Saturday, January 2, 2010

21st Birthday Celebrations 2009

December is the month of celebrations - celebrations for Christmas and for New Year's Eve. For WX and I though, it is also the month of our birthdays. So amidst preparations for all the other family celebrations that we were to participate in for those two weeks, we were also busily organising our party which had a 60 person guest list. Personally, I've never hosted a house party with more than 30 people, let alone cater for all the food instead of just ordering pizzas but with our resident cook, WX, in the house, I was put in charge of organising and aiding the other logistics of the event.

Guestbooks? Check! Balloons? Check! Speeches? Check! Seating area? Check!


 

What remained was, of course, the food the feed 60 hungry people! WX came up with a list of ingredients for a variety of cold and hot food so all that was left to do was make the purchase and cook! Unfortunately for us, the timing of our party landed smack bang after the Christmas period on the 27th. And so since this year, for some reason all the shops were closed on Boxing Day, what we hadn't purchased prior to Christmas, had to be purchased on the morning of the 27th. Luckily, I had the help of AW at 8am in the morning and since we wanted to make the most out of our purchases, AW asked the girl at the cash register to let us know everytime we reached the $30 mark so we could get ourselves a fuel voucher. I don't think I've swiped and signed so many times in the space of 10 minutes nor have I ever been contacted by bank security to verify my long string of consistent $30 purchases!

Thank you to our own personal troopers of the morning who helped us prepare and cook all the food for the day - WF, JL, AW, my dearest mother and of course my own thank you to WX who's cooking expertise we couldn't have done without! The morning was like our own little production line, especially when we were piling on the ingredients for the finger foods!



Mini BLT


Sun-dried Tomato Aioli & Prawn Canape


Chicken & Walnut Sammich


 Salmon Tartare



Goats Cheese & Roasted Capsicum Melts (Before we put it in the oven!)



Pizza (all stacked, ready to be chucked in the oven!)

Since I did a work placement at a bread company in the past six months, I got a lot of free bread products including Turkish Pide and pizza bases! All we needed to do was prepare the toppings and load them into the oven when people started arriving - quite convenient! WX had a list of different pizza flavours we could make which included Cheese Lovers, Margherita, Roast Beef & Rocket and Pepperoni!



Fruit Salad Platter



Fruit Punch



Smokin' Pepperoni Pizza in the Oven


Thanks to FL & JZ for providing these donuts!

Finally, what birthday celebration is complete with a cake, or in our case, 65 cupcakes? Thank you so much to AL and VH for all the painstaking effort they put into the cakes themselves, the sheer quantity, amazing taste and creative layout.


When they first arrived...



Creative!


 

Although it was the first time we had catered for so many people and hosted such a large party, it was an amazing experience. By the end of it, we were incredibly tired but very happy at the turn out of people, the comments about the food and decor of the night and generally just ecstatic that our 21st had been so awesome! Thank you to all those who attended and provided a helping hand, both WX and I are extremely grateful to have friends like you!

13 comments:

  1. That looked amazing! I'm glad all that hard work paid off! Congrats and Happy 2010!

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  2. Happy 21st guys! My 21st is coming up soon too so thanks for all the ideas... you guys did a great job!

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  3. happy birthday and congratulations on prepping so much food for so many guests. i'm sure they were extremely impressed with your efforts and yummy food. it's coming up to my birthday too so i'll need to think about catering ideas for a large number of guests too. i wish i had someone to make me 60 cupcakes, they look amazing! :-)

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  4. Happy 21sts, everything looks so good, especially the sammiches :-), the mini BLTs, the pizzas, everything!

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  5. Wow, a happy belated birthday to you guys! And I am very impressed - my 21st involved dining out and I certainly didn't start catering for people until my mid-20s. My favourite part has got to be the DIY cupcake stand =D

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  6. Wish I was there, the food looks nommy.
    I mean happy birthday!

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  7. Love the cupcake display and well done on the catering job! 60 people is huge!

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  8. joey: thanks buddy :) happy new year to you too!

    jacq: ooh, happy 21st for when it comes up! looking forward to seeing your post on that ;) haha - no pressure!

    simon: haha, yeah i think it saved us a lot of money too. extremely grateful to our friends. i'm sure one of our fellow foodies could help you out with your cake problem ;) advertise the position in a post! haha.

    yaya: thanks!! :)

    mademoiselle délicieuse : thanks! haha looks like the cupcakes stole all the spot light from our own catering! hahaha

    trinh: of course it looks nommy! you received an invitation but you just bailed on me! >=[

    helen: thanks helennnn! :) happy new year!

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  9. 60 person guestlist wow thats an effort!
    lol@ sammich thats a cute way of calling it


    all the food looks fab and your fruit salad looks awesome

    and nomnomnom donuts!

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  10. What an incredible spread! The BLT with the cherry tomatoes look absolutely amazing!

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  11. Hahahaha, love it how the pictures hide the fact that I burnt the bruschetta XD

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  12. Happy birthday you guys! Looks like a great food filled celebration it was :)

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  13. Betty: Haha, I think we were both pretty worried to begin with - 60 people was quite daunting. I'm pretty sure we started with 30...hahah.

    Trisha: Yeah, I loved that BLT too! But according to the recipe, the tomatoes were meant to be facing upwards haha but we couldn't balance it properly!

    WX: Ssshhhh!

    Yas: Thanks Yas! =)

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