It occurred to me a few days ago that I never did make a blog post about Lucy’s birthday party, which was well over a month ago now. It was such a fun affair, we invited about 20 of our closest friends and family to help celebrate our sweet girl’s first year of life. Our tiny home was cramped, but it really was perfect.

I am not wild about cake, and to be frank, I really suck at making it. I do however love pie and am great at making that, so that is what we did. We have not yet introduced sugar to Lucy (and I don’t plan to anytime soon) so I made her a completely natural, sugar free apple berry pie (recipe from the Julian Pie Company, published in this book). Instead of using sugar you add unsweetened apple juice and cook it down, letting the natural flavors shine. As you can see from the pictures above, Lucy adored it and devoured every bite. I also made a blueberry pie and a peach cobbler.

Since we were having pie I decided to loosely go with a picnic theme. I had thought about doing some sort of gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but decided it would be too much work to try and make a bunch of tiny sandwiches. Instead I settled on egg salad, which I served with sliced bread and crackers. I also made a huge bowl of sun dried tomato hummus, along with pita chips and a vegetable platter. It was a pretty simple fare, which is about all I can do with my busy toddler.

All in all, we had a fun and memorable day, and I am glad it’s over. Birthday number two will be much more low key.