Our little one’s birthday is a special milestone every parent wants to celebrate. Apart from making it something fun and enjoyable for our guests, we would also like to make it very memorable for the celebrant to remember with fondness for years to come. A good memento to add to their young memory bank!
I am sure most mums will agree that organizing a party is no easy feat, especially for a working mum who has other things to attend to apart from making sure that her little one’s birthday celebration will be one for the books and something the guests will remember with delight and a smile on their faces.
Max’s has been a part of the Filipino celebrations and special occasions for years now. I remember celebrating my 30th birthday in their Malolos branch {eons ago} with Jared’s dad and my sister, just a couple of days before I popped and welcomed my not-so-little bundle of joy into the world. The Filipino dishes they serve will always warm the hearts of each diner not to mention their appetites and their tummies! 🙂
Now, Max’s is making our little one’s birthday celebration even more special with their #KiddiePartyToTheMax. We were privileged to be one of the invited mum bloggers to get first dibs on their new party packages and party the day away in time for Chickie Boy’s birthday celebration!Â
I was able to attend Manila Workshops’ First Time Parents: Making Memories and Party Planning, held at the Medela House in Quezon City a few weeks back. This is my second time to participate in a Manila Workshops event as I have attended their Lunches With Love workshop last year {which I have yet to share here, by the way}. The speaker, Michelle Katigbak-Alejandro, editor-in-chief of Metro Weddings, shared loads of tips and chunks of knowledge to first-time and would-be parents about effectively recording the little one’s milestones and capturing precious memories.
The second part of the workshop, on the other hand, was chock-full of tips and wonderful ideas on how to plan and throw a beautiful party for our children, without stressing too much and breaking the bank. It was something I enjoyed attending and I really wish that I was able to attend a similar workshop when I was just a fledgling and struggling new mum.
Part I: Making Memories
Some of our baby’s milestones include growth milestones {the monthly birthdays, increase in height/weight, and pedia visits}, the developmental milestones {like the first laugh, first smile, first time to sit up and first time to eat solid foods}, social milestones {like the first play date, first time meeting family or their first music class}, and finally the holiday milestones that include their first Christmas, Halloween, Easter and so on. Our little ones accomplish a number of these milestones during their first year of life and it ought to be one of our goals as mums and parents to document each momentous occasion in our children’s lives.
There are several ways in which we can capture our baby’s milestones:
Photographs ~ the most common and the easiest way to capture our little ones. Photographs last for a lifetime and more and sure are effective and wonderful ways to remember and capture the moments in our babies’ lives. Nowadays, parents can choose the most convenient way to take their children’s photographs, may that be with professional DSLR, point-and-shoot camera, mobile phone camera or Instax, or what most of us know as Polaroid.
Videos~ these might be a bit tricky to shoot but videos are just as nice to capture our little ones, with sounds and actions, to boot!
Recordings~ is a great alternative especially if your child tends to be distracted by the camera in front of him. Recordings are perfect and discreet way to capture babies’ voice and noises without them being conscious about it.
Here are a few tips from the workshop on how to take baby photos
I am glad that even when I do not have a regular job and online opportunities for my mum blog is getting scarce since Mr. G took away my pr, I still manage to save up for the little man’s simple birthday celebration at his playschool. I was able to save up Php7,000 from last month’s work, which I thought was just enough for the party I have in mind.
It was Jared who gave me the idea about his party’s theme while he was playing with his minion toys one day. He said he’d put the minion on top of a cake and proceeded to singing the Happy Birthday song. When I asked him who’s having a birthday, he answered “Jared,” so a light bulb flickered to life in my mind. Minion birthday it is! 😀
As early as the first week of August I was already busy creating my birthday party checklist and scouting for items both online and off that I thought I could use for the party. I have also scoured a lot of minion-related Pinterest boards and got tons of ideas from them!
A minion cake and a bunch of cuppies were on the top of my list. Fortunately, I do not have to look far to find the perfect cake maker. I ordered Jared’s sweet birthday treats from the local shop Just Sweets and even the little man was delighted with his minion cake! 🙂
As usual I commissioned my brother to make the birthday invites, the banner, as well as the thank you stickers which I used to lock my loot bags. He printed the stickers and the invites, while I have the tarp printed in a local bookshop a day before our party.
I made my own loot bags from yellow colored papers I got from the bookstore and put these printed minion eyes I got from another Pinterest board, for finishing touches, and viola! I now have my very own affordable and cute minion bags! I filled them with these minion toys I got from an online shop on Facebook and these minion felt keychain I chanced upon at a local mall in our city. I also added a couple of scented colored pens that I am sure the kids will love!
To make our celebration more fun, I planned some fun activities for the kiddos at playschool. With my sister Cel’s help, we cut these create-a-minion cut outs for the kids to make and I printed a number of minion color pages for the children to color. I also got those printable page online.
Minion stuff are rather difficult to find, so for our piñata, I diy-ed a minion one out of a 100-peso-plus Spongebob piñata I got from this Divisoria-like shop I discovered at Maunlad Mall {thanks to sis Jhona, one of the mums at playschool, for graciously offering to accompany us there}. I also bought 6 stationery set for boys and girls as prizes for our party games there. Bel cut out a yellow colored paper for the minion body of our piñata, as well as a blue colored paper for its cover-alls, and pasted a couple of these minion eyes print outs to create our very own minion piñata! We filled it lollipops, candies and chocolates for the children to enjoy at the party.
For the food, we just ordered one-piece chicken/spaghetti meals from Jollibee. I opted for pineapple juice for the kiddos, too.
Here is the summary of my expenses for my son’s party: