Aaron Aziz's Daughters' Birthday

Dwi and Dahlia's Dessert Table

I am extremely fortunate to be able to contribute to this birthday. Kiddybounce is owned by a neighbour and a close friend. Kiddybounce was the official party planner for Aaron Aziz's daughter's birthday party and when she offered me the opportunity to prepare Dwi and Dahlia's dessert table, I immediately accepted!

Granted, I am not a hard core Aaron Aziz fan, but heck - he's definitely drool worthy and my hands are just itching to design a dessert table for someone other than Aiden. So together with Kiddybounce, we cracked our heads together and decided on a theme. Dwi was very specific on what she wanted - a fashion show themed party. So to make her dream a reality, we decided on a hot pink zebra black theme colour based on a scene setter from Party City. And therefore we kept everything in the party true to the theme design. Invites, lanyard tags, posters, printables, cake, dessert table - everything matched!




The invitation card. I was inspired by the classic Barbie ponytail in a frame, and we decided to incorporate that as the official logo for the party.

 

The crew lanyards (crew all access) and guest lanyards (VIP all access).

And finally, after weeks and weeks of planning, headaches, and heartaches (headache from baking woes and heartache from nervousness), the day finally came!


Fabulous Fashionista Party

All my hard work paid off!

Dessert table a tad incomplete - Dwi's birthday cake was missing the doll on top. Zebra print table cloth from Jakel.

Printables matched the theme - the food tags, mineral water and A4 poster all used the same hot pink zebra design with the classic barbie ponytail. Funny story about the macarons - will save that for the end of this post. As for the deco of using coloured costume jewelry, amazingly Hubby came up with that idea. Smaller animal themed cake was made specifically for Dahlia.



Mineral water printables were made to say "make up remover" to match the fashionista theme. During the party, some parents came up to us and asked whether it was truly make up remover or mineral water. I find that absolutely hilarious! Cupcakes baked by yours truly the night before, and decorated with matching cupcake toppers.

The night before: Vanilla cupcakes with swirl buttercream, adorned with matching pink edible flowers.

Milk chocolate and kit kat wrapped with personalized matching wrappers. Pink swirl lollipops and marshmallows. Last but not least, Dwi's complete cake - she was very specific that she wanted a three-tier cake. And we were of course, more than happy to oblige.



Matching pennant banner.



The complete dessert table, complemented by matching balloons.

In keeping with the fashion show theme, Kiddybounce decided to make various booths for the kids to "glam up". So they had a make up booth, a hair dressing booth, and a nail painting booth. The kids can then pose for a glamour shot which is then printed on the spot just for them to bring home. How cool is that??!!



I was on duty at this booth - make up! Loving the handmade dressing table mirror with vanity lighting, ala Hollywood film star! Makeup case by yours truly - I don't know what possessed me to buy that transparent casing but every time I bring it out, I get people asking me whether I am a make up artist.



Dwi and Dahlia, post make up.



Dwi complete with hair accessories.

Note to self, next time please make sure you identify the birthday girl beforehand. I had so many girls going through the make up booth and along came Dwi for her turn. I didn't even realise it was Dwi until I asked her for her name - and when she replied "Dwi", I exclaimed, "you're the birthday girl!" much to my embarrassment. So much for recognizing the father but not the daughters! *grin*



Cake cutting time.



Family picture. 



We forgot to light up the candles!



Dwi conducting the crowd to sing her birthday song.



Check out the flash bulbs from all the cameras in the room. Paparazzi habis!



Dahlia's turn with her cake.



One of Dwi's classmate was also celebrating her birthday on the same day, so she brought a cake to celebrate the occasion as well. Aaron holding my jewelry stand, which I had modified to match the theme by sewing a hot pink cloth around the figure to resemble a dress.



Aaron lighting up the candles on the girl's cake.

After cake cutting, the kids then went outside to hit the pinata and jump in the bouncing castle by the poolside. Westin also has a separate playroom full with toys for the boys to play with, and that was where I stationed Aiden and my maid for the entire evening. Where was Hubby? I found him at the end of the event, drinking coffee with Aaron Aziz and a couple of other guys! Men, how easily they bond over food!



