1st Birthday Cake Smash Photography Cheadle, Stockport, Cheshire

One of the many reasons I love my work as a newborn and family photographer in Stockport, Cheshire is the satisfaction I get from helping my clients to document their special family moments and milestones.

During the newborn stage parents are so often told to cherish the time they have whilst their baby is teeny tiny sleeping, all curled up as if they are still in the womb because they will change so rapidly from that moment on. This is why so many people book in for a newborn photography session in the first place. Parents want to capture those very precious first days in their baby’s life and have a lasting memory to cherish.  

When a family then books back in with me to have a Cake Smash session to celebrate their baby turning 1 I am genuinely delighted at the prospect of seeing how the newborn has transformed into an amazing bundle of fun, bursting with life and personality.  However, for this particular shoot documented on the blog…..the bundle of fun was my very own….

Looking at her newborn photograph above I can barely recognise her. Although I have spent every single day with her since she was born I can’t quite believe the transformation myself. Looking at her I burst with pride that she is mine, yet there is something so bittersweet about that 1st Birthday! Is it the thought that we will never get our teeny baby back that once curled up in our arms, but now struggles out of our grasp to go and explore. Or that we will rarely get to hold them tight in the wee hours of the night, cradling them back to sleep with that milky smell lingering on their tiny breath?? Those moments that remind you how utterly dependent they are on you for everything. I feel sad, I feel nostalgic. Where has the time gone? Why has it gone so so fast? I then have to remind myself that I have these pictures though. I may have been exhausted and in a lot of pain when taking them, but I am so glad I did because in this picture she will forever be only a few days old….and with the chunkiest of arms I have ever seen on a newborn in my studio!!

Less of the soppy stuff I hear you say!!

Okay so to celebrate this one turning 1 I thought I had best arrange her a Cake Smash session of her own! Many of my friends have made their child’s first birthday cakes and although I respect them for that I am more of a Colin the Caterpillar from Marks and Spencer’s kind-of-mum. However…for the purpose of this Cake Smash I figured I wanted something very simple, so decided that I would make the cake myself! You may well think this sounds like a recipe for disaster…well you would be right and in fact it was! My first attempt ended horribly! In my head logic was that given the cake was for a photography session it was all about the ‘look’ and not so much the taste. So the fact that I had no self-raising flour didn’t pose a problem, I would just chuck a load of extra baking powder in to make do! Even if it meant it wasn’t as tasty, she would surely eat some anyway and I could snap away with the camera happily. Major error! Cake basically exploded and tasted horrendous so had to be binned! 
Attempt two seemed to be going better, I had learned from my previous mistake and stuck strictly to the recipe. Cake came out of the oven looking very normal so I decided to turn it upside down on a cake stand to cool down before icing. 15 minutes later…Chris happened to point out that the inside of the cake had now emptied itself onto the kitchen surface! To cut a long story short I scooped it back up, put it back in the oven and saved the day and although not as professional looking as I may have liked, I think the cake did the trick and suited the set-up perfectly! This was her first taste of cake (as far as I know…her grandad may know better) and she actually loved it although was a very clean eater which made clearing up a doddle!! Good girl!

So please have a look at my little Lara’s 1st Cake Smash and admire those perfect baby thighs xxxxxxx