Part 2 of asian tradition: the 100th day celebration for baby!  The day to celebrate and wish for the baby to live 100 years.  (I believe this tradition originates from Korea).  As we did a full moon celebration for Abigail’s full moon, we kept this one low key.  Immediate family for a dinner only.  And since I didn’t make a cake for the full moon celebration, I’m not missing the chance this time!

I wanted to make this cake extra special, so a week or so prior, I started planning little elements I would add to the cake: Sparkly Cake Topper, her name in Royal Icing, and Butterfly fondant accents.

1. Sparkly Cake Topper

Since I don’t have a very cool machine like a Cricut to do this sort of thing, I did it old school way – by hand/xacto knife.  The Dollar store had a pack of 2 silver glitter cardstock for $1.50.  I took a 1/4 of it to make this.  (save the rest of course).  Printed the design on regular paper first, and then traced it on the cardstock. Carefully slice it out.  And then traced the 2nd copy, but flipped (Mirrored) so that it will fit on the other side.  I chose to make 2 layers as the cardstock wasn’t super sturdy and I didn’t want the sign to wobble.  Hot glue 2 toothpicks on, and then put the 2 layers together…voila:

Sparkly 100 Day Cake Topper

Part 2 of our baby photography journey with Joee Wong is the newborn photoshoot.  Our little monkey was 4 days old when he came over in the afternoon to snap some pics.  Looking back at them now, they are just so precious.  Babies grows so fast.  Abigail is 1 month already by this time, and looking at these pictures makes me feel nostalgic already!! Her little cute blue dress that Daddy specially bought for the photoshoot is now a shirt!  We are so glad we did this newborn shoot. Though we have been taking a lot of pictures of Abigail on our own, there really isn’t many of us together as a family – plus Joee is a baby whisperer.  Just some of my favourites here.  She is just too sweet. love her.

All photo credit on this page goes to Joee Wong Photography.

My baby girl is about to be 1 month – already?! Where does the time go…(rhetorical answer: feedings, changing diapers, admiring, taking photos).

Chinese tradition calls for a “full moon” celebration – basically the baby has now passed the “everything is ok” mark and everyone can come and see the baby and celebrate her birth.  I think in the olden days, they may not even name the baby until after it has pass the full moon.  This celebration can be as small or as large as you want. Some people go all out.  (note, many chinese households now also adopted the 100 days celebration instead to celebrate).

We have 40 people coming for Abigail’s full moon – a mixture of family and In laws’ friends – to be held at a chinese restaurant banquet.  Though I wasn’t exhilarated at the thought of having to “make” something so early into my new mommyhood…I also didn’t want to not contribute to the celebration.  I obliged and allow my husband to “outsource” the cake.  But I wanted to make the favours for the guests.  I decided on macarons for them.  In hindsight, it was a lot of work and time when the baby is only 3 weeks old leading up to the dinner. Definitely not recommended for anyone thinking of doing this for their baby’s party.  but everything worked out, as they often do, so here I am sharing the pictures!

I wanted to do 3-4 macarons in a gift bag of different colours and flavours.  I had to balance finding fillings that has the ability to keep frozen and stored for the week (which most macaron fillings can handle), but also it be ok once they are sitting at the restaurant and not in the fridge.  Here’s what I ended up making (approx 35 each):

• White Chocolate ganache with pink coloured shell
• Lemon filling with yellow coloured shell
• Vanilla buttercream with soft pink coloured shell
• White Chocolate ganache with purple coloured shell

We are in love…with our baby girl!!!  Introducing Miss Abigail, the cutest and most feisty baby ever (in our eyes).  She came into the world in a hurry (after taking her sweet time during the pregnancy), and since then has turned our lives upside down, but somehow made it seem right and complete.  Will have to write the birth story another time so that I don’t forget the details.

I’m very pleased to say that Ellie has been the sweetest furry big sister ever…the first few weeks she mostly stayed away with a few licks and kisses here and there.  Over last week or so we have seen Ellie sleep next to the bassinet often; and even put her chin on her leg when she’s crying on our laps!  so sweet. just melts our  hearts.

This is my absolute favourite picture of my 2 girls.  I hope that Abigail will grow up appreciating how special Ellie and Samoyeds are, and be BFFs for life. I even created a IG hashtag for them: EllieandAbigail.  my hearts.

We decided to officially capture our journey to parenthood with a 3 part photography session with Joee Wong; he was a photographer for my friend’s wedding and we really liked his style.  I recall one of the most important I asked of him was whether he likes dogs, and whether he has taken photos of dogs.  To which his response was YES!

I was 32 weeks when Joee came over to the house.  My baby bump wasn’t huge then.  Joee had to keep telling me to craddle my belly so that it would show more in pictures.

We started just us around the house:

and then we grabbed Ellie (of course) to try to take a pic with us.  She wasn’t in the mood (at that time) as you can see:

Went up to the nursery to capture a one last shot before heading out:

And then we went to a nearby park for some natural scenery.  This is the absolute BEST photo ever. Even Ellie was modellling!

Some more of my favs:

That’s it…we are ready for you little baby!

All photograph credits on this page goes to Joee Wong Photography

I think it’s about a year and a bit ago that we made an announcement…about our Ellie girl coming into our lives…

so for our 2nd announcement to our friends and family…this time..it’s a human baby coming into our lives!  We are so excited for the new addition.  This is our rainbow baby for those that knows what that means.  And though we are a bit nervous, we have passed the 12 weeks mark and into the 2nd trimester!  Nick and I have never made it this far, so we are allowing ourselves to be excited now.

Nick also knows I was holding off doing anything for the nursery this time around until we make it pass the 12 weeks.  And then the flurry of “nesting” activities begins (need to catch up on the blog posts!)

One of the first thing we wanted to do was involved Ellie in our announcement – so we did a mini photoshoot at home.  Man. photographing a puppy doing what you want it to do (sit/stay/look) is hard.  It’s just as hard as I understand it to take pics of babies. You have the precious 2 secs before it all changes.

I was so happy with the result, so wanted to share it here:

Doesn’t she look like a proud big sister already?!

(side note – we are keeping the baby gender a surprise, so we really have no idea if it’s a boy or girl – but some people thought the saying “big sis” implies i’m having a girl?!  no.  the Big sis refers to Ellie.  She is the older child here.)

Also want to share the pics that didn’t make the cut…but I think it’s still cute.

This was the runner up:

And the ones that never made it to “editing”:

Ellie is such a cutie.  Some of the shots she looks curious and confused by the little human shoes.  Good thing she’s out of her chewing phase!

Will sharing what we’ve done in the nursery soon – stay tuned!