At the end of the event, each child went home with their glamour portrait, a jar of marshmallows and a small goody bag courtesy of Westin.  

Oh, did I mention how nice Aaron Aziz was throughout the party? I found him very down to earth, and very fatherly with kids. And at the end of the day, I was walking by the elevators and he happened to be there, sending off his family. He actually personally addressed me and said "thank you".



Aaron playing with Dahlia.



Who can resist a photo opportunity with Aaron Aziz??



So? Drool worthy??



Thank you Hubby! He helped me with the manly jobs, such as assembling and dismantling the table, and hooking up the lanterns and balloons to the ceiling.



The neighbours! Picture courtesy of Kiddybounce.

The ladies who made it happen. All dressed in coordinated white tops and jeans. Picture courtesy of Kiddybounce.



The lady responsible for the fabulous birthday cakes! Thanks babe. Visit Shireen Bakes for all your baking needs!!



And of course, Diyana uploaded pictures of me on make up duty, on her Instagram. I'm famous!!





Aaron thanking Kiddybounce for the party.

Last but not least, I owe you a story about the macarons. In an attempt to make even the macarons match with the hot pink zebra theme, I tried making striped macarons. Here was the disaster:

I guess there must be a reason why people don't make striped macarons. Total epic failure!!! In the end I just stuck to my normal macaron recipe. Less heartache!

Where Did 2013 Go??!!

Oh wow! My first post for 2013...

I know, I know... I have left this blog neglected for too long. I really should put more discipline in writing. *sigh* One can only try...

Anyway, Aiden is now 4, Hubby is turning 32 in 2 months and I am turning 31 in 3 months. Let me just give you a recap of what I have been busy with these past few months:

• Gallavanting through USA, with stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Disneyland (for Aiden, of course) and Houston with Aiden and Hubby. Shopped till we dropped and with all that cash flow, we probably revived the US economy by the time we left.
• Baking, baking and more baking... although I started declining orders in June...
• Baking a birthday cake for Adi Putra and making a dessert table for Adi Putra's daughter's aqiqah.
• Supporting my sister-in-law's campaign in the recent GE 13 (yes, she ran but she lost).
• Baking a Transformers cake for Aiden's 4th birthday party. Amazingly, we only had a small do for him at his kindergarten. Nope, he did not get a birthday bash this year (surprising news??) because.......
• I was so busy melayan my morning sickness my loya, various back pain, aches and being an absolute pemalas due to this bun in the oven: 

Yes, Alhamdulillah we are expecting #2 at the end of this year. On the 29th of November (my birthday) to be exact! So insyaAllah three generations (my dad, myself and baby) will share the same birth date. I'll keep the story of how we conceived #2 and found out I was pregnant, in a separate post, but let's just say, after waiting so long for a second child, Alhamdulillah the fertility treatments worked on our very first try.

So bear with me a bit more as I carry this bun around whilst trying to juggle work and squeezing blogging in the same equation. And yes, I haven't forgotten - I still owe various posts from 2012 especially on running, baking using my Raspberry Ice glass bowl Kitchenaid and Aaron Aziz's daughters' birthday dessert table! Will try to catch up when I can. If not, there's always the three month maternity leave to look forward to! *grin*

Till my next post, take care guys! And thanks for still taking the time to read this humble blog.

Love, Liz.

A Happy 7th Anniversary with Durian and Crabs!

Nope! We did not celebrate our anniversary with a romantic getaway or even a quiet dinner. On the contrary, we celebrated it with the craziest and loudest bunch of people you could ever place together on the same table.

In a nutshell, we consumed a total of 8.5 kati Fatty Crabs, two large orders of fried rice, five sets of roti bakar, two kilograms of musang king and a buffet of durians. The people we celebrated with? My sister and my brother, my (only) eldest brother who had just arrived from San Francisco and Abang Ramli.

