The day before Mirei’s actual birthday, we threw a small, intimate birthday party to celebrate the milestone of her turning one! We were admittedly feeling a little overwhelmed (and a little lazy) about doing a big celebration, but we kept the guest list short and decided we’d just do what we could and that helped ease the pressure and stress on us parents. 😉 My brother Ted and his wife Elisa were gracious enough to reserve the party room at their condo for the celebration. Unfortunately, it snowed the morning of the party and some of our guests couldn’t make it because of the weather, but we still had fun with those who were able to make it, and we stayed warm and cozy as the flurries swirled outside!
First year poster for Mirei
Birthday cake for Mirei… intended to be smashed later in the party.
A tower of birthday cupcakes
Dan and I made these cake toppers — both the “one” atop the cupcakes and the one with her name on the smashcake.
hydrangea cupcakes
The items for erabitori
Cookies to be taken home as party favors.
lollipop party favors
First birthday sugar cookies
Don’t look too closely… it was my first time using gold dusting powder on sugar cookies!
Special thanks to Miwa, Hyo, and Elisa who all helped with getting the party decorations up!
Everyone crowding around the birthday girl!
The adorable kids arriving
The aunties
Cutiepies Mirei and Cara
So glad Nancy and her girls could make it! Welcome back to the States!
The birthday girl walking around
Pat and I with our baby girls. Thanks so much for coming! ♥
Mio with her aunties, posing for our makeshift photobooth.
We had set up our own little “photobooth” with an iPad app, and the kids had so much fun with it! It was really fun to see the collection of pictures at the end of the party:
We felt so blessed to be able to celebrate Mirei’s first birthday with such loving family and friends, and are so thankful that she is such a happy and healthy one year old! More posts to follow with the first birthday activities from the party — stay tuned!
On Saturday, we threw Mio a birthday party to celebrate her turning one year old. We held it at Dan’s parents’ house because our own place is too small to accommodate all the guests, but it still got packed with almost forty loving friends and family, and we are so thankful to everyone who made it out to celebrate with us, despite the torrential rain earlier that morning. I had started planning this party about a month ago, and the past couple weeks had been all about preparations for it, and despite some stress and a couple anxiety attacks, I’m happy to say that it turned out to be a wonderful party, and even better than I expected! Thank you to our friends who helped with the cooking and grilling during the party, as well as those who swooped in to help with last-minute preparations. We couldn’t have had such a memorable, enjoyable party without you all! 🙂
Because we have over 300 photos to sort through and video footage that still needs to get uploaded, I’m going to split this up into a few blog posts, or else it will take me forever to get them up. (Additionally, I feel no shame in milking the party for as many blog posts as I can get out of it, because I-worked-hard-godammit! :P)Â So this first post will highlight the party decor, food, favors, etc., while subsequent posts will focus on the birthday activities. Enjoy!
Invitation for Mio's First Birthday Party
Mio's smash cake that I baked and decorated for her.
I made the cake topper with the bunting and lettering, too!
Custom mason jar mugs that doubled as party favors.
We created a stencil and frosted 48 of these mason jars so that each guest could take one home!
It took Dan and I almost a week to frost the mason jars, but people loved them!
Cupcakes with cherry blossom fondant
It was my first time making fondant, but it was fun!
Homemade macarons... (not the best batch ever, unfortunately.) The pink ones had matcha flavored filling!
Cherry blossom brownie bites
Fruit skewers. Special thanks to Sam, Wynn, and Megumi for cutting and assembling them last minute!
There was no shortage of desserts!
Sugar cookies I baked for Mio's birthday. I had a whole bunch more that I packed in 50 little bags as party favors, too!
Futomaki and California rolls
More California rolls! Thank you Grandma and Kimiko-san for making them!
Hummus and pita bread platter
The birthday girl! She was so excited that she skipped her morning nap.
Let the party begin!
Hanging crinkle fans and pom poms
Mio with one of her favorite aunties, Tarrin!
Happy birthday to our sweet daughter!
…and this doesn’t even include the hamburgers and spare ribs that were cooking on the patio. Special thanks to John and Brent for grilling them! 🙂
Three month old Izumi-chan joined us for the party.
So adorable! Hard to remember when Mio was this little, even though it was less than a year ago!
There were plenty of babies to be passed around.
…and a couple older kids for the babies to look up to, too.
Friends spilling out onto the patio to eat.
Mio with Uncle Ted
Lovely sisters Wynn and Sam!
We were reminded of how truly lucky we are to have such wonderful people in our lives, seeing the outpouring of love at Mio’s birthday party. Stay tuned for more posts in the coming days on the fun activities we had prepared for Mio!
For the baby shower we threw for our friends Megumi and John last week, I tried my hand at making sugar cookies with royal icing for the first time! Because Megumi loved the film Totoro, I made Totoro cookies! It involved some research and preparation ahead of time, but it was a fun process and I wanted to make sure I document it!
A few people asked me how I was able to create the shape of Totoro, since it’s such a unique shape and it’s not like they sell Totoro-shaped cookie cutters just anywhere. This was the first major hurdle I encountered, but upon doing a quick search on Google, I found this awesome tutorial on how to create a custom shape cookie cutter — a Totoro one, no less! We grabbed a regular circle cookie cutter, and Dan shaped it into a Totoro shape for me with his tools. (I’m lucky to have a hubby who is very handy with tools and is always willing to readily lend a helping hand in all my crazy projects!)
