The canopy is gone. Furniture back at their original places. Cake stands and bowls and decorations stowed away, till the next party. Maybe Liam’s 21st birthday lol
Thank you everyone for coming to Liam’s first birthday party, especially to my Dayre family the #bahamasmoms.
Thank you for all the amazing and thoughtful gifts for Liam, they will last him for a few years! Liam is a lucky chap to have received so much love 💗.
I have written extensively about my DIY journey on Dayre but I think it might be interesting to my non-Dayre readers so am going to reproduce the story here.
When it was time to plan for Liam’s birthday, I had two themes in mind; nautical or aviation. In the end I went with the latter cause I want to keep nautical theme for a pool party when he’s older heheheh.
Next thing was to start a Pinterest board of course. I think I surfed Pinterest almost everyday! Initially asked for quotations for feature table but coiled in horror at the price :P So I decided to do it myself.
I chose this as my inspiration picture. I didn’t want to (or more precisely, couldn’t) emulate it but I like how it’s got many layers and textures and most importantly I can pull it off with using recycled materials.
For the cake toppers, I made airplanes out of wooden clothes peg and art sticks. “Clouds” made with scrunched up white paper. Bought the candle which I hated coz it’s green but it grew on me and I used it in the end eventhough I had bought another candle that’s white with red piping.
Made a cardboard box plane for photobooth. This took the longest time but not too bad.
I wrapped the main body in brown paper cause it was a colourful cardboard box pre-transformation. Only two boxes were used to make the plane. The backdrop was leftover fabrics from my DIY ballroom ceiling streamers for my wedding. Just simply clipped them to my curtains with clothes-pegs. I actually bought cheap polyester pillows, hoping I could pin the filling onto the fabric to simulate clouds but that didn’t happen cause the filling was so crumbly so had to abandon that idea lol
My baby pilot in his private plane :)
As for printables, I only needed two types; cupcake toppers and mineral water labels. So, I errrrrrrrrmm stole the design somewhere and then I used photoshop to customise it to my liking. I kept the basic design, just redo the text and coloured it differently.
As you can see it was too annoying to cut the toppers out properly so I just cut them circles straight.
Cupcake toppers in action.
Gareth helped me to cut water bottle labels.
The customised water bottles.
Now let’s talks about the cupcakes. I wanted non fondant cupcakes and birthday cake. For the cupcakes, I got 3 flavours; salted caramel, rose lychee and banana walnut. The birthday cake was pandan gula melaka flavour.
All from home baker DK Bakes. You can find her on Facebook and IG.
I love her because not only her cakes are yummy, she totally came up with what I had envisioned. For instance, I wanted a simple tall non fondant cake and she delivered. She could see what I was really gunning for and she wasn’t pushy with her own aesthetics.
She gave me a few relevant pointers and that’s it while there was one pretty popular baker that I also spoke with and he quoted me exorbitantly and then subtly talked down on me about not getting an extravagant fondant cake. I mean, after like 30 minutes of explaining to this person what I wanted, he said yes he understood what I meant and sent me a picture of a spherical 3D fondant cake with a flying pig, I am not kidding you!!
Anyway, my point is I am really pleased with DK Bakes and if you’re looking for cakes, look no further.
These salted caramel cupcakes were finishing up real quick!
The yummy banana walnut cake.
The rose lychee was really popular too, I wish I had ordered more of these.
And Liam’s birthday cake with my homemade toppers. This is pandan and gula melaka cake. So moist and delicious!
So this is how my dining table looks on the eve of party.
I don’t have old wooden boxes or old suitcases so I saved paper boxes of various sizes to be wrapped up in papers in the right colour palate. Means like brown-ish colours.
I found gift wrapping papers with passports and airline tickets stubs printed all over it in Tesco so I bought 30 pieces lol. Then I also found one in fake wood design.. so I bought 20 pieces. I also found a massive roll of brown paper that I had bought years ago which fit well with my colour scheme.
The stripey blue/white table cloth is actually a fabric I bought for my fantasy of sewing a maxi skirt. So now if I really sew it, means I will be wearing a table cloth hahaha.
The triangle flag buntings were made with the wrapping papers. No precision involved, just fold and cut into triangles, punched holes and run a string through. All glassware you see are stuff I already have. So is the chopping board.
The wooden planes were bought from an art shop. When I saw them I couldn’t resist! Quite easy to assemble, I just hotglued all the pieces together.
Some mini plastic planes from Daiso which I spray-painted white. The paper balls were bought from Aliexpress.
The backdrop are pinwheels and wheels made with the same loot of wrapping papers. Doily on the wheel is from my kitchen. The letters I cut out from a corrugated cardboard I got from an Ikea box. Thank goodness my son’s name has only 4 letters!!
The final look of the table. With all the cakes and snacks on.
With the birthday boy!
With our long time buddies :)
With my my Dayre family, the #bahamasmoms and their bubs, who make motherhood so much more fun! 💗
With more mummy friends!
I had lots of fun preparing for this party. I know Liam doesn’t know what’s going on but am sure he will have fun looking back at these pictures when he’s older. I think he had lotsa fun though, having so many of his friends to play with on that day :)
I end this post with my favourite picture from the party:
Happy 1st birthday my dearest son. Mummy and daddy love you so much and we hope you will grow up to be healthy, kind and honest. As your daddy always say, you won’t go wrong with those qualities.