Phew! After months of money saving, careful planning, and website scouring, finally the day that my family and I have long been waiting for finally arrived! It was the day where all eyes were trained on my one and only prince, Aydein. It was Aydein's very first birthday bash!
Prior to the event, I spent a great deal of time working on Aydein's very
first birthday website. Besides serving as something to remember, I wanted everybody to know the background of the
celebrated boy and how he has evolved from a very tiny infant to a very handsome prince. Besides that, the website is also created to monitor the guests that will be coming to the event from the RSVP section. It was purely designed and built by my husband, Aien. The idea, content and images were all done by me. :P We plan to keep the website for as long as we can, until Aydein is able to manage his website himself :)
snapshot of ahmadaydein.com
Next up, was the invitation card. Did you know that there are hundreds of amazing invitation cards out there? I spent a great deal of time on this one too, gathering ideas and inspiration for Aydein's first invitation card. And after loads of googling and researching, I finally came up with a design that I am very satisfied with. It has the same theme as the website -- exactly what I planned. Lo and behold, the e-invite that I designed myself for the event!
Anyways. The theme for that day was Black, Blue and White (BBW). At first, I wanted the theme to be just Blue & Brown. I've always loved that color combination. But I could not find any goodie bag that matches that theme color without costing me a fortune, so we decided to just go with BBW instead. :)
The event started as early as 2.30PM when my friend Ayu (from the Lamaze Class that I attended earlier) came with her husband Nizam, and her princess Nellilya, as the first ones to celebrate Aydein the Birthday Boy. Ayu was an air stewardess before she became a mom and Nizam is a pilot still! Best lah Nelly, hari hari bole terbang sana sini! :P Oh, Nelly is a fully breastfed baby and just 2 months younger than Aydein. :)
After that, more and more guests started pouring in ; from my officemates, to my University mates, to my schoolmates, to my relatives..
.. and of course, the blogger moms (with family)!
Remember them from my last entry on
Mom Bloggers Unite? This time we had additional 2 members to add up to the crowd --
Irin Putri and
Nadine (with their boys!).
It's probably due to their blog entries that I have been following religiously everyday, but eventhough it was my first time meeting the both of them in person, but it didnt feel awkward at all. Like Irin
tweet-ed in her Twitter -- the power of blogs! It was such a pleasure to be finally meeting Raees and Faaz the chubby boy in person too! Raees (Irin's boy) is adorable as ever and Faaz (Nadine's boy) to me, is like a grown up trapped in a small chubby body :D
As for the rest of the bloggers moms (
Anne,
Nuurill and
Nadia), they were as crazy and friendly as ever.
Their husbands were not bad either. Masing masing sporting & happening. :P
All of them brought their little heros (Imran, Adam & Oman) to make up a small soccer team! I purposely got the pool with loads and loads of colorful balls for the babies to play in. Actually, I wanted to invite the clown over initially, but felt like it would be quite a waste since Aydein would not be able to enjoy it much since he's still very young to understand anything. I'm glad I didn't though, because even without the clown around, the house was full of havoc already! :P
I too, did not miss to join in the fun! :P
And of course, the group photo!
the mummy bloggers (with family)!
I felt pretty bad though, that I did not get to catch up much with any of them since I had too many to attend! Many apologies u guys!
It was such a noisy and busy evening, with guests filling up the house, the kids and toddlers running around the house, and babies crawling and demanding their parents attention! SO FUN!
In case you're wondering, the guests were served with variety of food on that day, from Laksa Johor to Satay to Roti Jala to Cream Puffs to many kinds of fruits and asian delicacies.
Kids were not forgotten either. There were Singapore Bihun, cocktails, nuggets and the ever delicious (but sweet!) cupcakes, baked specially for Aydein by
Sugar Rush Trading. The cupcakes were baked in two flavors, Chocolate (with chocolate ganache filling) and Vanilla (with caramel filling).
And and, you know, the cupcake picks/toppers yang comel-comel tu semua i yang buat tau -- 90% handmade! 10% tak handmade pasal I print lah hahaha. :P Comel kan! :D It says "Happy 1st Birthday Aydein" and the other one has a prince image on it. :)
During the event, the children and babies were given one goodie bag each, which is filled with Squiggles cake, assorted sweets, party clampers, blowers, horns, noise makers and masks.
Just so you know, I did a lot of googling on goodie bags too because I did not quite like the goodie bags I saw in some of the party shops. Lucky for me, I got the goodie bags for Aydein's birthday at
Dini Gifts at rock bottom price! You see, normally the same goodie bag will cost you RM3.90 at Memory Lane, Living Cabin, and such. But from Dini Gifts, I got it for only RM1.50 each! Very satisfying kan! :D
And then, it was the highlight of the event -- the cake cutting ceremony time. We had to push it a little later since Aydein was very sleepy earlier and slept an hour through the event. When he got up, he was slightly cranky and refused all the guests except for his mama (apelah Birthday Boy ni). But after a bit of coaxing, he was back to his normal playful self again and was ready for the cake cutting ceremony.
Everyone gathered around the Birthday Boy and as Aien lighted up the No. 1 candle on the cake, everyone started to sing the Birthday Song to Aydein.
It was so overwhelming -- the crowd, the song and everything that I can't help but to glow brightly like the candle! Haha. Mama je lelebeh, Aydein relax je. :P
And this I must tell you, the cake, is simply SUPERB! The moment it went into my mouth, I was like, this has got to be the best cake from heaven! It is THAT good. SO MOUTHWATERING! Everybody was talking about how good the cake is, and I can't help but to glow happily!
Prince Aydein with his crown
A little bit on the cake, I was actually very nervous of how it would look and taste like. And thanks to
Nadibakes who baked it finely, it turned out to taste just as how I imagined it to be! I was just a wee bit dissapointed on how it looked however, but hey, like they say, you can't have the cake and eat it at the same time, right ;) So it's all good!
Overall, it was a very satisfying and enjoyable event. Tiring yes, but it was definitely worth it! Of course, it could have been better, because there were a few things that I planned to have for this birthday but it didn't work out well, due to the time and budget constraint. (Who would knew organizing a birthday party could take up a lot of your $$$?) :P But it was an enjoyable event nonetheless, and I look forward to arranging Aydein's second birthday party! :D
Again, thank you to those who have made this event a successful one, namely my husband, brothers, Syikin & Kent, as well as my helpful in laws with their bibiks. Thank you guys! Without you, none of these would have been possible!
And for those who have made it to the event, thank you so much for coming as well as for the gifts and I apologize for any shortcomings! I hope you enjoyed yourself last weekend, and I look forward to more gatherings like this in the future!
The happy Aydein in a pool of gifts!
More pictures of the event can be found in my Facebook later. Until then, love love from the Little Family (and Tok Ayah) ! XOXO.
