For those that know me well, they understand my love of birthdays and celebrating them. My birthday was a week ago and as a personal rule, I celebrate the entire month of May... just because and why not?!. My husband kicked the month of May off with a romantic fondue dinner at Geja's Cafe and surprised me with this amazing birthday cake (white cake with fresh strawberry filling)...


My mom also made a special dinner of my favorite Filipino comfort meal, which I savored. I also recently indulged in an awesome surf & turf dinner with coworkers where we enjoyed each other's company for over 5 hours. Over the past weekend, I had a much needed and amazing Sunday brunch with my bestie, who took the above pic of me. (Why does it look like I have gray hair?! Talk about bad lighting lol!). Later this month, my husband and I will continue with more birthday celebrations with fun dinners out and just quality time together.

But despite all the fun I have celebrating my birthday, I definitely put more focus on the birthdays of loved ones. One in particular is the birthday of my sunshine, Joel. It was a special golden birthday this year where he turned 8 years old on May 8th! I especially love that our birthdays are a week apart so I get so much joy in planning his birthday celebrations each year. This year was a bit different from previous birthdays because it was a much smaller group of friends and family, something Joel requested. We celebrated a few weeks early due to schedules and timing, which he didn't mind at all. Who wouldn't want to celebrate early?! He's a die hard "gamer" and he wanted to enjoy a day with friends playing video games lol. With that, I soon realized that all the cutesy things I've done in the past for his birthday has come to an end since my lil man is growing up. No more kiddie games, childish décor and certainly no cuddles/hugs/kisses in front of his friends. He even corrected me the other day and asked I not set up "playdates" with his friends, but rather "hang outs"... yikes!

Nonetheless, he still thinks I'm a pretty cool mom and he loved how I executed his Super Sonic Birthday this year. His party was held at Gamers HQ, which is essentially a computer lab on video game steroids. It was by far the quietest birthday party we've had yet because all the kids were tied to a computer screen/tv with headphones and controllers in hand. In fact, the adults in our party room were checked on a few times because we were so loud LOL.

For his Sonic the Hedgehog birthday theme, I took the easy route and bought themed table covers, plates and balloons from Party City. We had a custom made birthday banner to put on the wall with his smiling face too.

The birthday lunch I planned was of course, Sonic the Hedgehog's favorite food - chili dogs. To accompany the chili dogs/hot dogs, I also served up chips, veggie pizza squares, fresh fruit, lemonade, and mini bottles of red/white/blue Gatorade. However, we had a slight snafu where my Instant Pot (which needed to warm up the hot dogs) short circuited the electrical system so we quickly had to come up with a plan B. Thankfully, a pizza place was steps away and we ordered a few pizzas for the kids and whatever our family/friends wanted from the restaurant menu. It worked out great despite all the hot dogs and buns we came home with.

Since it was Joel's golden birthday, I made sure to get an awesome cake and it turned out amazing! This was from a local bakery, Lovin' Oven Cakery - a personal favorite and the same place my husband picked up my birthday cake above. Joel's birthday cake was 2-tiered. The top tier was yellow cake with chocolate filling and the bottom tier was a chocolate cake with chocolate filling. It was decorated with both buttercream and fondant, with Sonic the Hedgehog figurines as additional décor.
We've also incorporated a piñata at his birthday party that doubles as an activity for the kids and candy to put into their favor bag. At first Joel wasn't into the piñata idea, that is until I found a Sonic one. For safety, I prefer the pull string pinata to avoid having unnecessary injuries. This year, the kids all took turns pulling the strings on the bottom, however the piñata never busted open to release the candy. My husband saved the day and ripped open the bottom and showered the kids with candy. I didn't take any pictures but I do have a video... which I'll try to upload later. Nonetheless, the kids loved the candy rain and quickly filled their bags!

To go along with their piñata candy, I had these custom cookies made in the shape/style of a Nintendo Switch game system as the party favor for our guests. They came out really well and Joel loved them!