The last time my eldest brother was here, we had dinner at the same place and then retired to Abang Ramli's room post dinner. This time around, we did the same thing but decided to add a durian buffet in the itinerary.

Posing with a crab leg and my sister Awien, who claims she's the #1 fan of this blog of mine!

My sister, my brother and I arrived first and thus had devoured the first order of 3 kati pedas crabs and 1.5 kati kurang pedas crabs. My eldest brother and Abang Ramli were running late as there was a bit of a hiccup back at Abang Ramli's house. As soon as they confirmed that they were on the way, we ordered a new order of 4 kati and that too was devoured by them as soon as they arrived and sat down. Aiden enjoyed the food too - he had 4 helpings of his favourite Fatty Crab fried rice!

My eldest brother on the far left. Too absorbed with cracking the crabs open.

 

I wonder, what was Abang Ramli so happy about??!!

The massacre afterwards.

We wanted a group photo but instead of focusing on the camera, the boys really only wanted to focus on eating.

Excuse my outfit, I came straight from the engagement event in Kuantan.

Really, I was wearing the most unpractical outfit ever for a crab and durian eating affair. I wore a kaftan top with a slightly longer piece in the front. And did I mention that it rained while we were having durians? By the end of the dinner, my kaftan ends had swiped clean the toilet floor of Fatty Crab and dipped into a small drain by the roadside near the durian buffet place.

After crabs, we had durians next! We went to one of the durian buffet stalls in SS2, and started with Musang King. I have to admit, I didn't really enjoy the Musang King. Not worth the money we paid for. Then we decided to have the buffet, it was either RM15 each (for D24 durians) or RM9 (probably for crappy durian). In the end, we all settled for the RM9 buffet. Throughout the buffet, the stallkeeper just couldn't keep up with the amount we were consuming. We had to call him a couple of times to remind him to replenish the durians on our table. Some of the durians were good, some were bad. The bad ones we immediately binned, dah nama buffet! Poor Hubby who chose a seat at the end of the table, was constantly forgotten as most of the durian action was happening close to where my sister and I were sitting. He had to constantly remind us to pass the durian down the table... sorry Hubby!!!



Musang King! Abang Ramli was lamenting about the quality of the durians and how we should have gone to some dusun durian near Dengkil for better quality durians.

Model buffet durian RM9.

Brothers bonding over durian.

Even Aiden joined in the fun! That's Aiden sipping coconut juice.

So that was how we celebrated our 7th anniversary. It was certainly a memorable one. And it certainly makes me appreciate Hubby even more because only he can put up with my crazy food antics and durian cravings, despite just driving KL-Kuantan-KL and book shopping just that morning. I love you, Sayang!

Aiden's present all the way from Silicon Valley, courtesy of my eldest brother who works with Yahoo!

Big Bad Wolf 2012

So, has anyone headed to the Big Bad Wolf yet? This is my second time at the Big Bad Wolf and after all the experience from last year (I actually went every single day last year, and of course spent a bomb), obviously I went prepared! Left Aiden at home (check!), one cabin size luggage bag (check!), a wristlet to carry my phone and cash to keep my hands free (check!) and a sweater in case I get cold (check!)...

Since this year is the first time that BBW is experimenting with being open for the first 63hours straight (Friday morning until Sunday night), my crazy book-holic friends and I decided that the best time to get our books, escaping the crowd and peak hours, was to shop during the Friday night/Saturday period. Unfortunately, come Friday night I was feeling under the weather - but no way was the shopaholic in me going to give in to a slight case of fever, so after popping some paracetamol and resting, at 930pm I left for BBW with two other neighbours, and two other pregnant friends.

Boy oh boy, we soooo got our timing wrong. Apparently everyone decided to shop during the same time frame! By 2am, the queue was so long until people had to line up in the aisle between books. Thankfully a neighbour of mine was already in queue so while she queued, I went through my stack, filtered what I wanted and rejected, then I pooled my books with her and paid together. It took us nearly 2hours to pay. By the time we got home it was close to 430am, Saturday morning.

