A Bubble themed Birthday Party - Manav turns 2 !!

 

Our little guy just turned 2 years old. Time literally flew by and before I could get enough of his soft baby cheeks, baby smells and baby giggles, he’s grown up into a naughty yet cheerful and loving toddler who’s smile can melt anyone’s heart, who is ready to give you a high five anytime,  who is willing to atleast give a ‘lick’ to everything mommy cooks, who loves to jump into his dadda’s caring arms when dadda comes home from work and has recently learnt that if he falls flat on the ground and makes crying sounds his grandparents will do anything for him…yes he’s grown up a lot in these 2 years and has a lot of tricks up his sleeve.  

Manav celebrated his 2nd birthday on July 11^th We just had a simple cake cutting at a friend’s house. Their son Avyay and my lil’Appu has been friends from almost 6 months of age and they love each other’s company. As it was a working day we kept it simple and ordered a simple chocolate cake from a local bakery and Appu and Avyay had super fun blowing the candle over and over again and eating the cream right off of the cake.  

Avyay’s mom got all creative and made a beautiful sandwich in the shape of a fish with Strawberries for the fish scales (as Appu loves Strawberries) and Cheerios for bubbles, isn’t it terribly cute!!! She also prepared awesome Pav Bajji , and we had a simple yet scrumptious dinner party and the kids played their hearts out.

We  decided to have a small party with very close friends and our new neighbors the coming weekend (July 13th) at our home and having pondered over a lot of fun toddler birthday party ideas I was confused between organizing a Farm themed party or a Bubble part. The bubble theme sounded much more fun and do-able (b’coz I dint want farm animals in my backyard ;-) though Appu absolutely enjoyed being with them at our Farmvisit) and even my friends were all thrilled with the idea as their kids loved blowing and popping bubbles as well. 

A Bubble party is a very easy, simple and totally enjoyable b'day party theme. There are so many ideas available online to make this theme a success, but I just decided to keep things simple and both kids and adults enjoyed a lot!

Obviously I was making the cake, but this time I took it a step further and decided to cook the food also myself, along with a lot of help from my parents, Manish and my dear friends. My mom was completely assigned the task of keeping lil’Appu away from the kitchen and Manish was in-charge of putting up the decorations and all bubble play stuff up and ready and me and my dad and few of my friends were the cooks :-)

For the decoration, ofcourse I wanted lots of balloons everywhere (balloons look like bubbles right?) but I also wanted a certain "bubbles-floating-in-the-air" kinda look and bought water balloons just for the small round bubble like shape. 
We used the same Happy Birthday banner which I made for his b’day last year (made using colored card-stock and alphabet stencils) and decorated below it with blue and yellow water balloons for a floating bubbles effect…we kinda nailed it…what do u think? Manish did this whole stuff, so full credit goes to dadda! :-)

For the Cake table I wanted to go for a Blue-White theme. I made the Birthday Cake with a Blue Ombre effect topped with blue Gelatin balls and also made Cake Pops and Cake Balls in blue and white shades respectively (again a nice idea for a bubble theme). 
I immersed the cake pop sticks into mason jars and glass containers filled with sugar.  Manish got helium filled blue, white and blue-white polka dot balloons to border the table. In all we loved the way the cake table was arranged…what about you? (I’ll be sharing in detail about the cake and cake pops in subsequent posts)

The Cake cutting went really well…Appu was the perfect B’day boy, ever willing to cut the cake , while singing ‘Happy U uuuu’ to himself  (that’s his way of singing the happy birthday song) and graciously opened his mouth to take big bites of the b’day cake when his dadda, grandparents and myself offered it to him! If you notice even our dress colors are shades of blue n white (except for my moms :-) )

A bubble themed party is incomplete without the bubble makers right? – so we bought lots of different shaped wands and bubble solution and a bunch of bubble maker guns (specially good for smaller kids incase they put the soapy wands in their mouths). We did not plan for any bubble themed games, but this was good enough to keep the kids engaged and they loved every bit of it.

Non-stop bubble fun, Bubbles bubbles everywhere...Little kids should be supervised ofcourse, but its double fun for both the kids and adults :-)

Even the adults had lots of bubbly fun :-)

I also wanted to do something really fun which included making a huge bubble the size of the child with the kid standing within the soap solution :-) Got the idea from internet. We made a homemade soap solution, bought the splash pool and hoopla hoop to get it done but in all the excitement and running around at the party we couldn't get it done,  so the next day Appu got to stand inside a bubble his size, all by himself.

He had super fun with the bubble forming around him and he kept popping it out when it came to the level of his head, so photographing this was quite a difficult task….It’s a super fun idea for a bubble party and I bet it would be much easier with older children, as lil’Appu just wouldn't stand still *sigh* :-)

Now coming to the food – no party is complete without yummy food is it?

I wanted to incorporate some bubble theme into atleast the Appetizers, so  we had Pani puri (perfect for a bubble theme) , then there was Bhel puri made of puffed rice, round mini pizza’s and round veg cutlets.  Well atleast something round , something puffy, something that pops in your mouth – all has something bubbly about it right :-)

The main course really had nothing ‘bubble’ about it, but it was all yummy stuff and we made everything from scratch… Yes!! (except the icecream and naan…lol)

Veg dishes : Mushroom Manchurian, Vegetable Biriyani, Mattar-Paneer masala, Veg Hakka noodles, Raita and Naan

Non-Veg dishes :  Chicken satay kebabs with roasted veggies, Chicken hara bhara kebabs with roasted veggies, Chicken Tikka masala.

