Fif-TEA-eth Surprise Party

Sorry for the grainy picture. I don't know how to use my camera yet.

One of the reasons my blog posts have been few and far between lately, is that a lot of my time and energy was focused on a surprise 50th birthday celebration I was helping throw for my wonderful MIL.

The planning crew, which included SIL M and AIL, decided the theme would be "Tea Party". There's this wonderful restaurant near our place called "The Tea Room" which MIL frequents and loves, so we ran with that idea.

The hardest part of the planning process was not accidentally slipping about the party! I sooo wanted to post pictures of the invitations and some ideas we had, but I know she reads this blog!

The party was a complete success and we all had a wonderful time wearing pearls and eating little desserts.

Any words I write won't do the party justice, so I've compiled a few of my favorite pictures:

Picture of the invitation.  I made a little pocket to insert a real tea bag with each invite.

 

We made a few poms to hang around the room. 

In hindsight, I wish I spent a little more time on the banner.  This was one of the last projects we worked on the night before the party.

 We bought teapots and pearl necklaces to use for centerpieces.

 

 We had four tables, and since there are 4 kids in the family, we named each table after each of them.  There were escort cards to direct people to whichever table they were assigned to.

Sorry for the sad picture of the escort cards.  By the time I got around to taking the picture, most of them were gone!

A dear friend, L, let us borrow her beautiful teacup collection, so each guest had their own teacup!

And of course, there had to be a photobooth! All the guests took turns taking pictures with the guest of honor at the photobooth. 

My mom and I had decided to take a few pictures together while waiting for the guest of honor to arrive.

Here's another silly one with me and SIL M!

 All the pictures from the photobooth, will be printed and pasted into the beautiful scrapbook SIL M created.  All the guests were also requested to write a message to be included in the scrapbook.

Dessert buffet -- yum!!!

 One of the games SIL M came up with we called "What's my Flavor?" in which we passed around unmarked teabags and had each guest guess what tea flavor it was just by smelling it.  The person with the most correct won a prize.  The game was a lot harder than it sounds.

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We all had a great time and my wonderful MIL was truly surprised!

What I Did With Those Blueberries

Thank you for all of your suggestions on what I can do with 5 lbs of blueberries. 

I'm glad to report that we've eaten them all!

I checked out allrecipes.com and found some great and delicious looking recipes using blueberries, but.... I was too nervous to try any of them out.  I know. I suck... Plus, I was pressed for time and was scared to fail because then I would have to write about it and you all would truly see how seriously unskilled I am in the kitchen. 

So, I came up with 3 super-easy-absolutely-no-effort-involved ways to use those yummy berries for the party we hosted on Saturday for my brother's birthday.

1. Mixed green salad with glazed walnuts, feta cheese, blueberries, and a light raspberry vinaigrette! This salad was yummy and really flavorful. I probably had 5 servings of it throughout the day.

2. Blueberry Margaritas!! Genius, right?! Luckily, we have one of those Margaritaville machines, so I just put ice in the machine, threw all the ingredients into the pitcher and pressed that shiny blue button.  Perfectly blended margaritas in under a minute!  The drinks were fruity enough for the ladies, but also in a cool shade of deep blue/purple so the guys didn't feel too embarrassed to drink it. 

3. Frozen blueberries in a bowl! I couldn't think of any other ideas, so I just put a bunch of berries in bowls around the house.  People loved them since it was hot that day and the berries were refreshing. 

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the bowls, but I'm sure you get the idea. Source

I really did have big plans to do something that required more effort... but in the end, I'm glad to have found these simple ways to use the tiny blue fruit. 

Friday Foto: Harvy

My mom is funny. Not in the she-tells-great-jokes kind of way... She immigrated to the United States about 30 years ago from the Philippines and can speak English fluently but still has a slight accent. Sometimes the fob in her will come out and she'll say or do things like this:

[Mom and I are driving on the freeway when all of a sudden, someone cuts her off causing us to swerve and almost hit the car in the other lane] Mom: Look at dat stupid guy! He almost hit us! Me: I know! What a jerk! Mom: I hate him [she makes the "thumbs up" gesture with her hand and pumps it in the air for the car in front to see] Me: What are you doing? Mom: I'm showing him how angry he made me! Me: [laughing] Umm.. no you're not! You're telling him "good job"! You're supposed to use your MIDDLE finger if you want him to know you don't like him.

See? She's funny. I love her.

Also, she can never tell our two dogs, Harry and Marv, apart. They have distinct looks, but no matter how many times we tell her who's who, she never gets it right and more often than not, she refers to Harry as "Harvy" - unintentionally combining the two names.

