Adding photographer to my resume...DIY smash cake photo shoot!

In 17 days my son will turn One. That's right. One.

In true new mom fashion, I intend to go completely overboard.

And the festivities started yesterday.

When my son was about 6 months old, I read online about a horrendously messy project called smash cake. I googled, and it was over. I've since been waiting to place my child in front of a cake and let him go wild, and yesterday I did just that.

I decided to use the smash cake photos for his birthday invitations. I really wanted these pictures to look professional (this is after a botched Christmas card debacle.)

So I set out to do it right, and here's how it went down.

First, I made a mini pop up photo studio. To do this I takes up a long price if white cloth in my kitchen. I chose white because we used a very bright cake to match my son's Yo Gabba Gabba themed party.
I bought fabric long enough that it flowed several feet onto the floor. That would have sufficed, but I purchased a big piece of fiberglass to put on the floor. This held the cloth in place so it would withstand baby wiggles. It also created a more professional look and gave a subtle reflection of his pudgy baby legs.

I then takes up a .99 cent Happy Birthday banner for a cute decoration. I also had on hand a birthday hat, which was not an option to use as far as my son was concerned, and a Happy Birthday balloon, which we opted out of using as well.   Here is my mini studio!

Could only be cuter with disgustingly frosting covered child smack dab in the center. 

So the crucial part of all of this is this: I had my mother and my fiancé (OH) as baby wranglers. I couldn't have done that without them. Here are some of the rough edits. We took these with my iPhone.

I will post the edited pictures that were taken with my camera on another post.  

Talk about stinkin cute.