Happy Happy New New - A Celebration, At Last!

When the BB was born, I knew that for the rest of my life, new years would be associated with my son's birthday. Born just a couple of days after the New Year came in, his birthday celebrations happen along with the Christmas-New Year festivities. All my past regrets were finally put at rest, because we did in fact had something like-a-party to celebrate the day this time. Considering the fact, that it was just about a fortnight, since I came to this entirely new place, I am happy that atleast something could be done.

We invited three families, one of whom, we met for the first time in our lives and fell quite in love with, Trishna's. It was rather sweet of everyone to come in. The party actually happened on the eve of the BB's birthday, since I did not want to spend his birthday all busy with the dinner preparations. A set of friends, trooped in earlier, and helped with the decorations and preparations. Below is a photo of what the living room looked like, just after being decorated.



And next, is one of a gorgeous cap, that was gifted to the BB, which was just ideal for the day, since it is shaped like a birthday cake, with exactly three candles on it. I think it is absolutely adorable, so just wanted everyone to peek at it.

My job for the day was to prepare the dinner. And never in my life have I cooked for eight adults and three kids. I have a great habit of choking up, while cooking, and invariably mess up the food, when having guests over. I neither had great cutlery, nor my regular resources and so the task just got more daunting. The cake was ordered from a shop ofcourse, I have no idea about cake icings, and I had not even tested the oven here till then. Chips and dips were all that was kept on the ready for starters. A friend made some yummy pineapple raita, and fortunately, the rest of the food, that I prepared, turned out quite nicely, nothing was burnt, had extra or less salt, and that for me is good enough reason to celebrate. There were seven dishes including the raita, and I am super-duper happy that I could pull it off. A completely Indian meal, and decently edible. Unfortunately, I was all rushed, and have never hosted a party at home, so I don't claim to have been half as decent a host as I would have liked to be, but I loved the guests, who were gracious enough not to mind that, and just go about the whole thing happily.


The spread above, is what was served. The meal consisted of peas pulav, puri, raita, chhole, sukha aalu and lamb curry, followed by kheer/payesh.Yes, yes that is completely me bragging. But I am sure the serving, and presentation could have been greatly improved. But I give myself the concession of having just moved in, and managing with whatever I had.

I don't think the BB got the point of being the star of the evening. He was rather smitten by Aadya(Trishna's daughter). So much so, infact, that even while cutting his cake, his eyes were fixed on her. After the eventual shyness, she too became relaxed, and these two little ones, under the supervision of an elder, kid managed to amuse themselves well. Did I tell you, all my culinary efforts were completely ignored by these two kids, and they actually survived the evening on just the chips served with the cake. Just look at them, hovering around the bowl of chips.

The candles were blown, people sang the birthday song, My BB cut the cake, and so it was the kind of celebration I had been waiting to have for his birthday since the day he was born. And finally it was done. Not huge, but a party all the same. And here is saying cheers to my little baby, who had suddenly turned into a boy of three, and life has become a bit tougher!