So what did I get? I concentrated mainly on novels, especially writers which I was familiar with such as Sheila O'Flanigan and Tasmina Perry. I was so excited that I found the sequel to the Carrie Diaries; Summer in the City by Candace Bushnell which is also the prequel to her Sex and the City novel. Another one which I immediately grabbed was The Help - I enjoyed the DVD immensely so am definitely looking forward to reading the book. I had previously read The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory during a transit in Amsterdam, so this time I grabbed another historical novel - The Constant Princess. I don't know whether I will enjoy it though, as I prefer chick lits rather than heavy historical writings. Jennifer Weiner and Mellissa Hill are new writers to me, so we'll see if I grab their books again next year. 

Novel loot from Day #1

Last year I bought tons of recipe books. However, I have come to realise that those books are collecting dust in a corner of my dry kitchen. I actually prefer trying out tried and tested recipes on the internet. So this year, I looked for books on decorating cakes. Hello, Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake? both provides step by step instructions on making fondant decorations so I am extremely excited over the books!

Baking books and other titles from Day #1

For Aiden, I found Maths and English workbooks for his age. I will  need to allocate sometime during my year end holiday to help him with the exercises.

Aiden's loot!

So, did the crowd deter me from heading there again? Heck no! Come Saturday morning, with barely 5 hours of sleep, Hubby pitched the idea of a last minute trip to Kuantan for a relative's engagement, and conniving me immediately agreed with the condition that we head to the BBW early morning before leaving for Kuantan! Hubby reluctantly agreed... I think he was secrely hoping that I would oversleep and thus the BBW plans would be thrown out the window.

Evidently, he doesn't know how much I like to read (and shop). Come 330am Sunday morning, I shook him awake. Learning from the first trip, I wanted to catch the 430am - 630am time frame to shop. After putting our Kuantan luggage bags into the boot and getting Aiden into the car seat, off we went for trip #2 of BBW! Arrived at 430am, and I was overjoyed to find the hall with just a handful of people and extremely short queues. Browsed through every single table which had novels on it, and as I was halfway, Hubby carried Aiden in. Apparently, Aiden woke up in the car and said "Daddy, I want blanket!"... the aircon in the car must have made him cold. Then when Hubby asked him whether he wanted to go see books, his eyes widened and asked "Where?" so Hubby decided to let him join in the fun!

Second day's grab was not as great as the first day, but I enjoyed being able to browse at my own pace and my own time without having to worry about the queue. Happy that I found another Candace Bushnell novel, The Fifth Avenue (which I read on Wikipedia, will be turned into a mini series like Sex and The City). I've heard of Jackie Collines, but really, I only bought the book because of the title. I had read Sophie Hannah and Adele Parks before so I grabbed the novels as soon as I saw their names.

Novel loot from Day #2

Aiden handpicked his own books! And The Ultimate History of BMW and Japanese Garden for my car-holic and garden-crazy Hubby.

Below is a picture of all my unread books. The three piles on the right are new, while the sole pile on the left is my unread books leftover from last year's BBW! Aaaccckkk need to start reading them all! And probably a new Ikea bookshelf too!

Unread books...

My entire loot from BBW 2012.

Of course, in my excitement of buying, I didn't realise that I bought two of the same books. Apparently the title enticed me last year as it did this year!

Left was bought in 2011, right was bought this year.

Fine, forgiven because I haven't read the book thus may not have recognized the plot when I grabbed the same book this year. But this one below cannot be forgiven. Cecilia Ahern is my absolute favourite writer! How did I manage to forget that I have read the book before??? I even blogged about buying the book three years ago, here!

The hardcover on the left from BBW 2012, and the paperback I bought full price three years ago.

Which has made me realise, I really can't remember all plots and twists and turns from books i've read before. Especially since I don't re-read the same books once i'm done with them. Heck, I can't even remember the ending of the Twilight series that I read about three years ago. How many of you can remember all the books you have read?