hard to do! If you want to do something similar with your little one but you don’t want to spend a lot of money I think you would be surprised to see what you can accomplish with a box cake and a white sheet.
Decorations and Cake
The backdrop is actually a shower curtain. You’ve seen this same shower curtain in all of Caroline’s monthly photos. While I cherish all of those pictures, I am excited to fold this thing up and put it in the cabinet for good. I steamed the shower curtain to remove the big wrinkles and draped it over our table. I taped the edges down to keep it in place. I like this shower curtain better than a sheet because it is thicker!
The multi-colored tassel garland is from Target. They have all different colors and different styles of garland in their party department. Sometimes they have similar decorations in the dollar spot. The lanterns are also from Target.
This cake stand was a wedding gift. I added it to my registry thinking I’d have baked goods on it all of the time. Here we are three years later finally using it. I used three 6 inch round cake pans and one box of funfetti mix for her cake. Thank goodness perfectly imperfect cakes are trendy because I just slapped some icing and sprinkles on there and called it a day. The cake topper is from Target. I couldn’t find the exact one to link but here is a similar one.
Caroline’s Outfit
There’s really not much of an outfit, honestly. As I mentioned above, this tutu is from Gracie’s on the Strand. I found a similar one online, but if you are local go check out this boutique.
I have a tiny party hat that I thought about putting on Caroline for these pictures, but these big bows are her thing (ok, it’s mom’s thing but whatever). This pink bow came in a pack of eight bows for cheap on Amazon.
The Shoot
We have large windows along the east side of our house. These photos were taken around 11:00 am while the sun was still on that side of the house. I always take my pictures in indirect sunlight. I opened the shutters to let as much light in as possible. I looked like a total goon taking these pictures laying on the floor. Milton looked like a bigger goon behind me doing wild things to make Caroline smile.
My camera is a Nikon D3400. I like to shoot in manual mode. Even though I’m not that good at adjusting the settings, I can typically edit the photos to make them look more polished. You DON’T need a nice camera to get good photos. Milton has the iPhone 11 and it would have taken just as good of pictures.
In total I spent $35 on this photo shoot. That is including the cake pans, cake mix, icing, sprinkles, cake topper, garland, lanterns (considering I already had the bow, backdrop, cake stand, and the tutu was a gift).
Keep scrolling for a Caroline overload.
