Liwanag's First Birthday: A Shabby Chic Sunshine Party

We celebrated Liwanag's Birthday at the same day as her Baptism last March 8, 2015.  This is an advance celebration as her birthday is on March 11. I decided to have a Sunshine theme inspired by her name which means "light". I also wanted to have a non-pink color scheme since this seems as a default color for girls. Don't get me wrong, I love pink! In fact it is my favorite color and I actually hate yellow because I think it is a loud color. 

When I was searching for party inspirations, i stumbled upon the theme Shabby Chic so I adapted a few concept from that theme thus the "Shabby Chic Sunshine" theme.

We had her baptism at St.Joseph the Worker Parish and had the reception at Pippin's Restaurant. Both places are very near our residence.

Our decoration for the venue are all DIY which my husband and I both made with love. I made the pinwheels and cloud pom poms while my husband made the 3 ft letter standee and the sunshine Pinata.

For the table centerpieces, I recycled mayo jars and adorned it with doily and ribbon and placed baby's breath flowers. I attached a balloon per vase. I wanted to add framed photos but we forgot to print the photos, so there.

I ordered the 6 inches icing sunshine cake (P700) and sunflower cupcakes (P29) from Sweet Aroma who did a great job in copying the design I gave them. I chose them specifically because their cakes are really yummy and I don't want a fondant cake because I don't like the taste much.

The loot bags are bought from stores and I just added the doily and ribbon.

 For giveaways to god parents I had sugar cookies made by Jan Alalong.

 So here we are, the yellow team

 

and here is the birthday girl, our little miss Liwanag. She has truly brought happiness and light to our lives. God bless you always baby! Mama, Papa and Kuya loves you very much!

My Customized Blog Header

I've been pestering Mike to make me a blog header but  he seemed to be always busy. So last Sunday, after all the chores have been done and the lil monster was asleep, I decided to do it myself. With my beginners level Photoshop skills, I am proud that I was able to come up with this one :) I just uploaded the photo as header and voila! instant customized header. I'm still figuring out though how to resize the header because I just used the "shrink to fit" option.

A little explanation not that it needs one but just because I want to :) 

The first photo from the left is our wedding rings shot by Mike.

The second photo is one of our prenuptial photo taken by Mike's friend, Dot.

The third photo is Kulay's tiny little feet and Mike's hand when Kulay was just a week old.

The fourth photo is Kulay's pre- Baptism photoshoot when he was still 5 months.

The last photo was our first New Year in our own house, we just used a tripod to take this photo.

So that's it! I love that it sorta represents our journey as a family. This header will probably be staying for a while as I am too lazy these days to fiddle with the layout of this blog.

DIY Birthday Invitation

Another DIY I did for Kulay's Birthday was the party invitation. The mini buntings I made first because I thought the theme would be COLORS but then I changed my mind but still used the buntings because I already made around 50. I just used board papers and printed the monsters then cut it out and pasted it. I also cut the lower right corner with ordinary scissors to make it look like it was bitten by a monster. Luckily I found matching envelopes for the paper. I forgot to take pictures of what's inside but it was just details of the party using the "smiley monster" font in black color. If isn't obvious yet, my theme colors are blue, green and orange :)

DIY Party Loot Bag

The theme we chose for Kulay's first birthday is Little Monster because he is our little monster. He is indeed a monster at times when he cries (and screams) and he also makes this cute monster growls. Anyways I know that choosing this theme would be a bit challenging because most party supplies available are in popular cartoon characters such as Cars, Mickey Mouse and etc. So I know that I would do a lot of DIY stuff starting with the loot bags. I don't know who started this fad but loot bags or goodie bags just became a necessity in every kid's party. I scoured the net for ideas on my chosen theme and really found a lot of interesting stuffs. There are a lot of printable materials but we don't have a printer at home so I chose a simple design for the loot bag.

1. Conceptualize your design and prepare your materials. I used the ff.

• Paper Bag (the ones used for food take outs)
• Art Paper
• Scissors
• Glue

2. Cut out monster parts.

3. Paste.

My good friend Rhea helping me out

4. Voila you're done! You have your own personalized Li'l Monster Loot bag. Just stuff it with candies and toys and will surely put a grin on a Li'l Monster's face :)