I kinda like it. Instead of H&M, I might start using "Harvy" to refer to both our little bullies:

iPhone pic

I *microphone* Dad

I like to sing and have been doing so since I was five years old when my dad bought me the karaoke version of "The Greatest Love of All" by the Whitney Houston on cassette tape. He taught me how to add vibrato to my voice and emotion to the song. I rewound and practiced that song so many times that the tape eventually wore out and we had to get another one.

Since then, I've sung at church, school, concerts, weddings, and every family party I've ever attended, much to my chagrin. You see, I really like to sing and am fairly competent at it, but never really liked to do it often... but boy, did my family make me! I'm Filipino and for those who don't know, 98%* of Filipinos like to sing, whether they are good at it or not. If you know someone that is Filipino, they probably have some sort of karaoke machine/magic microphone at their house and bust it out at every family function.

My family is no different. After everyone is done eating, everyone gathers in the living room for endless rounds of karaoke. I can probably go on and on about this topic (which I will probably in a future post), but I digress...

Somehow, many years ago when I was bored one summer, I decided to record myself singing karaoke and compiled them all in a CD to give my dad for his birthday - complete with a "professional" looking CD jacket and label. The quality of the recordings were just a'ite, but I thought the idea of having a CD with me singing on it was cool... and apparently so did my parents - especially, my dad.

My brother ended up having to burn probably 100 (I'm not even lying) of those CDs for my parents to give out to ALL of their friends and family... I was mortified. I remember walking back to my car from church one day and hearing my CD on full blast in another church member's minivan!

I *hate* listening to myself on playback - whether singing or even just talking. It sounds disgusting to me... but I did it for my parents. They were proud of their little daughter. Anyway, they asked me to record more and that's what I did. I was young and did what my parents told me to do, so throughout those next few years, I recorded 6 different albums using our karaoke machine and some computer program my brother knew how to use.

Once I went off to college, I told my parents I wouldn't record any more songs. I was tired of doing it. I was an adult and they couldn't tell me what to do anymore. I still sang at parties, but never recorded anything again. From time to time, other family members would ask me to record more, but I would politely turn them down, saying I didn't have the free time to do that anymore.

One day last month, my dad called me while at work. He said he was listening to the very first CD I made him and was feeling very nostalgic. I heard his voice crack and I knew he was crying. He missed his little girl.

I realized then how selfish I was being for the past 8 years, and decided to suck it up and record him at least a few tracks for Father's Day... so that's what I did!

I recorded four tracks for him. The first one being a song he's been requesting me to sing for a couple years now, "Someone to Watch Over Me" by Linda Ronstadt. The other three songs were songs I liked and thought would be easy enough for me to learn: "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus (hey - don't hate, it's actually a good song), "God Bless the Broken Road" by Rascal Flatts (I was going to sing this to Matthew on our wedding, but changed my mind the last minute), and "Chasing Pavements" by Adele (her voice is the bomb!).

I didn't have any CD cases lying around at home, so I decided to make my own paper sleeve. I created a template on Photoshop and designed it accordingly. Using a paper cutter, corner rounded, scissors, and paper creaser, it took 3 minutes to print and assemble the sleeve. In case any of you out there want to make your own paper sleeve, I've attached a template in Word below.

My dad was super surprised with the CD and told me he's been playing it non-stop since.

Some of you may be curious to here what the recordings sound like, but I don't think I'll be posting the full versions any time soon... I did them last minute and the mixing is not the best, so I'm not exactly proud enough to add them here...

However, I will add a tiny snippet of "Chasing Pavements" (I know I'm not nearly as good as Adele - her voice is pretty heavenly, but I just really like the song) (Google Readers will need to click through to see the player)

CD Sleeve Template (for Microsoft Word 2007)

P.S. If you want the template in .PSD, please let me know!

*I don't know where I came up with 98%, but in my experience, if you're Filipino, you're either a singer or a dancer.. major points if you're both! Obv, this is an over generalization... but it certainly holds true in my family.

My Daddy

Sneak peak of my Father's Day present.

Hope I can find the time tonight and tomorrow to finish -- I waited until the last minute to start working on it (bad daughter).

For now, here are just a few words about how much my dad means to me:

He was my first word.

my first coach.

my first duet.

...my first love.

He is my number one fan.

my source for good advice.

my favorite home cooked meal.

my favorite duet.

I have his eyes and his heart.

His humility and his stubbornness.

His creativity and his wit.

I admire his strength and loyalty.

His patience and spirituality.

His ability to truly forgive and forget so effortlessly.

I miss laying on his lap watching late night shows.
Ballroom dancing in our living room.
Hearing him recount stories of the good ol' days before bed.
And kissing him goodnight.

I love how he always looks at me with proud eyes.
Never judging, always kind.

He'll be "daddy' forever and I will love him until the end of time.

at a gig with my dad sometime in 2005 (please don't judge my "stage" make-up)