My little boy turned one at the beginning of January, and we thought a birthday party by the beach would be something he would actually really enjoy.
We send the invitations out as a message in a bottle..
On the day, the fun started even before the party did, with our boys in their swimmers heading straight for the crab-shaped sand pit and sailboat pool we had brought in for the party...
The venue we had picked was Tanjong Beach Club, owned by one of our friends and one of our favourite weekend spots. It sits on Tanjong Beach in Sentosa, and there's a beachside pool and bar plus restaurant.
At the entrance we'd set up a little nautical photobooth with little props like flags , sailor hats and telescopes for guests to grab a polaroid with.
We'd put together a little guest book with photos from Teddy's first year, for guests to leave a message in, before Teddy received them inside the nautically- decorated venue.
Inside the dining room, a nautical buffet awaited the guests. The dessert buffet table featured a beach made of edible graham-cookie-crumble sand, with a scattering of sea animal-shaped cookies, edible candy-floss sea, and fish swimming in blue jelly. It was awesome seeing the kids (and some adults) eating the beach straight off little spoons!
For the hungrier guests, Tanjong Beach Club had prepared 300 little brown paper bags of fish and (truffle) chips, along with calamari and spaghetti. And at the bar, TBC had arranged martini glasses of a specially concoted Blue Hawaiian Freeze for those people in search of a mid-afternoon cocktail.
Because a kid's party isn't complete without ice-cream, we set up an ice-cream station with a chef making live oreos-and-cream ice cream. The other flavour offerings were creme brulee and orange-lychee, and there was an assortment of toppings to add atop the sundaes.
Fun for the kids was our priority, and guests were invited to come in their beach attire. Some families hit the beach and pool, and the littler ones had a terrific time splashing in the sail boat pool and the sand pit set up on the terrace just by the dining room.
And somehow, a pinata (an overstuffed crab one in this case) always seems to get children extremely excited....
We managed to get everyone together for the cake cutting...
And at the end of the party, the kids were invited to bring home a bucket of sand toys or their very own pet fish.
When the party was over, we went out to the beach and watched the sunset.
Happy Birthday my little one!
Photo credits: Andrew Lum, Gwo Wei and Kerry Cheah