A long, long, long, long time ago, back in February, Cole turned 1! Turning 1 is often quite a joyous celebration, where you invite lots of family and close friends to witness the 1-year old's very first birthday party ever. And very first piece of cake ever! For
Calla's first birthday, we had just moved across the country from California to Georgia, and I couldn't bear to celebrate this sweet girl's first birthday apart from family. So, just a month after moving, we flew back West to throw a big party at the park. However, for Cole, things didn't work out to do that. I was sad for a while that family wouldn't be able to be there for this big shindig, thinking that someday he would grow up and feel sad when he looked at pictures from his first birthday. Then I had this idea - what about a virtual birthday party?!? We often Skype during family parties to somehow feel a part of the festivities (we even one time got to be judges for one birthday party's cupcake decorating contest!), so why not take the Skype idea to its limits and slam it out of the ballpark? Ideas immediately started rolling, though I found little help on the internet. Guess I'm a forward thinker. Or crazy? Let's not go there!
In the end, it was a fun, chaotic, and technologically buggy (but in an "I-think-we-might-blow-up-the-universe" kinda way) party. So without further adieu...
HOW TO THROW A VIRTUAL BIRTHDAY PARTY IN 10 EASY STEPS
STEP ONE- Create a party box
Since they cannot come to the party, send the party to them. This takes lots of planning and organizing, as the box needs to get to them before the party, but not too early for the cake to go bad (more on that later). For our party box, I made party hats.
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| Don't forget your adorable party hat model |
In addition to the hats, we sent a few games for the kids. Our theme was (sort of) transportation, since the internet was being used as the new way of transportation. We sent little transportation stickers to put on a bigger cardstock airplane. We also sent each house a piece of a puzzle of the United States, intending for them to color and then send the puzzle pieces back to us for a little gift for Cole. Still waiting on some of the puzzle pieces! :) We included little party favors for the younger kids. And, most importantly, we sent jar cake!
STEP TWO- Let them eat cake!
What is a party without cake? I got this idea after jealously Skyping during family parties and wanting a big piece of their cake. Then my sis-in-law Shelbie actually sent us a Cake Pop she had made for her son's first birthday, and it was still delicious! This is where the internet came in most handy, especially pinterest. Anyone following me on pinterest confusedly saw that for some odd reason I had a sudden interest in cakes baked in jars, as that is all I was pinning! I looked into companies that would send cupcakes or cakes for me, but it was about $50 per house to do that after shipping. Um, no thanks. So I finally came across this idea to bake and send cakes in jars from people who do this for loved ones serving in the military. There were a few uncertainties. I was most nervous that the cake would go bad, I also wondered whether frosting should be in the jar or sent in a sealed tub along with the jars, and I was also hoping to use empty baby food jars since I had plenty of those, but not sure what would happen if I put those in the oven. So I did a test run. My jars worked perfectly. I had several experiments going on with different types of jars, vacuum sealing without frosting, closed but not vacuum sealed with frosting inside, opening after 3 days then 4 then 5, all just left out on the counter. All checked out to be great! They did go bad after a week or two. But I knew with confidence that they would be fine shipped priority and eaten in 3 or 4 days. One piece of advice is that the cake rises significantly more in a tiny jar, so only fill it 1/4 of the way up the jar. Also, the cake batter goes farther than you realize. I used 2 boxes of cake mix that I doctored up, for about 35 people and probably only needed 1 box. If anyone is interested in viewing my party pinterest board where you can find the jar cake links (and how to make party hats), here is the link to the pinboard:
Cole Turns 1
Some easy steps:
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| Boil empty jars to make sure they are perfectly clean |
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| Borrow your awesome friend Ally's Kitchen Aid mixer and make way too much cake batter since it goes farther than you realize! |
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| Bake |
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| Find any baking dish you have and fill with leftover cake batter and bake and freeze for later |
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| I read online that if you whip a standard tub of frosting with your mixer, it doubles in volume. Let's see. This is before. |
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| Definitely increased, maybe not doubled. |
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| Have fun with food coloring. |
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Decorate!
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| We found some free printables online and used a circle punch to cut them out. We just taped them on top of the jars and tied a little ribbon around them. Cute! |
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| Yes, folks, that is a lot of cake |
STEP THREE- Carefully pack and ship your party boxes
We spent more on shipping than anything else for the party. But just think how much a party costs to throw it in person, I think in the end this party was way cheaper money-wise (definitely not time-wise though!).
