It's hard to believe but our baby girl just turned ONE! We had fun celebrating our Giada Esther, who happens to be named after celebrity chef Giada de Laurentis. The other Giada just came out with a cookbook called, Giada's Kitchen, so we thought it would be fun to use that as the theme for our lil cutie's birthday party. Really it was just another excuse to cook up an Italian feast and celebrate!
We had a little Italian fun with this theme. Mama Lisa showed up for the occasion with artist Da Vinci Daddy. We had to celebrate one of our fave Italian artists.
We turned our kitchen into an Italian Ristorante and here was the posted Menu for the Lunch Specials.
This was a kid-focused par-tay so we piled all the kiddos in the kitchen donning big bibs/aprons and they had big fun eating with her hands...Big sis Meilani led the brigade on this messy but yummy adventure. Some of the older kids made pasta necklaces too.
So far our sweet Giada has been a "vegetarian" when she's not guzzling Mama's Milk. For the big party, we served her a Meatball as her introduction to the carnivore life. In case you couldn't tell, she *loved* it. Yes, she is our lil Italian girl!
We had a few baby friends over to share in this big occasion, including Giada's boyfriend (at least one of them!) Nathanael. He got so messy eating his lunch he had to go shirtless. Well, maybe he's showing off those biceps to intimidate the other young lads at the party.
Instead of the traditional birthday cake, Mama Dorina made chocolate zucchini cupcakes for dessert. Nana Maria added her homemade connoli to the treats.
Needlesss to say, Giada was a big fan of her birthday cupcake and the whole party.
As the Italians say, Mangia! Mangia!
