Last October 10, we celebrated our mom’s 60th birthday. The weather was extremely bad! It was raining cats and dogs in our area yet, many of our relatives and friends were able to make it to my mom’s simple birthday party. Thank God!

Months before the party, I already did my research, planning, window shopping and actual shopping (which I like the most). I planned to have some sort of candy buffet or dessert bar with lots of sweet treats for the kids and the kids at heart since the theme was “Sweet Sixty”.

We loaded our dessert bar with cake, cupcakes, chocolate crinkles, chocolate chip cookies, marshmallows, food for the gods, chocolate and strawberry coated pretzels, wafer sticks, truffle, vanilla biscuits, mallow cones and some candies. We also included some almonds, pistachio and cashew nuts. It was fun to see that our guests love sweet treats on buffet.

I’m a huge fan of DIY stuff so everything was done manually from making and printing invitations, old photo scanning, editing and printing, making paper fans and party poms, banner making, balloon inflating, decorating through to table skirting and arrangement. Yes, tedious and time consuming but this is what I love doing and so as my sister and brothers who have always been helpful in setting up and running some errands for every party that we celebrate.

Hiring a caterer was one of our options but since we love to cook, we decided to do the cooking by ourselves. We served Pinoy all-time favorite dishes such as lechon, kare-kare, chicken binakol, relyenong bangus, Valencia and more. We made fruit salad for dessert and there was ube cake which was given by my aunt and cousin. Many guests loved the food that we cooked; it makes me happy.

We were fortunate to have aunts who are very helpful. They arrived early at our home and helped us in our preparation.

It feels great when you put a lot of effort into something, especially when making your loved ones happy.

The party was simple, relaxed but memorable.

I’m happy that our mom was very blissful and thankful with what we have prepared for her.