This is it, pansit!

After a few months of preparation, the time is upon us. Tomorrow's the big day. Thirdy's party is just 13 hours away!

Thirdy's party's final official logo

I remember when Chea and I were getting married. We were hands-on with the selection process for our suppliers and with the plans, but my brother was there for the execution. But with Thirdy's christening and first birthday celebration, since my brother is no longer around, we were having second thoughts about doing it ourselves.

We couldn't find someone who can do the worrying for us, without paying them huge sums of money. And most of our family and friends had other obligations, so we had to mostly rely on ourselves.

Yesterday night, we still had to do the final preparations. Some of our plans didn't work out. But that's the great part of handling your own parties: you won't scream at yourself if things don't work according to plan. But if you were doing it for other people? And they're paying you huge sums of money for it? I guess you can imagine what would happen.

So last night, Chea was finally able to pick up all the cardboard print outs of the decorations we were going to use for the party. Chea, my mom, and our helpers had to start cutting them out.

I, on the other hand, started packing all the party stuff into boxes. Chea helped me in figuring out what we wanted to place in the memorabilia corner.

After that, Chea and my mom continued working on the marshmallow/oreo pops. They finished around midnight.

By the time we woke up around 7 today, Chea and my mom continued on working with the 'pops. I then started stuffing all the boxes in our car. I managed to fill the trunk and the back seat of the car with all the items, and there were still a few boxes left out.

We were planning to borrow a truck from one of our supplier, but they weren't available that early, and we had plans for the afternoon. And since our car was banned under the license plate coding scheme for the day, we couldn't use it so we had to borrow my dad's car.

Our original plan was to have Chea, Tita Fe and Thirdy stay at Lancaster Hotel for the night. While my mom and myself were to head back home. Unfortunately, my father had something else to do, and I don't drive myself. So we had to change plans. My mom was the one to stay at the hotel with Tita Fe and Thirdy, while Chea and I do all of our business for the day, and then head back home, and just bring the decorations tomorrow instead of today.

So we left the house by 1pm, leaving all the decorations at home. We then dropped by at Chocolate Lovers to buy additional stuff for the 'pops. And then headed to Ortigas to my office for a while. We then headed to Lancaster and checked in my mom, tita fe and thirdy.

Now, the original plan was we'd head to our photographer's place at Marikina, meet a family friend who's doing some of the decorations, visit Photoline's main branch in Robinson's pioneer, then meet with our hosts after, and finally drop by at Charlie and Gerard's flat to pick up the avp.

Unfortunately, it was almost 4pm by the time we arrived at Lancaster. The trip to Marikina and the family friend (who's in the far part of Antipolo) would easily take 3 hours. So Chea just called our photographer and discussed things over the phone. We then asked Chea's cousin Donna to meet our friend, in our stead, tomorrow.

So with those two trips out of the way, Chea and I went to Robinson's Pioneer, and had a 20" x 30" poster printed out, along with a few 2r/4r pictures of Thirdy. We also picked up a few things at National Bookstore. It was already 6:30pm (What's with today? Seems like time's going way too fast), so we had dinner at Savory.

This isn't the finished one we had printed.  There was a last minute change.

We dropped by Lia's Cake to make sure they had our orders booked for tomorrow. Then we went to McDonald's in Katipunan to meet our host, Kimmy, and planned the program for tomorrow. It's just a 1 hour program for the kids so they can keep busy while the parents get to chat for a while.

We then went to Charlie and Gerard's flat for the avp. Gerard was still stuck in traffic. Fortunately, Charlie was already home so we got to watch the avp and then copied it to our thumb drive.

After that, we drove home and got in around 11pm. The party's tomorrow so we have to wake up real early, as we need to bring all the decorations at One Cafe by 8am and do the arrangements as well. It's going to be a really long day tomorrow.

Signature book

I wanted to have a signature book for Thirdy's party. It would be nice to have a coffee book filled with Thirdy's pictures lying around the house with messages from well wishers.

Chea agreed to the idea. I initially wanted to go with Storybook Philippines. There were discounted vouchers all over the net. Unfortunately, they needed a long lead time (7-11 days) which is too long since Thirdy's party is just around the corner.

So we just asked our photography supplier if they offer photobook magazines. They offered the small ones for 500 pesos. Unfortunately, these were the 6" x 6" ones, which is too small to write anything meaningful. So Chea opted to get the 8" x 11" variant with 20 pages, for 1,600 pesos.

Chea went to their place in Marikina and gave the pictures and they emailed us the layouts. Unfortunately, I didn't like the original one, as it was too baby-ish. We wanted something a bit more modern. They sent us a second layout, which we still didn't like.