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| Here is the box before mailing! |
We mailed to 5 different households. 4 in California and 1 in Texas. We saved money by having some households combine into one house (it helped that my family was celebrating my brother's birthday the same day).
STEP FOUR- Remember, it's a party where your guests see only what is in the shot. So don't clean your house. Clean a tiny part of your kitchen. Cool, huh? But remember to DECORATE that little window into your party!
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| I cut out circles from felt and used my sewing machine to sew them into a garland. Easiest thing I did for the party. |
STEP FIVE- Coordinate!
Okay, so this is not essential, but it made for a lot of fun. We all dressed in colors that matched the party, for maximum visual affect.
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| Sweet little one-year old |
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| Big sis! |
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| Cole with his Grammy - the only family member who was able to make it in person to the party! |
STEP SIX- Figure out how to use your technology before the party
We did not totally succeed with step six. I knew I wanted to use the upgraded Skype, because I could basically conference call anyone else who had Skype which theoretically would allow us all to see each other. Plus, Skype offered a free trial. We did test it, but not thoroughly enough, because for some reason, as more people joined the call, it caused one of the houses to keep freezing and getting kicked off. :( And then one of the houses was doing Skype from their mobile app, which didn't work with the main conference call. However, we have lots of Apple fans in the family, so we used the iPhone and iPad as backups. Our party consisted of: 3 households conference calling on one Skype call, 1 family iPad to iPad, and 1 family iPhone to mobile Skype. If you do it this way, it is very important to take the iPad and show it to the 3 on conference call on the laptop. Then, have the mobile Skype friend take the party on the road and drive through Lubbock. See what I mean about exploding the universe? I think we came close.
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The set. We were trying to brighten up our shot, hence the lights. In the end, I think we only succeeded in making us all really really hot.
STEP SEVEN- Once everyone is online, have them open their boxes
We decided to have everyone open their boxes together, to ensure that all the stuff cake inside didn't magically disappear and to build anticipation. This gave me a chance to explain what each thing was, and the kids could get busy doing their sticker activity right away.
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| We are watching the boxes being opened |
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| The party box contents |
STEP EIGHT- Keep it moving & be prepared to feel like "the entertainment!"
This party is going to feel like it goes by really fast, especially since you can't expect a party like this to be 2 hours long like it would be in person. Put yourself in the shoes of your guests- since the communication aspect is far from ideal, your guests can't really talk to you or one another and end up resorting to writing on signs and mimery. Since they can't really talk or interact much, they are just watching you and listening to you with big smiles on their faces.
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| Our guests from our view |
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| Aforementioned signs |
Ever wonder what it felt like to be the entertainment (think clown) at your own party? Then throw a virtual party. You sorta feel like you're "on air" like on t.v. and continuously trying to keep them entertained with no dreaded dead space. So you want to keep it moving- after opening boxes, we were quick to do cake and presents and say goodbyes. I think it was probably less than an hour.
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| Cole's special non-jar gluten/diary free cake to smash and eat as he pleased |
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| He quite enjoyed it, as you can tell. |
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| Big sis was quite eager for the jar cake |
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| One of the households eating their cake (and staring at "the entertainment," who might be losing them!) |
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| Oh, that's better! |
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| The cake we party-throwers got to eat. |
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| Presents! |
STEP NINE- Have some activity that brings the different party houses together
If technology participated nicely, this is a way to get creative. You could play some trivia game where you asked trivia about the birthday boy and the first house to yell out "birthday" gets to answer. You could even give prizes for game winners, like emailing an itunes or amazon gift code. Our technology wasn't great, so what we did was beforehand, we emailed each house a letter/number that they had to find in their house or make before their party. Then at the right time, they had to hold up their letter/number and see what they spelled together.
STEP TEN- Take pictures and make sure they snap some pictures from their end.
All of this effort for a little baby who won't remember it the next day, so we needed pictures. I'm going to make a Shutterfy photo book for him to look at someday. The one thing I wish I had done was asked people to take more pictures from their end. I did get a few. Oh well, maybe next time!
SIDENOTE-
One of the benefits of a virtual party is that if the birthday boy is sick, you can still invite your guests to come to the party anyways and not fear spreading germs. Poor little Cole had a fever and the next day we took him to urgent care, and he actually had pneumonia! :( He did not enjoy the party much. Especially the lights we had set up. But because of the difficulty coordinating so many people, and fearing spoiled jar cake, we had the party anyways. Just another memory, I guess.
SIDENOTE- 
