Happy 1st Birthday Esra Aaliyah!

This is going to be a long post.

Yesterday was my little Sunshine's 1st birthday. I honestly can't believe a whole year has gone by so quickly. I actually feel very emotional about it, it feels like yesterday that I held her in my arms for the first time. My whole life has changed since becoming a mother and I really do understand the true meaning of life and appreciate every single day a whole lot more.

Esra Aaliyah you are our world, we thank god everyday for blessing us and love you more than words can explain. You are our little princess!

Allah seni nazardan korusun biricik kizim!

Esra's day started with smiles and was happy to be riding around in her new smart trike!

We had a small family gathering which was nice and intimate.The party was supposed to be a 'garden party' at my mums but we had some fantastic wind action in London yesterday that made everything start flying left,right and centre. So, we had a warm indoor party instead! Here's the 'sweet' setup.

The giant pink cupcake cake was purchased from Asda.

I made little favours with cupcake cases!

I personalised some bubbles for the kiddos also with cupcake cases.

Some more sweet action...

I made the cupcakes!! *so proud* They tasted so yummy, they were vanilla cupcakes with vanilla butter cream frosting topped with pink glitter and pearls. I used pink food colouring to achieve the desired tone to match the actual cake. We also had another walnut cake to munch on.

I made some paper flowers by scrunching up cupcake cases for some added colour which now live on my makeup area. Yes, the theme was 'pink' and 'cupcakes', I'm sure you guessed that by now.

Foodwise, we went all Turkish. We had 'Lahmacun' which my mother in law made, 'Cevizli lokum', (walnut bread), peynirli pogaca, (buns with cheese filling) kisir (cracked wheat with fresh mixed salad), and potato salad was all made by my mum. Yes we had pink plates, cups and cutlery! :)

 I snapped some photos of Esra in her party dress in the garden!

The dress was from Gap but I'm afraid it's very old, my mum purchased it for her in the sale when Esra was just a few weeks old. The cardigan is from Zara, the tights are from H&M, I made the headband from a clip and added the crochet bits.

Now for the fun part. 

I did a little indoor photo shoot of her Eating cake for the first time. I taped the balloons to the wall and used the 50mm lens on the canon 600d to get some cute shots, although silly me forgot my tripod.

Yum!

SHE ABSOLUTELY LOVED THE CAKE! Uh oh.....

The tutu and top were both from H&M, the shoes are from Next and I made the headband.

Thank you to my family & friends for showering Esra with the most beautiful and thoughtful gifts. We are truly blessed. Also a huge thank you forall of the sweet messages on Twitter and Instagram.

I heart you all!

xXx