Once the cookie cutter was made, I made the dough for the sugar cookies (supplied by my aforementioned sugar cookie expert friend Megumi!) and cut the shapes out, and popped them in the oven to bake. I literally squealed with delight at how well they came out when they were done baking!
Totoro-shaped cookies, out of the oven.
While the cookies were baking, I made the royal icing and colored it using icing colors to get a bright shade of blue. (I considered making a blusih gray, but found it too hard, and thought the bright blue was more cheery.) Relying on Megumi’s tips on using the flooding technique for royal icing, I piped and flooded the icing onto the cookies, making sure to leave the stomach area un-iced, since I’d be filling that portion in with white icing later. After this first round of icing, I let them sit out to dry for 24 hours.
I also iced a bunch of baby-themed cookies: onesies and baby carriages, in pink and white!
The following evening, I filled in the tummy of the Totoros with white icing, and iced on the eyes, nose, and the blue markings on the chest. I also decorated the details on the onesies and baby carriages.
Completed Totoro sugar cookie.
I'd like to think they came out pretty good for a first try!
Baby shower sugar cookies.
Totoro cookies in a row.
I’d definitely like to try making these again, as I’m sure they’d be a hit with kids! I’m also looking forward to trying other unique shapes and testing out new ideas for sugar cookies with royal icing in the future. Although it’s a multi-day process and decorating can be tedious, I love that there are endless possibilities in what you can create. I’m definitely hooked! 😀
Last Sunday, we hosted a baby shower for our dear friends Megumi and John, who are expecting a baby girl around Christmas next month! It was my first time planning and preparing a shower, but it was a lot of fun to put together! (I did realize how much work goes into them, though, and awakened within me a deeper appreciation for all the effort friends have put into the brial shower and baby showers they threw for me in the past.) I’m glad that we had this opportunity to gather together as friends to celebrate this new life and welcome Megumi and John’s beautiful baby girl into our lives!
Setting up for the baby shower!
Megumi is a big fan of Studio Ghibli films, especially Totoro, so I created a Totoro-themed calendar for the guests to guess when the baby would arrive.
Guess when the baby will arrive!
Little umbrella favors for the guests to take home.
...complete with personalized tags.
And what is a shower without some delicious food? As baking is more of my forte than cooking, I made the desserts — cupcakes and sugar cookies!
Chrysanthemum cupcakes. The cream cheese frosting was a little runny, so it looks a little like the mum petals are melting.
This was my first time making sugar cookies with royal icing, but they turned out decent, thanks to some awesome tips from my dear friend and sugar cookie guru, Miss Megumi Kaminaga (different Megumi from the one we hosted this shower for). Thank you Mamagumi, and hope I’ve made you proud!
My first time making sugar cookies with royal icing.
Totoro, onesie, and baby carriage cookies
For the main course, we had a Korean platter, with bulgogi, japchae, and dumplings. Thank you for cooking everything, Kayo!
And a special thanks goes to Ann Helen for the delicious salad (not pictured) and the veggies, hummus, and homemade guacamole!
Mio took everything in as her Mama ran around preparing and setting up.
We also planned some fun games to play during the baby shower. The first was the Dirty Diaper game, in which we melted chocolates within these “diapers” and the guests had to guess what type of chocolate each diaper contained. (i.e. Butterfinger, Crunch, Mr. Goodbar, etc…)
The guests of honor, John and Megumi
Ann Helen and Aika take their guesses
A curious Mio watched as everyone played the game.
Aika and her adorable 5-month old son, Easton.
John got all of them right and was the winner!
The next game was the baby food guessing game. I soaked the labels off of baby food jars and the guests had to pass them around and guess what type of food each jar contained, from smell and (if they were brave enough) taste.
The last game we played was the classic “Guess the Mommy’s Belly Size” game, where we measured out tape to however length it was around Megumi’s baby bump.
John with the daunting task of taking the first guess.
Megumi still looks so petite for 8 months! She looks great!
Kayo measuring out Megumi's belly to get the actual measurement.
A few people came pretty close, but Kaz was the winner!
After the games, we went onto an activity of decorating onesies for Megumi and John’s baby! I’d seen variations of this where people used fabric paint, but I thought it would be a lot less messy and perhaps look nicer if we cut out fabric and attached them to the onesies with iron-on adhesive and peel-n-stick adhesive. Even the guys got into it and created some great custom clothing for baby!
Dan exercising his creativity.
Daddy-to-be John worked on making one, too!
Everyone hard at work.
Ironing on the letters.
The results were spectacular! Look at how cute everyone’s onesies turned out! I was so impressed! 😀
We had John and Megumi each pick their favorite designs out of all the great onesies everyone created. It was not an easy decision!
Having a hard time choosing...
John chose Kai and Koreana's collaborative onesie creation.
Megumi picked Ann Helen's lovely design!
Finally, it was time to open presents! There were such cute goodies for their baby girl…
Aika crocheted this adorable hat and mitten set for the baby!
Special thanks go Kayo, who cooked for the shower and MC-ed the games! I couldn’t have done it all without all the help from her, Kaz, and Ann Helen.
John and Megumi getting some practice entertaining a baby... and Mio just enjoying all the attention.
Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to the baby shower — I think it was a great success! 🙂 Congratulations to Megumi and John — we can’t wait to meet your sweet baby girl!
