The Bub in the Belly

Some more catch-up today. This is about Ryan's birthday with the family in KL, back in January.

Richard had some business meetings in KL which coincided nicely with the weekend before Ryan's birthday so we tagged along to KL with him. Ryan had a grand weekend, as he always does when he's there.


For his birthday cake, Margaret got his favourite cake ringed with Kit Kat! Yum yum. Plus marshmallows...yum yum yum.

Before the birthday cake at home, we brought everyone out for dinner at Naughty Babe Dirty Duck in Desa Sri Hartamas. We thought that we ordered quite a lot of food but I think we still didn't get enough to feed the hungry horde because the portions were quite small. Every time a dish of food hit the table, the food was gone in seconds!


Babydoll wasn't too interested in the food at the place. She got my brother to take her out to a bakery nearby to buy a doughnut! Babydoll is wearing a dress I made for her back in September 2014, which you can see better in this post.


Here's the birthday boy in his new jacket, which was a present from his Aunty Margaret. Margaret and her family had just got back from a holiday in Japan so there were plenty of gifts, birthday or otherwise, for him (and the rest of us).


Ryan's birthday was in late January, but he is already telling people now that he is "six and a half" and he asks, quite often, whether he will be turning seven soon. Oh my, how fast it goes, huh. Happy birthday love! We love you to the moon and back, always and forever.

A quick post on what we did for Ryan's 6th birthday celebration at school. I kept things very simple this year. First order of things was his birthday tee-shirt. Last year I spent too much time making the gifts for the class that I didn't have time to finish his birthday tee-shirt. This year, I whipped it up on the sewing machine the day before. It has a large number 6 on the back, as you can see. I actually made a similar one just a few weeks prior to this one - it had his name RYAN in a curve above the number '5' at the back. He really loves that he gets to display his name and his age, so I really should make more of these things.

For his little party in school, we made crowns for his teachers and his classmates. Initially I was planning to sew the crowns but after sewing a couple, including sewing twenty tiny jewels onto each one, I succumbed to practicality - I could not imagine sewing 24 of those. So I opted for this version - I just cut out the crowns from stiff felt and sewed an elastic strip at the back. For embellishment, we used adhesive felt letters which are ready-cut from the store. The letters correspond to the first letter of the recipient's name.


Here are the completed crowns! The two green ones in the front of the pile, with the red R's, were for Ryan. I like the one with the fancy cut but he chose the other one, with the jewels which I sewed on, because that was the one that I presented first to him. The red one with the jewels but without a letter is an extra.


For the birthday cake, we ordered mini eggless cube cakes from Emicakes in six different flavours (one of Ryan's classmates is not allowed to have eggs). We arranged them on a cake board in the shape of a '6', stuck candles in them, handed out the crowns, sang the Happy Birthday song (a few versions), blew out the candles and distributed the cubes. It was so efficient and went really, really fast, mainly because there was no need to cut a big cake and plate the pieces. I didn't snap any photos though. I really should have!

Anyway, that was that for this year. Simple and easy. If you're interested, here's a flashback to what we did for last year's school party.

Ryan attended a costume party on Wednesday. I dressed him up as Elvis Presley!

I'll give you some details on the costume first. The shirt and the pants are the ones I made in November last year for Zoukidisco, at which he won Best Dressed. The shirt is a modified Nature Walk Pullover by Oliver + S and the pants are Jacob by Zonen 09, to which I added silver shiny gussets to make them more bell-bottom-my. He still fits into the outfit except that the sleeves and the legs were a little short so, for the pants, I added a gold trim to the hem, which added about 2 inches. I didn't have enough time to do anything to the cuffs, but from these photos, they look okay, I think.

Of course, what would an Elvis costume be without a cape? The cape was a killer project. It took me three hours just to put the gemstones on as I sewn them on individually. The inside of the cape is a Japanese tissue lame in gold. I initially wanted to sew gemstones onto the front of the shirt but didn't have enough time. I might still do that though, just for fun!

The cape caused the shirt to fall down towards the back so I tightened the neckline by adding some gold buttons, which did the trick. I only did that the day after the party though, when he went to preschool (yes, he went to preschool in costume!).




Okay, let's get to the party! The party was organised by Impact Models Studio. Anyone can sign up to attend, you just have to pay the fee. It is a drop-off party from 10 am. The children will play games, have lunch and they will also put together a runway show. They get their hair and make-up done and some photos taken. Parents are asked to come at 5 pm to watch the runway show. I think they have these parties every quarter. The studio also offers birthday party services so you can celebrate your little ones' birthday with them if you like.

Check out those sideburns!


Elvis and me. He was really happy, as you can see.





Elvis and daddy. Daddy had a special surprise for Ryan after the party ...


... he brought Ryan to watch Geronimo Stilton live on stage at United Square plus a meet-and-greet after the show! Ryan was so happy! He was dancing and singing throughout the show and, the next day, he was still singing the song from the show! We have been reading Geronimo Stilton at home and he could identify the four mice in the show - Geronimo, Thea, Trapp and Benjamin.


When we got home that night, while Richard was helping Ryan to scrub those sideburns off, Ryan told Richard, "Thank you for my surprise, daddy. I like my surprise very much." Aww.

The next day, Ryan went to preschool in costume. He also brought a souvenir from the Geronimo Stilton show and he kept talking about the show, which confused everyone because everyone was wondering how the show was related to his costume. When I picked him up after school, Ryan told me,  "Everyone thought I'm a superhero but I told them that I'm an Elvis Presley." Hahaha! Of course, I would be surprised if any of his friends know who Elvis is!

Last week was a mish-mash of good stuff. The kids had some interesting experiences, I spent a lot of happy time with my sewing machine and Richard, well, Richard worked hard, hahaha. Richard got a big promotion at work a couple of months back and these things don't come free, eh?

Ok, let's go through the photos. Here's babydoll. She's ... looking at an ant. Hahaha! She's wearing a dress made by me. It is made from bamboo knit - it is so soft, I love it. The pattern is the PlayDay dress by Heidi and Finn. I made one size larger than her usual but I think it's TOO large. It looks like a nightgown and it keeps slipping off her shoulders. I'll probably make another, better-fitting, one.


My two masterpieces. How come I can make only one version?!




On Friday, we visited Mita at her beautiful house in Mount Pleasant Road. This is (part of) her backyard.


Ryan asked me to get a playhouse like that for him too. I said, "Sure...!"



That's all!