Happy Birthday Nola!

This weekend my family celebrated my niece’s 1st birthday.  I made these very complicated but cute panda cupcakes for the occasion.   My sister couldn’t come up with a theme so we based it around the cupcake idea and did everything Asian.  Chinese food, paper lanterns, and Chinese birthday traditions. It sounds like a very unique theme for a 1 yr olds bday but it was fun.  Especially for the adults, yummy Crab Rangoon is a good party to me!

Making the cupcakes with Sarah. We were up till 1am and still not done.  I finished them up the next day. 
 

Rob didn’t know he would be roped into making the Oreo crumbs.  He wasn’t too happy about that. 

Time to make the tiny panda heads.  I was supposed to use a mini marshmallow as the muzzle but frosting over it was almost impossible.  So instead I carved out a little muzzle on every head.  Then I had to frost each head and add the face with black icing and mini chocolate chip eyes and nose.

Here is the finished product of Panda #1 Oreo limbs and all!

I made a lot of pandas that day.  We ended up having extra heads left over so there was   a plate of mini heads and big heads to choose from if you didn’t feel like eating the whole panda.
    

I made a larger panda for Nola to tear apart.  The first one turned out cute but I didn’t place her head centered enough and she started to droop like she was going to sleep.  I made a back up panda that wasn’t as cute but he had a loose cheek that kept wanting to fall off so his eye started to droop.  We ended up giving her sleepy time Panda instead.
   

Time for the party!  Everyone had their name written out in Mandarin.  Nola was Nu Ling.  I was Nu Nu. 
    

Nola started out the night in her cute little baby kimono! 

She really enjoyed her noodles.

Nola was very neat with her little Panda Princess.  She just took off the Oreos to eat and poked at her little panda. 

Happy Birthday Nola!!!