It's a rainbow party - Angel is 1!

To me, the 1-year-old birthday of every child is the most important of all. Ok. Maybe 21st birthday too. Anyway, probably every birthday of Angel will be important to me.

But, I did plan to have a wonderful first year celebration for my darling as she turned 1 on 21st November. The thing about staying overseas in a small town like Karlskrona is that you pretty much have to do everything yourself. From the not-so-hard planning and doing up of the guest list to the still-quite-ok coming up with theme, ideas and decorations to the most-challenging-part of cooking for over 60 guests.

If you ask me, I'm definitely more of an artist than a chef. So it came naturally to me as I decided on the party ideas, invitation card and favours for the little ones. When it came to coming up with the menu, I really cracked my brain to come up with dishes that I could whip up and yet look presentable. Oh, I also had to make sure they were the easy-to-swallow and will-not-puke-out type of food.

 

I decided to theme the celebration a "Rainbow Party" because rainbows are vibrant, happy and kids love them. At least I do. Anyway, rainbow made it easy for me to come up with decorations for the house. I could just make things look very colourful (and messy) and credit it to the theme.

The above were two posters that I did especially for Angel. One was "Angel's alphabets" and the other was "Angel's colors". The idea was that I could use pictures of her which had relevant objects/colours to teach her her ABCs and red, blue, green instead.

I also bought some decorations like a banner and hanging swirls to spice up our house.

This was how my main door looked like. I did a simple rainbow poster of Angel to welcome the guests.

Here was one of my proudest achievements. I became Summer the Balloon Twister! I learnt to make balloon models of a flower, sword, dog, butterfly, guitar and bear and gave them away as favours to the children. It was really quite easy to make. All you needed were balloons, a pump and YouTube. 

Similar to My Fairytale Wedding, I also did tentcards for each of my food dishes. Oh, I forgot to mention that because my house was not huge enough to accommodate 60 guests, we had to split it into a two-day celebration on Saturday and Sunday. While that meant that the kids and guests had ample space to move about, it also implied that we had to cook TWICE. I pretty much had two sleepless nights that weekend.

Our final menu consisted of:

1) Prawn noodle soup (we threw in a lobster as well)

2) Braised duck, quail eggs and tau pok

3) Fried wanton (dumpling)

4) Baked/fried chicken wings

5) Cabbage with scallops

6) Assorted sushi (Lobster mayo/omelette/crab tempura/salmon nigiri, California/Unagi/Lobster mango roll, and crab omelette futomaki)

7) Nine layer kueh 

Yup, it was easy to see why I wanted the nine layer kueh. It was a RAINBOW party! While it might be miles apart from what you can get from the shops in Singapore, I still felt so proud and happy that I finally made it myself.

I also made a photo gallery depicting Angel's monthly growth from birth till 1 year. The idea of using scrapbook pages was so that it would be easy to keep them into an album after the party and not waste the hard work. Ok, actually it wasn't very hard because I used very simple decorations. By the way, Angel loves looking at her album from time to time now.

This was a pearl portrait made up of 3600 beads that I did for Angel. I quite liked the floral border though it was really meant to fill up the empty space only.

This was my Princess on Day 1, wearing a pretty fuschia pink dress bought from Primark in London (only £5!). She was so full of smiles that day. Maybe she knew that she was the star.

I am not a baking fan and my best achievements so far are a pandan cake and apple crumble. However, thanks to a baker friend, we had personalised cupcakes for Angel on Day 1 and also a personalised butter pound cake on Day 2.

The cupcakes looked so lovely with Angel's photos (which were edible sugar by the way) that I couldn't really bear to gobble them up.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Angel, happy birthday to you! Time to blow the candle and make a wish!

Here was the sweet birthday girl on Day 2, which was exactly one year after her birth date. We were geared up for another hectic day of cooking. I had to say that my hubby did a great job in the kitchen. He is probably one of the best chefs I know (for a guy). Thanks dear, for helping out so much in the cooking if not I would never have been able to pull this off by myself.

Ta-dah! This was the cake which had our blissful family photo. My friend sure could read my mind and knew that I loved customised stuff like this. Thanks so much! Anyway, our little princess got to blow candle, make a wish and eat yummy cake all over AGAIN!

Many thanks to all the guests who showed up to celebrate this happy occasion with us. I'm sure you all made Angel feel like a celebrity that day with all the gifts and attention.

 So, that marked the end of my baby's 1st birthday celebration. After the guests departed on the second day, it was finally time for me and jw to sit down, relax, have a beer and just watch TV while my girl got excited and busy opening her presents. Wow. I'm wondering where to store the bulk of toys. 

To my dear Angel, hope you had a great party and a very happy 1st birthday to you. Mummy loves you more than words can say and I always will. Hugs and kisses.