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Ruby begged Daddy to help her play her violin tonight and after about 10 minutes, she learned the A-string and E-string. I know nothing about either of the two, but I can’t help but feel proud of my four year old for knowing the difference!
Violin lessons are on the horizon, but for now its fun to watch Daddy show her the ropes. For the sake of documentation, this is the first ever violin duet by Ruby and Daddy!
This post is sooo tardy, but it’s a week later and we’re still recovering from Ruby’s 1st birthday party! Of course, it was a lot of fun, but a huge reason it was so special was because of all the loving preparation that went into things from both sides of the family! This post is to honor all of the handmade and homemade special details of Ruby’s birthday party!
#1: Go-ims
Go-ims are traditional decorative “towers” that are usually trimmed with hard candies and/or beans for a Korean 1st Birthday Party (dol). Ed, his mom, and dear friend/”grand uncle” Wonil lovingly spent days and hours working on these for Ruby’s party! They used white beans, black beans, kidney beans, red/white/pink chocolate spree, black m&m’s and mentos to decorate all 3 of the go-ims. Ed designed all 3 of them first – he found an awesome tiger template to use in honor of Ruby being born during the year of the tiger, and he then he put together a retro-looking one with Ruby’s name and starbursts. Finally, he mapped out a patterned design with all red, pink & white candies to look more pop-ish and modern.
Halmoni decided she’d like to work on the tiger and Wonil worked on the one with Ruby’s name. Here they are hard at work!
As you can see, each individual candy and/or bean was glued to the paper towel roll (which was covered with poster board to make it smooth) one at a time. Patience and determination prevailed! I wish we had remembered to take a picture of the back of Halmoni’s, because during her quest for perfection – she couldn’t get the mentos to line up evenly in the back! So, she decided to use the beans and m&m’s to put Ruby’s birthdate (11-02-10) on the back to even things out.
This is the only pic we have where you can see part of it – but it looked great!
Proud and happy here on evening #2 as more progress is made:
The go-ims were beautiful, and we’ll always have memories of special bonding time with Ed’s mom and Wonil during the time these were made. I love this one of Ruby with her Halmoni on the day of her party:
#2: Cherry cookies
I wanted Ruby’s party to have a “retro cherry” theme. I saw a birthday party online that was a big inspiration, and it had these perfect cookies with cherries on top that I was dying to re-create (with my own spin on them of course). Since my parents are known for their masterful baking skills (they made 150 bride cookies and 150 groom cookies for favors at our wedding!), I asked if they’d help me out. Mom baked 48 sugar cookies and whipped up a batch of her own buttercream fondant, and Dad set out to cut out leaves and cherries to decorate each cookie.
This was at the beginning when he was using royal icing to “glue” the fondant base to the top of each cookie.
Moving on to adding the duo of cherry pieces …
Then, he took the extra leaves that were left over to cut stems for each cherry (he’s meticulous!). It really made them look all that more polished … and they tasted as good as they looked!
I can’t thank my parents enough for this … there’s no way I could’ve pulled off this impressive array of cherry-themed treats without them!!!
Red Velvet cupcakes with a cherry-on-top:
Mini-Cherry Cheesecakes and Chocolate Cake Balls:
The entire spread in all of its glory!
#3 Favor jars filled with Cherry Sours
I had been saving baby food jars for awhile in hopes of using them somehow and decided to use them for favors at the party. Pretty simple, but made with love nonetheless. What can I say, I’m a stickler for a theme …
#4 Ruby’s Retro Tunes Playlist
Ed & I sorta have a reputation when it comes to mix CDs. However, since the actual process of burning CDs seems so wasteful these days with folks using MP3 players and all, we decided to ditch the actual CD and just post our compilation for download (You can download the playlist here, if you want). The mix is simply songs that make Ruby smile, with a retro slant (of course!).
More party blogging to come – but all the details deserved their own post!
