Emma is One Under the Sea Celebration

Emma turned one recently, and I still find myself disbelieving the facts - one, I'm a mother; my baby is no longer a baby, that I'm momma to this joyous, spunky, loving little girl. Sure, we'd love for her to have more hair, but truly, she is perfect.

Notes about motherhood, especially being a working mum, have been steeping in my head for some time now. Maybe I'll find the will and time to share those thoughts before she turns two.

We celebrated Emma's birthday with a simple, 90% DIY party. We hosted slightly more than 30 adults + kids at our humble home. I chose the Under The Sea theme, a loose interpretation of Emma's love for water and sandplay, and, well, I love the colours. 

Wave streamers, balloon "bubbles", and helium balloon "sea creatures"

We spent one weekend in Chinatown KL sourcing for stuff. I bought turquoise and green crepe paper, dark and clear blue balloons, teal paper bags and cute whale bath toys in bags of 20 for door gifts, and I also found these dolphin foil balloons. I also found these adorable wooden pegs with sea/water creature shapes on them, which I knew I could use as part of the gift bags.

Whale bath toys from Petaling Street. These were accompanied by packs of fish crackers and chocolates in the goody bags

DIY goody bags - we glued little sea creatures from Bugs Party onto plain teal paper bags and affixed these cute wooden pegs on them (bags and pegs from a shop in Chinatown)

Goody bags all ready for little hands

From Babyland we purchased plastic sea creature models, and these dolphin and shark boxing dummies (not sure what they're really called), for RM15 each!

Stuff I sourced online: clear balloons, small plastic sea creatures and a very cute octopus balloon. Very quick delivery.

We also paid Spotlight a visit, and I got really overwhelmed. The variety is huge, but the prices ain't cheap. After much deliberation, wringing of hands, taking and then putting back stuff on the shelves, I managed to pare my purchases to a few pieces of felt for Boo's shark costume, and iridescent ribbon for hanging balloons.

I initially wanted to get a catering company to provide the food, but work and life and general carelessness got the better of me and all the catering companies turned me down at my one week notice. In the end, this became a blessing in disguise. We ordered satay from our favorite place, and AK also decided to order 100 mini dessert tarts - banoffee, lemon meringue, chocolate mint from this place. They were pretty good, especially the banoffee and chocolate mint. Would prefer the lemon meringue tarter, though. 

I cooked seashell pasta with my mum's favourite bolognaise, and made chicken nuggets. I also found this adorable project on Pinterest - a watermelon shark! Read up the tutorial, and attempted it on the morning of the party itself. Gotta say, I think it turned out quite well. Filled with chilled watermelon chunks and grapes. I made tinted jelly to pour into the bottom of the tray, to make it look like the sea :) My cousin made the gorgeous cake, an amalgamation of similar ones we saw on Pinterest. I loved loved it. I also made cutout cookies in sea creature shapes - made the dough the weekend before, cut out the shapes and froze them before the party so I wouldn't have to stress just before the day itself. I used this recipe, which turned out well - easy enough to roll out (I divided the dough into 8 parts and had to re-chill each batch after rolling out and cutting, but hey, it's Chinese New Year weather in KL - I was just thankful for the fact that I could cutout and transfer the shapes into a tray)

I cut streamers out of the crepe paper, and AK hung the blue ones on the ceiling (like waves, see?), and the green to look like seaweed on the walls. We grouped the ballons in strings of 3-5, to mimic bubbles. We hand pumped the latex balloons - we considered helium at first (Spotlight offers filling services), but balked at the price of filling them and the logistics of it all. So we decided that only the 3 sea creature balloons would be filled with Helium.

The play area with its beach towel, dolphin and fishing "pond". 

One thing we knew we had to set up was a play area for the kids. So we used our foyer as the space. We put down Emma's play mat squares and I covered the offending red squares with my blue peshtemal to mimic a beach towel. We put down the boxing dummies and a blue basin with a fishing game - with a magnetic rod and fish. We also placed the presents and basket of door gifts there. Turns out the kids were more interested in fishing Boo, who was languid, docile and generally a good sport throughout.

Isn't this just so perfect??

Emma was more interested in her goody bag than blowing out the candles on her cake

Scraps of fabric from Spotlight to jazz up the dining table

Adorable octopus balloon

Homemade sugar cookies in sea creature shapes. Had lots of trouble with the icing, ironically with the purportedly easy instant "just-add-water" mix, it wouldn't spread evenly. 
Next time I'm just going to source the meringue powder and make my own.  

