Survival and 1st birthday celebrations

It’s official, the Little Monkey is now a toddler and as usual it was just another excuse for me to celebrate with friends and family.On her actual birthday we had a cake and dressed her in the outfit I wore for my first birthday (yes my mom is a hoarder!).

It isn’t uncommon for the 1st birthday to be a grand celebration in our Sri Lankan culture and so I set about gathering 70 of our closest and dearest together for a Bollywood themed birthday bash on the weekend. Luckily for me I had a stellar team helping me with everything which made the event an absolute blast. All the minute details from the fantastic food, delicious cakes, a keg (yes I said a keg, deal with it) to setting a baby and adult friendly atmosphere, were executed to perfection (ok.. near perfection) with a strong team.

Planning a kid’s birthday was quite different from the usual large gatherings I’ve thrown for our friends in the past. This time I had to ensure that there weren’t dangerous items lying around, that no vodka cups were within reach (hey it looks like water!) and that there was space for kids to run around. Yet I wanted to do all of this with the classic flair that I like my events to have, which is why we rented a party room at our friend’s condo just down the street from us. Ample room and great layout and decor, only issue was that I had to bug my friend every time I needed something to be done. I do feel bad about that! We had about 18 kids (aged 5 and under) and about 60 adults come through from 4 to 11 p.m and to be honest, it could have been stupidly crazy, but it wasn’t… only because everyone was having a great time and didn’t mind the minor mishaps that happened.

Guests were greeted with a colourful event space and little girls and moms got bangles, a bindi and sticker tatoos. We had some henna cones lying around in the hopes that an artistic person might find them and guess what.. we discovered a friend’s secret talent. Not so secret anymore!

The food is always a focal point and Famous Indian Cuisine on Gerrard St in Toronto did a fabulous job catering. The chef and owner was in at 7 a.m  to lovingly cook everything from scratch and even made one of my favourite desserts despite it not being on the menu! It’s a small shop and they don’t even have a website but the food is pretty darn good and they had very reasonable catering rates. Their Lamb Rogan Josh, the Paneer Tikka Masala, Pakoras, Kebabs, Naan and Rasmalli were my favourites. We ordered food for 40 people but it fed over 60 adults and we had leftovers as well. My brother also whipped up some super spicy Tikka wings and Boti kebabs which meant that there was plenty of food to go around. In true brown mom fashion my mom HAD to make something as well and so the bar area was stocked with Sri Lankan Cutlets and cocktail samosas. No one could say they went home hungry!

Every good party has refreshments and our bar was well stocked with juice, pop, liqueurs, the hard stuff and a Steam Whistle keg. Yes a keg, every one year old should have a keg I say! Hah.. just kidding. This was a celebration of the Little Monkey’s first birthday, but also a celebration of our 1st year of survival. So cheers to us! The 20 litre keg was perfect for us, my only advice would be to get the super friendly Steam Whistle guys to set the keg up atleast 2 hours before the start of your party. It took a while for the beer to settle and for the first couple hours we had really foamy beers that had to sit in the glass for a few minutes for the head to settle. We loved having someone come in, set it up and then pick it all up the next day, talk about effective service!

The centrepiece of any party (beside the guest of honour of course!) is the cake. I made a pull apart figure 1 cake with cupcakes and it turned out fabulously! Chocolate cream cheese filled cupcakes formed the shape of the number one and I then iced them all together so that it looked like a slab. The kids loved having their own little cupcakes (okay they were quite large much to the parents’ dismay) and no knifes and forks were involved. The tricky part of setting this cake up was ensuring that all the cupcakes were the same height (or else you will end up having a bumpy figure.. I mean the cake. My figure is bumpy regardless).

We were also celebrating my mom in law’s 60th birthday and us kids wanted to do something special for her so we had a delicious and exquisite PEPSI cake made by Creative Treats. Gotta love social media because she was brought to my attention by a fellow Tweep. She did a fab job with the design and it tasted great too! A plus for me is that she’s a mompreneur and I love supporting fellow moms! 

A playlist comprised of Hindi, Arabic, English and Sri Lankan top 40 (some from the 1990s) set the mood and the ambiance for a colourful event. The heavy draping of silk fabric, bedsheets and shawls throughout the room tied everything together. I also had a kids play area set up with toys, play mats and a huge mirror which meant they were entertained for hours! Given that we had many kids under the age of 2 we set up a seperate room for nappy changes, feeds and it even had space to pop up a couple playpens in!

Given that our place is small and that the Little Monkey has a lot of stuff we decided to request for NO GIFTS and if someone really wanted to do something we suggested a donation to the June Callwood Centre for women and children. However many brought gifts and only some were smart enough to donate. We did get a lot of fun stuff like Starbucks and chocolate for the parents, homemade address labels (fun eh!), a lot of fancy outfits and accessories and ofcourse toys and books. While they’re all super fun, guests clearly weren’t following orders! For our goodie bags I tried to keep them educational (books) or artsy (make your own doll, headbands, bag tags e.t.c) and ensured that each goodie bag was no more than $4 each. Had to stick to a budget after all.

Luckily for me everyone wanted to carry the Little Monkey so I got the chance to run around, greet everyone and ensure that they had a drink in hand! All in all a fabulous time was had, not enough dancing unfortunately but there’s always next year! We had the great fortune of having our memories captured by the ever so lovely Sounds Like Knock. While I’m lucky to say that she’s a friend, she’s also one of the better photographers I’ve seen when it comes to working with young kids. Most photographs on this post were complements of Sounds Like Knock.

Cheers to our family! We’ve had a fabulous year enjoying nearly everything we always did but now.. with a baby on the hip!