Dessert: Scoops of  Neapolitan  Icecream and Boondi Laddoo 

I also placed a tray of watermelon and honey dew melon balls – scooped out using a melon baller – This was again a stunner and my friends loved the idea and went very well with the bubble theme! ( I did these in a hurry, so some were perfect balls n some shapeless ones ;-) )

Finally the goodie bags. We found these cute bubble themed goodie bags for the little guests to take home and filled them up with bubble party favors and chocolates and some fun stickers.

And not to forget the gifts…Oh! The gifts….Appu was literally buried between his gifts the next morning and he loved them all :-)

I must mention my heartfelt thanks to my friends and family who helped a lot with the dishes, this party wouldn’t have been a success without your food:

Rupali - for the lovely chaat (pani puri and bhel puri) and mini pizza,

Kalpana - for the veg Biriyani masala and ofcourse of Appu’s favorite Boondi Ladoos,

Nandini - for the awesome Veg cutlets,

Swathi - for her superb Hakka noodles,

Daddy and Mummy for helping me with the rest of the food :-)

Special thanks to hubby dear Manish for bearing with me and helping me make this party a success! Muah! 

Neha, our photographer also gets a special thanks for capturing some lovely pics of Appu (second pic and above pic) and of the cake cutting. All other photographs were taken by me.

We had super fun for this bubble party and I hope you enjoyed it too just as much as we did :-)

If you want to see Manav's First B'day party : A Rainbow theme - click here !




-Manju

Fresh Farm Eggs and New Beginnings!

I know that’s the weirdest title I might have ever read – Farm fresh Eggs and New beginnings? How do they even relate? And No, I’m not talking about chicks being born from the eggs…Lol ;-) And this isn't a recipe post...just some musings and excitement that I want to share.

So to begin with New beginnings , let me announce  very happily and proudly that we are moving to a new single family home and we are just so damn excited. Specially Me, b’coz all my life until now, I’ve only lived in apartment flats , so this is very new. So it’ll be pretty exciting to see how I settle down in a big whole house!

Manish is definitely excited and as for Manav , he can jump and run around as freely as he wants, b’coz now we won’t have to worry about disturbing our nice downstairs neighbors, who were so kind enough to bear with all the noises, thumpings and jumpings of the lil’ monkey :-) 

We move at the end of this month and are now neck deep in packing and cleaning and hoping that the moving from our apartment goes smoothly without breaking anything…my beautiful crystalware – be safe!! Apparently our lil’champ is thoroughly enjoying all the boxes and mess and what goes in seems to keep coming out magically...hehe!

As you can see below, for one of our recent visits to the new home , Lil’Appu has already decided which kitchen drawer he wants to himself…Lol! Must remind myself to childproof the entire kitchen next time we go there…The Kitchen is all MINE!! :-P

Now coming back to the title – Fresh Farm Eggs and that too colorful ones…have you ever seen any like it?

The  previous home owners of the house seemed to have had a very colorful taste in painting the different walls and rooms of the house and so every room is a different shade…trust me, there’s a Lavendar shaded room, Red , Pink, Blue, Yellow and Green walls/rooms , White and Brown rooms as well! But we love it and we are just gonna keep it just as is.

But we still had some more painting left so we called a guy who can paint for us, and he was so kind enough to bring us a crate full of  Fresh Farm eggs from his own home farm.

Other than while vacationing in my hometown village in kerala, I don’t think I have ever held a fresh chicken egg ever and what was even more interesting were the color of these eggs…they were also multicolored just like the rooms in our new house…coincidence or what ?!

Mostly all pastel shades of Green, Blue, Pink, Tan, Brown and White!!

I just had to take snaps and share them with you all…so here’s a few.

Some of the the shells had multiple shades of different colors, like how the blue egg on the right has darker blue dots, the pink one had white dots, a brown egg had pink shades on it etc.

I didn’t have the heart to crack them open but then I was too curious to see if they had colorful yolks as well :-P

Cracked open a few. The egg shell was really firm and hard (not like your easily breakable store bought ones) and they had the most beautiful deep yellow yolk and a nice thick egg white and thankfully they looked very much like normal chicken eggs and no colorful surprises inside and tasted really fresh and wholesome. I’m in love with these eggs for sure.  

From what I’ve read, the color of the eggs is reminiscent of the diet the chickens are fed and also their breeds.  Here's some more info that I found if you are interested to know.

Don't they almost look like those candy eggs that you get everywhere these days as Easter special…So here’s my Easter basket for you all – Happy Easter in advance to all who celebrate!!  

So folks, Manju’s Eating Delights is busy packing and moving to a new home, so new recipes might come in a bit slow for a few weeks…but don’t worry, I have some gorgeous blogger friends who has very happily agreed to do guest posts for me , so stay tuned! Until then…wish me Happy Moving and I hope you all are having a great time!

-Manju