Taco Bell Smash Cake, Full Taco Bar, & The Cutest Taco Belle You Could Imagine
First Birthday parties are very rarely for the child. Sure, we are happy they have been here on Earth for a whole year, but they won’t remember the day. Half of them are forced to shove their face into a cake and just want to take a nap, the other half are so tired from the festivities that they are napping from relative to relative.
Long before I had a child, I knew I wanted to do a party that was mainly for me. I was certain that I needed to be celebrated for the 9 months of housing and the 1 year of keeping something so new and fragile alive. What’s better than a Taco Bell party? Not much, I say.
I originally saw a Taco Bell smash cake on Pinterest, and I will give some creative/inspiration credit to Monica Phillips (Delta’s mom.) It lit a fire, and I decided to give it a whirl with my tiny foodie, Clara. We did the TACO SMASH with our favorite photographer, Kaylee Creighton.
For the party, we had a huge taco bar. It was complete with beef and chicken options, nacho cheese, homemade guacamole, Mexican rice, black beans, and 3 different kinds of salsa. The taco bar was a hit, but when are tacos NOT a good option for a crowd of 50 people?
You read that right. We hosted 50 people at our house. I had a huge plan for SO many balloons and decorations including homemade pom pom garland, tassels, and a flower wall backdrop for photos. I didn’t fully execute everything, but the party looked beautiful and was a great success!
For the party, I got Clara an actual chocolate cake for her to smash into. I grabbed a $5 one from Walmart, decided I didn’t like the icing on it….scraped the icing off and did some version of cake decorating on it myself. I’m glad I didn’t get a close up photo, because it’s not perfect, however, it was cute enough and looked like it fit right in.
Our one year old dug in and loved playing in the cake (with utensils of course.) She was a beautiful mess, that’s for sure!
For guests, I spent an extensive amount of time making tiny sweet tacos for the tops of Funfetti cupcakes and a mound of white frosting. They were made from a golden sandwich cookie, separated and broken in half, pieced together in the shape of a taco with chocolate frosting fashioned as a taco filling. (Inspo)
I painstakingly topped each sweet taco with a mix of green, yellow, and red sprinkles. I thought they were SUPER cute…and they were TOTALLY worth the ~4 hours of labor they took.
Cece got more presents than we could have even imagined. She was showered with love from every person there, and that’s when I realized the party was for her….it wasn’t all for me! The theme was for me, but my girl had such a good time. And she got (no joke) close for 40 books, and NOTHING makes her happier than a good book.
Happy First Birthday to my SWEET, taco-loving baby. <3