So left with no choice, I did the layout myself, spending an entire Sunday indoors. I think I spent 12 hours on these layouts. Chea wanted a lot of pictures included, but mostly head shots of Thirdy. She wanted it to show all of Thirdy's expressions.

Simple and clean for the main cover.

Again, I had to use Adobe Illustrator (for the layouts) and Adobe Photoshop (for the image editing). I have to say that I'm not particularly good, but I think they came out a little bit better than the ones we were originally sent.

That is a poem we made for our son's first birthday

Thirdy on his 1st month

Thirdy at 2 months

Here's thirdy at 4 months

4 months

At 5 months

Chea took this with her Iphone and used instagram. He started sticking his tongue out and kept at it for days

Thirdy at 6 months

Still at 6 months

Thirdy at 7 months

Thirdy on his first halloween

Already at 8 months

Thirdy at 9 months. First time in a pool at Acuatico Resort during  our  8th wedding anniversary

Lounging at a chair at Acuatico Resort

Thirdy at 11 months

11 months,  Kiddie studio shoot

First studio shoot

Studio shoot at Starbox studio

With nanay Chea

Last page for the photobook

Those are a lot of images. I think I've had enough of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for the rest of the year.

Let's get on to inviting

So we finally got our hands on some of the invitations yesterday. The rest we might be able to get over the weekend. Since we invited most of our guests via Facebook already, these invitations will double as the giveaways.

The invitation is a photo film canister. Yey!

The reason why this invitation took quite some time to make was because we had to go through 3 suppliers to make them. And that's not counting the camera shop where we bought the empty film canisters.

Our original supplier from Marikina had too many things lined up and they couldn't fit us into their schedule. However, they were kind enough to do the layout for the invitation as well as relayout the camera boxes from Etsy.com for printing. They also managed to print us the camera boxes, which we cut and assembled on our own and some of the invitations.

We had to go to another supplier to do the rest of the invites. They printed the invites and placed them inside the canister.

We then had to bring them to another supplier to add the keychain.

Yes, that is a film canister inside our cardboard camera box.

Getting the exact design we wanted really took some time. But as you can see with the final product, everything is just perfect.

We have cake

A few weeks back, Chea finally decided on our cake supplier: Teacher Cake.

It took us quite some time to settle on our cake supplier. Since we had limited funds, we needed to choose one that could offer us an inexpensive cake.

We couldn't go to our wedding cake maker, Judy Uson, as she's a bit on the expensive side. We looked around in some forums, and the ones that we found, made great looking cakes but, again, were expensive.

That's because K(aye) used to be a pre-school teacher who now makes cakes!

Chea did, however, find Teacher Cake and we looked at her page in Facebook. Her cakes looked pretty good, and from what we've read, they tasted good as well. We asked for a quotation for a 2 layer cake, and she emailed us a price of 6,000 pesos.

The ceiling we set for ourselves for the cake was at 4,000. We felt that paying more than that for a cake is a bit too much. I mean, most of the cakes you see at weddings, debuts, etc, are just there for show. It's a great centerpiece for parties. But most of the time, the cake do not really get cut into slices and served to all of the guests. For several-tier cakes, most of the cake are made from styrofoam. So would you really pay 6,000 pesos or more for a two-tier cake, which you can only eat one layer of? For roughly 6,000 pesos, you can buy 10 single layer cakes from Red Ribbon or Goldilocks.

So we asked Teacher Cake if they can give us a cake for only 4,000 pesos. Which they said yes to. We will be getting a slight smaller cake (10" x 3" bottom layer, and a 6" x 4" top layer cake), but with the decorations and design we wanted. Even at that price, it's already fairly cheap, especially if you compare it to the other suppliers, especially the one we were looking at fondly, Bunny Baker.

We sent the same sketch to Bunny Baker, and they priced it at 18,000 pesos.

So we dropped by Teacher Cake's house in San Juan, and spoke to the owner, Kaye. We probably spent a half hour discussing the cake and then asked a few other things. Kaye was a pre-school teacher so she was pretty soft spoken and was patient with all our questions.

We also decided that we will be getting the cookies from her as well. We will be putting the cookies at the same cake/candy/cookie buffet table.

We asked her to send her designs for the cookies that we wanted: an instagram, a camera, a film canister, and a photo film.

Can't wait what they'll actually look like

We've approved the design already, hopefully, they come out looking and tasting great.

Update. You can see Kaye's pictures of Thirdy's cakes here