My cousin Jasmine and her husband Will are pregnant with twins. As soon as they announced it to us, I volunteered to organize their baby shower. Since they’re having a boy and girl, Jasmine thought of the idea to use Sanrio’s Little Twin Stars as the baby shower theme.  With “village” help, we had an initial planning meeting and two work parties – one for making the invitations and another for making the bunny towel giveaways & diaper cake centerpieces – where I served as the lead coordinator (kinda self-designated haha). For our initial meeting, we discussed ideas for the invitations, games, prizes, food, decorations, and who will be designated to what tasks. Besides me, Jas, & Will, the main committee members consisted of my sister Marj, cousin-in-law Rowena, and Jas’s mom Tita Pin. Will’s cousins Sean & Justin served as the facilitators aka facsimilators. They did a great job facilitating the Baby Shower games. At first, they were really shy and nervous b/c they weren’t used to being in front of lots of people (74-100 guests), but they totally got into it!

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The games included Guess What’s In The Diaper Bag, Guess How Many Jelly Beans Are In The Baby Bottles, Beer Baby Bottle Chug Race, Name The Title & Singer of the Songs w/the Word “Baby”, Find The Safety Pins in Uncooked Rice While Blindfolded, and Guess Mommy-To-Be’s Tummy Size. I totally made up the names of the games but I think they best describe them without really having to write out a description of each. Anyway, we also had a Diaper Raffle game, where guests can exchange diapers for a raffle ticket for the grand prize. Since there are so many different diaper packages, we decided that 20 diapers = 1 raffle ticket. So if someone brought a package with 210 diapers, he/she’d get 10 tickets. The grand prize was an Ipod shuffle! The prizes were all given by us committee members. I think everyone had a lot of fun. There were actually a lot of participants considering it can get pretty hard trying to organize and get guests involved with so many of us! Overall, it was super fun and I’m excited to be an aunt to these Little Twin Stars!

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Tonight we celebrated Ginet’s 25th birthday at Whisknladle in La Jolla.  Her real birthday is tomorrow (more like in 25 minutes), but with it being so close to Thanksgiving she celebrated tonight.  Whisknladle was really accomodating and even made her a personalized menu… they are very highly recommended!

Her color theme was teal, black, and white, so we made her invitations and favor boxes to match.  I baked red velvet cupcakes (Ginet made the YUMMY (aka best-part-of-the-cupcakes) cream cheese frosting) and packaged them in the favor boxes.  Not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I really like how the boxes turned out!

PS.  HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY GINET!!!!

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My good friend Sheryl asked me to help her make favors for her friend Nina’s baby shower. We went to Michael’s to see what we can come up with. We bought these pre-made white boxes to make alphabet blocks. We cleaned out that product! Hah. We also bought paper, one with a pea in a pod pattern and another with cars, to make it more cutesy. We also found these really cute felt animal stickers!  There’s a little more to do, but here’s a preview:

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My birthday and graduation party was a success!

The planning and coordinating of the event was super short notice (my bad on my part).  I knew I wanted to do something to celebrate both occasions (the big 2-5 and my graduation from my masters program at CSUN), but I didn’t want to place that burden on my parents who usually throw my parties.  So instead, Ginet and I planned it and all:

1) in less than 1 month notice

2) on a super tight budget

and of course, 3) to be simply chic’d as much as possible.

Once I found a venue to throw it at at an affordable price (thank you La Jolla Brewhouse!), getting invitations out were my first priority.  Once I figured out my design.. Ginet and I executed to it exactly how I hoped it would turn out.  Favors were next, and with the advice of my mom, I got bottles of $2 chuck from Trader Joes and added a label and a hat to match the occasion.  I think this turned out so much cuter than I imagined it would be, so yay!  My raffle tickets were the most time consuming to do, but I loved them!  Each ticket was individually stamped with numbers and cut so they were perforated.   I love being able to perforate stuff! Haha!

Anyway, I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Thank you to all who came and for all the bday wishes! I love my family and friends!

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Since I’m not as crafty as my partner in crime, I decided to work on my creativity and handy work with this project. My friends Liezel, Diwata, and Sheryl were all celebrating their 24th birthdays (they’re all August babies) in Las Vegas. They planned a joint dinner and I volunteered myself to make their giveaways. I wanted it to match the theme and colors from the Evite (see below for image). I decided on making a pillow box and putting their favorite candies inside. Not knowing all the resources out there and only having a week, I made everything from scratch. I found a pillow box template online and wanted to use as close to the color as on the Evite as possible. I bought my supplies from the nearby Michael’s. Everyday for a week, I’d work on it while watching the Olympics. Although there are some things I would improve, it’s not too bad for my first crafty project!

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