Party Time

We celebrated Axel's 2nd birthday last Saturday and had great fun. We decided to do a little more for Axel this time around, since for his first birthday...we just had a backyard pool party. But I also did a lot of the stuff myself, to save on money. I had a hell of time finding Blues Clues items. Laos na daw! hahaha! Apparently, there were very few stuff available as most of the party giveaways these days are all Sesame Street, Disney stuff, Incredibles, Spongebob, and Dora.


Theme: Blues Clues, Axel's favorite TV show!
Venue: Parc Chateau, sponsored by a Tita. Good enough for our 90 guests.

Costume and Loot Bags:
Axel's "Steve" shirt, by Che Katigbak

Che is a friend of mine and my photography assisant. But he also does costumes, custom made bikinis, cheerleader and sports uniforms. I asked him about two months in advance if he could make a Steve shirt. The hardest part was looking for the cloth. After scouring Divisoria and Kamuning and coming up empty handed - I decided to buy a t-shirt at Orange Juice with the green stripes print. Good thing it was on sale. What Che did was he reworked it to look like a Steve shirt, complete with white placket, collar and dark green sleeve rings. It looks pretty good! The labor came free as a gift. The loot bags were plain dark blue nylon pouches. I figured to keep it as plain as possible so that the parents can reuse the pouches.


Invitations & Tarpuline Background & Pinata (Candy Pull)
me!

I copied the orange and yellow letter from Blues Clues "Mailtime!!!". It was a fairly straightforward design. Bright board paper, and then the black border was electrical tape. Inside, I put the details of the party on a 3R photo I had printed at a digital photo lab. I also made a blue and green version, for kicks.

fFor the tarpuline design, I scanned Blues Clues characters off of Axel's books. Then, I composited a photo of Axel with the characters in Photoshop. It took about 2 hours to make the file. It takes about 2 days to print the tarpuline. P35/square foot. His was 3X3 for 9 square feet - much cheaper than renting one of those big tarpuline backgrounds for P600.

My masterpiece!! I made the "thinking chair" candy pull/pinata myself! =) My husband said I was lokarette for doing it but I had fun making the papier mache over a 2 week period. Now the thing is just sitting in my patio garage. Anyone coming up with a Blues Clues party soon? It can repaired and reused. Sayang, for just a few moments of happiness!


Caterer: Josiah's

I'd give them a good rating. The food met expectations but then, it wasn't that demanding considering we only ordered the kiddie menus. What I enjoyed was the professionalism. They set up on time, didn't give me any headaches, had clean linens and dishes. Staff was very professional, polite, and refilled drinks promptly. There was very minimal instructions. All my earlier requests were granted: extra tables and settings for cake, gifts and prizes, and that they serve the cake. They provided the extra plates. After the party, clean-up was swift. Without us asking, they also packed all the extra food in styro containers to be given away. They are a little pit pricier than other caterers - but when I checked - they didn't have extra charges - such as service fee for every floor they have to go up in a condo (yes! these exist). Bitin lang, their kiddie packages did not include dessert. Daming food, we are still eating the leftover BBQ and siopao to this day.


Decors (Balloons/Centerpieces), Food Carts and Coordination:
Rara Zarate of the Zak and Zoe Party Shop

Highly recommended. Rara is my husband's first cousin but I'm not giving her a good rating just because she's family. She did Axel's first birthday party and I got her again. She really is very professional and goes the extra mile to ensure the party goes smoothly. She did the balloons, centerpieces and provided extra amenities like the bubble machine, pabitin, hand-made Blues Clues character wall decors and the food carts. I had a lot of last minute requests, all granted. She also added little touches, like a "side table drawer" and a big toy telephone, to mimick the set of Blues Clues.


Prizes and Lootbag Fillers:
Ebong's Toys
Tutuban Mall / Market! Market!
Pioneer Center (groceries) for the candies =)

I sourced the prizes myself since I am such a control freak.


Party Host:
Bobi the Magicman

My husband is soooo very particular when it comes to party hosts. In fact, whenever we attend a kiddie party - he always has something negative to say about the magician/clown whatever. Super critical. But when we watched a gig of Babi, Andreas said he was the first magician he didn't want to beat up. hahaha! Bobi and his wife Weng (who did sound production) are actually teachers at San Beda and they do parties as their weekend racket. He is very very funny, his magic tricks are unique (haven't seen them elsewhere). But what I liked the best about him is that he doesn't talk down to children. He's humour is truly funny, without being corny. Reasonable na rin, he charged us P7,500 for balloon twisting/magic show/and ventroliquist type puppetry. Includes the sound system. My only comment was that since Bobi and Weng both had day jobs, it was difficult to reach them during the day. We'd either talk late at night or thru text lang. But I must admit, the performance went off without a single hitch! I loved their background music during the meal - Beatles and Elvis songs sung kiddie-style (Looney tunes ata). They gave me a copy of the CD as a gift! =)


Birthday Cake -
Rachel Calabia (my sister!)


My sister has a different philosophy when it comes to cake making. Not only does it have to look good, it has to taste good! So for her, taste is first, aesthetics second and really...everyone enjoyed her cake! It was a yummy carrot and cashew cake with cream cheese filling, not-too-sweet and not-too-hard fondant icing and little Blues Clues sculpted figures on top. It was a real labour of love. =) She's just starting out in the cake business so for now, she does only one to two level designs. If you want order cakes from her, she enjoys challenges and making one of a kind designs. A previous cake she designed was based on Tolkien folklore. Beat that!


Charlie's Pritchon:

All I can say is BITIN!!! Sarap but bitin! =)


Photography by Eli Agabin
Videography by Peejo Pilar

Peejo and Eli are both colleagues and friends of mine. And while they did the job in exchange for dirty ice cream and Pritchon, I will always be thankful to them for being my families' official photographer and videographer. You can check out some of the photos here:

http://www.pbase.com/aueysantos/axel2

Peejo did the video, haven't watched it yet. But I'm sure it's laden with funny moments and wacky commentary.