My watermelon shark in his blue pool

Overall it went very well, even if I do say so myself. You know, as I was frantically calling caterers over the Chinese New Year holiday week, I was totally regretting putting myself up to this. I moaned to AK about this party being all about me and Emma won't remember a thing about this party when she's grown up.

The truth is, yes, I was thinking a little of myself when I made up my mind to have this party. But when people started coming, relatives and friends taking turns to hold Emma, the kids got settled into the play area/on the sofa with Boo, and friends started grouping around, eating and chatting, I realized what a party is all about. It's about bringing together our nearest and dearest, to celebrate in our joy with our little girl. And I'm not sure if we're going to be up for this every year, but it was pretty fun coming together as a family to put up decorations, source for food, take turns taking care of Emma, etc. In fact, after the party is over and I don't have something to plan for/a project to tackle, I feel kinda lost. Even my helper got super enthusiastic and was in on most of the decisions.

Sure, I said next year we'll just go on holiday instead, but we'll see. 

Totally unnecessary sea creature mantelpiece

Celebration!!

It's December, my favourite time of the year!

I bought a large tree (after, like 3 trips to 3 different malls), and went for (I'd like to believe) a silver, gold and winter theme with icicles, silver balls and translucent angel wings. Unfortunately I broke 2 icicles, and the weekly maid another 3 :(. Note to self: Perhaps it's not such a good idea to buy glass ornaments. Next year will get another set of lights and more ornaments, so the tree doesn's look so bald.

We hosted a Christmas gathering amongst colleagues/friends, with a heated gift exchange that included steals and bargains, and then played Taboo.

I ordered a turkey from Hank's Fine Foods. Ordering was a bit of a hassle in the beginning, but the turkey turned out pretty good actually - moist and tasty white meat! Such a rarity. I made my own mushroom gravy to go with as well - pretty easy. Caramelize chopped onions, then add chopped mushrooms (I used portabellos and brown mushrooms) and saute. I soaked dried porcini in hot water, then strained the mushroom liquid and finely sliced in the porcini for extra umph. Grate in a clove of garlic, leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Voila.

Some other things I made:

- My guacamole, which our prep crew took to snacking on before the party started, and finished waaay too early. I should've made more! Next time next time.

- Mushroom pasta. Saute sliced brown and portabello mushrooms in olive oil, add chopped garlic. Let the mushrooms cook down. Add cooked pasta and a bit of the pasta water. I used about 5 cups of sliced mushrooms to one 400 g packet of spaghetthi. Toss over low heat, then add lots of freshly grated parmesan. I used my large oval Le Creuset to cook the mushrooms and toss the pasta with, and then as a serving vessel. Just before serving, sprinkle with freshky chopped parsley.

- My mum's awesome chicken wings, which is the subject of another post. They went down so fast I didn't even get to eat any!

- Early grey jelly with oranges and pomengrenate seeds

- Fudgy brownies using my favourite recipe

Some lessons I learnt on hosting:-

1) Get friends involved. We had one friend who was a general helper, helping to chop, slice, basically do anything I wanted doing. Another friend made his delicious rocket and avocado salad with olive and balsamic dressing, and artfully arranged the crudites in glass jars you see below. Yet another guy offered to make his Mojitos (virgin ones for me and another pregnant guest), which got the party started pretty nicely. You don't have to do it all yourself - and since our friends were guests as well, there was plenty of joking and mingling way before the party even started proper.

2) Prep as much as you can beforehand - I sliced my mushrooms, marinated my wings and made the gravy the night before. I also made desserts the night before. The day itself - roasted the wings, made the pasta and guacamole. With my friends around to lend a hand, this was easy and we had plenty of time to drink mojitos and snack on aforementioned chips and guacamole before everyone else arrived.

3) More is better than less! I would've liked to make more pasta, more guacamole, more wings - they went down so fast! And maybe order a ham. Again, something to keep in mind for next year

All in all, it was a good night. I know hosting something of the like is going to be a challenge next year with the baby and everything, but I'd love to make it an annual tradition. We'll see.

My precious gifts under my gold and silver tree - Boo's like, "Whatcha doin under MY tree??"

Turkey and "stuffing" from Hank's, homemade mushtoom gravy (in the large glass bowl), salad and mushroom pasta (left, partly visible only)

Our staircase - note that my Yogja skull has his Santa hat on!

Turkey from Hank's Fine foods - surprisingly tasty white meat. I would order this again.

The most artfully arranged crudites by our friend (veggies to be eaten with bought cheese dips), homemade guacamole with corn chips.

Mushroom Pasta

Boo staking his place under the tree again

Group photo of the night