1st birthday party

The party that I had been looking forward to -
My little baby 1st birthday.

It's a small family affair with a few close friends, but still decorations and small favors are a must! It's very simple and filled with many many balloons (children love balloons right??). Guess if you talk about me being generous, I must admit I'm generous in putting lots of balloons - at the expense of my breathless brother & helper. Haha!

Was tempted to do some balloon sculpting to decorate the wall, but you can't expect much from someone who squims her eyes in frght whenever she twist the balloon and who's dog is handicap (one leg longer than another) so gave up.

Decorations

Favors

The birthday girl and her sister Athena and cousin Ignatius

Video of my girl's first year was played, nothing fantastic but hey! I gotta show off my girl right?

After the video, we sang the birthday song. Before the song, everyone wow-ed at the cake. Isn't it lovely? I was lucky Anna could help me with this when I asked her for a customisation about a month ago. (Anna just gave me the inspiration to bake & decorate a nice cake for a family birthday celebration - everyone must eat lomotil first. I bought some decorating tips quite some time back and have yet to use it.)

I was expecting Benecia, Keverne and Beatrice to join us but I guess weekends usually the children are busy with extra classes. No choice, hope they're able to make it for Athena's party.

Alexandra must have felt privileged being the only guest amongst the family in this picture. But poor girl got her eyes poked by Aricia.I was trying hard to pull Aricia's hands away from Alex; legs from cake. Somehow, in an attempt to stop her legs I forgot about the hand and 'poke'.That girl's too fast liao!

Blowing the candle. Think it was Athena who did the job, Alexandra was quite moody over being poked by Aricia so she didn't blow the candle.

Oops! We forgot a photo of her alone with her cake. Apparently when she sat down on the table, she kept looking at the cake and started clapping her hands.

I was quite apprehensive in cutting and destroying the cake. Athena asked for the feelers ( which the day before she said is nice. So we teased her "we'll ask Aunty to bake you a cockroach cake, longer feelers) and took one eye. We gave another to Alex.

Yummy! It's chocolate pound. I really forgot what I ordered until Anna reminded me the day before.Ha! We finished 3 1/2 of the body - for that small number of guests. Goes to show it's really yummy

Birthday girl enjoying her cake

And then it's Pinata time. Wasn't suppose to have one since I only expected 5 + 2 baby. Athena requested for it (as usual we all know that children love birthday parties so... I gave in to her) and at last minute, no customised pinata but an off-the-shelf from Concourse. Quite a disappointment, it's so small. Can't find the hole to put the sweets, I had to cut the top part and was telling helper, if the hole's too small for the sweets to drop out, we're going to cut it.

Then we all pull, yeh! the strings fell and all came off. Butterfly still intact. Hubby had to tear it open for them. So funny!

Of course the two older children were at a better advantage. Athena picked up alot which I then gave some to Alexandra coz' I forbid her eating sweets.....
Since the pinata was small, I still had some leftover which I kept in the fridge.

Threw it from above their heads (funny!) coz' I don't want any spare sweets in the house.

I think Iggy was mouthing things, Aricia was playing with the streamer. Infact, I had her bag with me, in that chaos somehow the bag went missing. So she wasn't picking anything. She's too young to know what's going on lah! Anyway, it was more for Athena & Alexandra. Hope Alexandra had fun picking up them slowly (nobody to fight with)

After that, the two of them went to the room to play. They played pretend pets and the books were their food. It's really nice to see them playing alongside.
Must admit that Alexandra is her playmate most of the time, coz' Angeline & myself not working, so when we can meet up we'll bring them out and let them play together.

End of the party when the guests have left, I gave Aricia her favor. And immediately she inspected what's inside. I like her expression ; pouted lips

Then she somehow only picked the san-zhar to eat. And she did manage to take out the paper.

As what Jasmine put it, she really 'swing by' to drop the present without the kids. Ai....... but it's okay, I guess their schoolwork is more important. Passed their favors to Jasmine, we chatted a while before she had to leave to drop another present in another party.

After cleaning up the house and bathing the 2 kids, we sat down to let her open her presents. She didn't have as much presents as Athena did (well that's coz' we had a bigger party).
It was really difficult filming her opening up her pressie. She's only interested in the box & papers.
Lots of clothes which is going to take her a long long time to grow to the size

Aricia is still young to understand anything, hopefully when she's older we'll be able to throw her a party with different themes. Well, there are alot of themes for girls

So, one down another one to go in about 2 months time. For sure gonna get Anna to do a cake for Athena. Sigh........

Things in brief :

Decorations
All DIY-ed coz I cheapskate mah! But it took me a long time to do it coz' most of them needs photoshop
Streamers : bought some blue, red and yellow but didn't get to use it. Instead I used the leftover from Athena's 3rd Elmo party which has the same colour
Baby Einstein balloon : online and shipped from US

Food
Neo Garden

Cake
Sugar-Inc

Favors
Adults : all personalised and DIY-ed
Children : The Baby Einstein box and small little thingy's were bought from online. Snacks were bought in SIN. One small animal clip purchased in HKG