M's Birthday Party Series: Lootbags

 Since my baby's party theme is Pirate, I gave out treasure chest lootboxes. Bought the boxes from Chocolate Lovers for Php 89 for pack of 10s. Then inside I placed treasure-themed items (well, at least majority of them):

 

- RING pops
- iced gems cookies (Gems = treasure)
- Goya gold coins and golden balls bought from Chocolate Lovers
- gold/orange colored candies like Butterfinger, TofiLuk, Orange swits
- silver foil covered goodies such as mallows and choco crunchies
- non-themed food items are pixy sticks and oreos

for non edilble items I placed the following
- bubbles (bought these from eBay. they are angry bird designs so I just covered them using my own design)
- mini yoyos from Toys R Us (these are actually Ben10 yoyos. I covered them with my own design)
- play doh

I over estimated the amount of candies I bought. I wasn't able to put alot since the box was a bit small. The excess chocolate coins and balls, I placed them around the cake. Instant candy bar for the kids during the party

M's Birthday Party Series: Invitations

After I got the Pirate Pocoyo images from my brother, I started working on the invitation. I was able to download a pirate digi-scrap kit from the internet. I used some of the elements to come up with this:

I mostly gave this out as e-vites (electronic invitation). But for those who received printed copies, they received theirs looking like this:

I made use some of my cupcake toppers to seal the envelopes. Double purpose! Cute eh?

DIY Series: Personalized Apron

During S's 3rd birthday, she had a small school birthday party. I had a lot of plans but again budget was the issue. Unlike during S's 1st and 2nd birthday parties, when I was still working and had money to augment the paltry budget my CFO gave me, this time the "working mommy no more" had to be extra creative and resourceful on how to make the party special at the same time stick to my budget.

S and her classmate getting busy with the activity

Her school only allows simple parties in school so no games and program. But I wanted to add an activity aside from the usual eating and blowing the candles. I decided to do a cupcake decorating activity. The kids decorated cupcakes I ordered from Frupcakes using candies, sprinkles and fondant decorations while wearing these cute little aprons. I got the idea from The Loot Fairy. I initially wanted to order from them but they have a 24 pcs minimum order. It came to a point I was tempted to order all 24 thinking the rest I can give out as Christmas gifts. Tee hee! But at that moment, I did not have the money to order all 24 pieces. 

With no sewing skills, I tried asking my friend if her mom who dabbles in sewing can make the aprons for me. It was fairly easy to make so she asked me to send her the template and the materials. I'm sure your friendly neighborhood mananahi (seamstress) can do that for you.

The Day She Turned 3 - The School Party

My daughter turned 3 last Friday. For this year, we didn't have the same big parties we prepared for her when she turned 1 & 2 years old. Gotta be prudent about the money since I'm giving birth in November. We prepared though a small school party for her in the morning and playtime in Timezone with her playmates in the afternoon. 

We started the day with surprising her with a small birthday cake and gifts: