MY 7TH YEARS BLOGIVERSARY

15 September marked my 7-year blogiversary–Wow! I can hardly believe that I’ve been blogging for 7 years!. I am proud to say that I have made it to the SEVEN year mark and am still just as in love with blogging as I was when I first started!

I started this blog because I needed something to do during my retirement day. The idea of the blog came from my children ... they gave me an idea to share recipes or Human Resources Matters something that I'm good at.  Tired of the corporate world I decided to do something that I am passionate about, something that can occupy my retirement day, something that I love doing  and that something are cooking and baking...ya it's better than head wrecking subjects like Human Resources.

Honesty I don’t know anything about starting a blog! ha...ha my children guided me, picked the layout and designing the contents and so on. I won’t say it’s been easy. Anyone who has been blogging knows that it is hard.Although it has required a lot of hard work, determination and focus to get here, I’m thankful everyday that I had the courage  to follow my passion and create something that’s so rewarding

7 years ago 15 September 2010, I first hit the publish button on my blog, PATYSKITCHEN was officially born... as I said, I never had an intention of being a blogger. I love cooking and baking but I am not a CHEF. I am not a WRITER, I don’t have the best grammar and you can often catch a spelling error in a post of mine. I was quite sceptical I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into but somehow throughout my blogging year, people have reminded me that they aren’t expecting a perfectly edited post it is more about the content My recipes are tested personally by me. If I like it… it goes on the blog.  I really do try to share unique recipes, new recipes locally and around the world ha..ha it's my blog tagline - EXPLORING THE GLOBAL FLAVOUR AROUND THE WORLD.......alhamdulillah I survived the 7 years of blogging and today

·         7 years, 84 months, 2565 days
·         Over 2,704 blog posts
·         Avg of 386 posts per year
·         From hobby to business
·         From short personal posts to detailed to magazines post
·         From not a single image to learning to use a real camera
·         Genuinely more fun each year
·         How I’ve met some of the best peoples

·         How I’ve had some of my greatest experiences

          How I've enhanced by baking and cooking skills

What a great platform and I am grateful. Blogging is amazing and I can’t picture life without it.  I’m so excited to celebrate 7 wonderful years, and I look forward to more! Thanks for sticking with me through it all. I can’t wait to see what the years to come bring!... 

I wanted to take a moment to say  THANK YOU to each and every one of you!! Thank you for all of your comments, emails, messages, and kind words. I treasure each and every one of them. If there is anything you wish I should blogging more about, please let me know in the comments below or you can contact me, anytime.

ELYSA's FAIRIES TALES AND TEE PEE BIRTHDAY PARTY

My daughter wanted a Fairy Tales Princess birthday party for her little one this year and since its Hari Raya, I thought it would be perfect to throw her a mixed celebration of raya and bairthday.. I ran the idea with her and I really wanted to host a low key celebration that was casual and kid-friendly so we opted to have it at a park near our house. Tasik Titiwangsa was our choice. We invited our family and a few of my friends who are also mums brought their kids along too. 

I had a teepee  set up for the girls to enjoy themselves.

All the little fairy friends were dressed up in a custom designed handcrafted tutu dress and headband. The color theme incorporated the little one favorite pink and blue. This party is again filled with stunning and beautiful details. 

Other details check these out

BOX OF LOVE

I have no recipe for this entry, cuma nak share apa yang saya buat sempena Vaentine's Day. Jelas-jelas kita memang tidak menyambut Valentine tetapi dah namanya homebaker makanya kita tidak dapat lari daripada menyediakan sweet treats yang diminta oleh customer, rezeki namanya selagi ia halal kita buat.

Box of love ini saya buat untuk sebuah boutique, my job was to pack as per request. Merah warna tema makanya paling sweet kita pack meringue kisses, macaron dan cupcakes, selebihnya bunga and ballons boutique owner sediakan. Anyway saya ingin abadikan hasil kerja ini dalam blog ini.

HOSTING A PARTY - MY DESSERT TABLE

Its trending these days from weddings, birthdays, baby showers, receptions or festive events, dessert tables are popping up everywhere on the party scene. These photos are from my Eid Mubarak Open House. I hosted the open house same time as my grand daughter 1st birthday.

I set two dessert tables one for the birthday girls with lots of candies  and chocolates (see my previous post) and one for the open house. As a foodie  I am a firm believer that people eat with their eyes first, so I always want to present my desserts in the best way possible that pulls the whole theme of the  event together.

Keeping it simple and “less is more” are my approach and these easy tips and tricks really helped me in styling my dessert table so here's the result.

http://catchmyparty.com/blog/tips-for-putting-together-an-awesome-dessert-table

ELYSA MY LITTLE PONY BIRTHDAY PARTY

Baby’s first birthday is always a big milestone. I believe every parents were be excited to celebrate their babies first birthday, same goes to my daughter it was her first baby, first birthday and happens to be my first grand child so we don't want to miss the chance to throw her birthday party.  A fun party, with the sweet addition of smash cakes, makes celebrating the big O-N-E even more special!

My grand daughter turned one on 22 nd June, since it was Ramadan we had to postpone her birthday to after Eid Mubarak.  Elysa loves pony and horses, so we picked My Little Pony birthday party theme for her! We had a great time at Petak’s and I was the one doing most of the things, from the birthday cakes, candy booth up to the decorations. 

Here's something that I liked to share The party is always easy to do, not too expensive but always look great  I’m sure you will get some inspiration and ideas on how to host your very own party

The Event Space

We rented an event space "Petak" for the function, its easy an economical, I don't have to worry about weather, tables, chairs, music, sound system and after event cleaning....all taken care by  the event space vendor

The 1st birthday photoshoot

It' important to capture the moment, birthday girl won't need it now but later in here life she may ask for it. We had it two different session for the birthday girl, 1 st session was a day before the event, we had the smash cake photo session and the second session was the birthday itself. We did it ourselves our way without the professional....ha...ha cost saving

Here are some first birthday picture ideas to inspire your baby’s first birthday photo shoot! Its not easy to capture the moment unless you engage a professional photographer to do ...somehow we just try our luck using tricks and gimmick to get the moment anyway it works for the first half, not the second half we have to stopped when Elysa started to get bored

The invitation

The first thing on the ‘party to do list’ is of course, the invitation! We made a simple card with the party theme images

 The Decorations

For My Little Pony, the colors are just about every color in the rainbow.  So it makes life easier. One of my must-have party products were Balloons They were inexpensive, and instantly give any room a party vibe.  I used lots of it  I also decorated with some Rainbow Dash My Little Pony toys. which was a fun way to display 

The backdrop

For the backdrop we just keep it simple no banner or even D.I.Y decorations, honestly time was our issue so we cut it short. We used Elysa's first 12 month pictures, we rounded it up and put in the projector and transferred it to the wall,  a coolest way to capture the moment of growth

The Kids Table

With rainbow confetti, My Little Pony figurines, and colorful tableware, the party tables were a rainbow of colors for the kids. The plates, napkins, and cups were all bought and already had the My little Pony theme onto then. 

The Centre Piece

We put together this simple centerpiece. We used Elysa’s My Little Pony collections around the table, again, using what we already owned as decor made some pom-pom flowers and mixed and match here and there

The birthday Cake

This little girl is a lucky one, she had 3 birthday cakes, one for the smash cake that we had one day earlier, second with a two tier Little Pony Cake that I placed it on the candy station and the third cake, the birthday cutting cake.

The birthday cake was quite tedious, my daughter wanted a carousel cakes with little ponies around, I have to refer to youtube tutorial on this and good enough I managed to get the horse mold since I couldn't find the pony mold, it took hard labour work to produce the cake and I was happy with the result

The Chalk Board

One of my favorite birthday trends right now is the birthday chalkboard. I got this from cakeholics com, I’ve loved putting them on display at the party because they’re so darn cute, and they’re a great way to commemorate Elysa’s favorite things and abilities at that stage of life.

My Little Pony Candy Booth

A candy bar can get expensive.  I pulled from my candy jars that I've collected over the years to set a small table of assorted candies.  I didn’t have gobs and gobs of candies, but just enough to fill each container and set a colorful sweets station.

I set each candy bars with  cutie marks. I got it free from the net. You can see all the printables, used here I google them from the net

My Little Pony Party Favour

As a take home favor,  I put a few extra treats in a bag – a fun-size packet of  bubble mixture, marshmallow, cookies and candies

The Party Food

The party was scheduled for mid-afternoon, The party menu included chicken fingers, sausage and a selection of easy finger foods. 

The drink

This is such a fun way to display beverages and also very easy to recreate using mini bottles of strawberry milk, or even different pitchers or beverage dispensers of  lemon syrups for adults

.

The kids desserts

We created fun desserts around this theme we came up with all the rainbow color, mini sponge cake, rainbow cupcakes, rainbow cookies, donut, macaron, kisses and fresh fruits salad. Its eyes catchy and the kids love it

Somehow we did end up ordering rainbow mini sponge from my friend  Izah Muffin Lovers.  I couldn’t resist having the colorful mini cuppies. Her mini sponge cakes were soft, and the color was stunning.

Kids favourite rainbow donut glaze

Rainbow  Pops, basic cake pops dipped and sprinkled in every color of the rainbow. 

Cupcakes with cutie mark cupcake toppers

Fresh Fruits Salad

Baby Macarons

Rainbows Short Breads

The Cake Cutting

It's no secret that the cake cutting is one of the birthday photographer's favorite images to capture. So here's the moment waiting for, mommy and daddy helped birthday girl's cake cutting

The party games/activities

Many of the babies in this age range are still on all fours, its hard to create a party game for them. What we did was we set a  baby play zone filled with age-appropriate toys  we filled the space with foam balls and soft blocks that babies can enjoy whenever they need a little time away from the bustle of the party.

The Photography session

This was the most fun part . I don't have any photo prop but somehow the guests had a blast taking photos together ha...ha even if you don’t have a photographer, almost everyone has a camera on their phone that they can pull out to grab a photo...that was cool

Say cheese uolls!!!!