Whew – Halloween was a big one this year! Of course, with this being the 1st one for Ruby, we were pretty excited. After solving the great costume debate (Ed wanted Ruby to be “the chest-bursting alien from the movie, “Alien”. He was going to put her in the Baby Bjorn, put a shirt over it with a hole cut out … you get the idea. I wanted her to be a cupcake), we found the cutest little garden gnome costume. It was perfect! (Big thanks to our friend, Jennifer for sending us the link to the costume!) We were just happy that Halloween went over better with Ruby than the trip to the pumpkin patch!
First things first – our friend Elizabeth decided to throw a super-fabulous Halloween Party just for our girls! We were so lucky, the Arzates threw an amazing party. Tony made his annual Pumpkin Stew (served inside the pumpkin – so cool!) and Elizabeth planned all kinds of cool activities for the kids.
We tried hard to get a pic of all of the kids – but wow, it was like “herding cats” (Actual quote from Elizabeth!). Here’s our best shot:
Ruby got to trick or treat in the backyard and got all kinds of cool stuff like a Gerber Graduates cereal bar, goldfish, a mini-book and more! Plus, she got to go “ghost-bowling”. It was an awesome time!
Ruby also got to ride her favorite car at Violet’s house:
Then, on Halloween day, Ruby’s Halmoni came over with a special box of treats for her.
Lucky girl! In the box was also her very first pair of TOMS!
They are a special edition from the UNICEF/It’s a Small World line carried at Nordstrom. Ed & I almost died because the pattern on them is a Mary Blair pattern, one of our favorite artists from the ’60s. Mary Blair did a lot of work for Disney and her artwork is iconic. We LOVE her. So … thats why we are flipping out over these shoes!
Back to Halloween … Grandma & Papaw came over and we took Ruby around to the neighbors to trick-or-treat. After we got home with her candy, we dumped it all in the bowl and passed it back out again! But she wanted to keep one piece of loot … so we let her :)
See more cute pics of our Garden Gnome here. It was a very Happy Halloween!
As new parents, we were obviously very excited to take Ruby on her very first field trip to the pumpkin patch. We had visions of our adorable little baby clapping with glee as she looked at all of the pumpkins, and her cute little cherub face hamming things up as we shot a few pictures to capture the moment.
One word: NOPE.
For whatever reason, Little Miss Ruby did NOT enjoy her first trip to the pumpkin patch.
What to do? First, we tried to distract her with silly cut out photo ops …
Boring! You can see by looking at her here, she just wasn’t interested.
How about checking to see how tall you are, Ruby?
Nah, couldn’t care less.
So there it goes. Ruby wasn’t that into it. Oh well. There’s always next year.
At least we got her to smile for ONE pic …
My love of Germany and all things German is legendary, so it was with great excitement that we took Ruby to her very first Oktoberfest! We’d been to other Oktoberfests throughout Southern California before, but they had always come off as pretty cheesy and not very authentic.
As it turns out, having a real German friend to find a good Oktoberfest is very valuable. Our friend Malte, who lived in Munich for some time, found out that the Phoenix Club, a German cultural center in Anaheim, CA, held a pretty large one, and much more authentic as it was staffed mainly by Germans. Perfect!
So off we went to this quasi-Munich celebration that originated with Crown Prince Ludwig’s wedding in 1810 with friends (Malte and Amy, and Daniel and Amber) and babies in tow, ready to drink some fine Bavarian beers and eat some hearty food.
As it turned out, the Phoenix Club’s Oktoberfest really was the best local Oktoberfest I’d been to, by a long shot. It certainly helps when Germans are running the show. The food selection was great (far beyond the bratwursts that most local Oktoberfests serve), as was the beer selection.
Even the giant tent looked pretty legit!
And how did Ruby and her baby buddies Paloma and Nora do?
Well for starters, Ruby LOVED the pretzel. But wait…sauerkraut too? Yes, Ruby DEVOURED the sauerkraut. She even cried when we’d stop feeding it to her. Who knew?
Me, Ruby, Daniel, and Nora…kickin’ it Bavarian style.
And the German Tiger and her Cub.
Excellent times. Bis zum nächsten Jahr!