Weekend birthday celebration

My brother recently turned a year older and to celebrate his birthday, I booked a 2-bedroom suite at the Greenstone Serviced Residences. I had never stayed there before but I saw a pretty good deal for it in Groupon Beeconomic and thought it would be good for us to try it.

2-bedroom premium suite at Greenstone Serviced Residences

As you can see from the photo of the living room above, the 2-bedroom suite here is very spacious (it has an area of 151 square meters, so that is quite a lot). There are two bathrooms and the kitchen is fully furnished, complete with kitchenware and dinnerware that guests can use. If you wanted to cook your food here, you could. You can check out the room details here.

master bedroom in the 2-bedroom premium suite at the Greenstone Serviced Residences

Instead of one birthday cake, I got a few different desserts for our celebration. For the first time, we tried the Mango Torte of Cuerva Bakeshop which is located at the 2nd floor of the Petron station along Edsa and Pasay Road (next to the Pasay Road gate of Dasmariñas Village). The website doesn't indicate the prices but the small torte is P1000 while the large one is P1,200. It was a small price difference so I decided to opt for the large size. They don't accept credit cards so be ready to pay with cash. (It was good but I prefer the mango torte of Dulcelin and personally, even that of Conti's.)

Mango Torte from Cuerva Bakeshop

I also decided to get cupcakes from The Noodle Bakes. I got to try a couple of cupcakes from this place before when they set up a booth at the Baker's Dozen in Powerplant and I enjoyed them so I thought it would be good for my family to try something that wasn't readily available. I ordered two flavors: Garth Vader (P70 each), which is a peanut butter sponge cupcake filled with peanut butter cream, thick chocolate ganache frosting, and garnished with butterfinger, and Thirty-Seven (P70), which is a chocolate cupcake with an Oreo bottom then stuffed with cheesecake filling and crowned with chocolate ganache. If you order cupcakes from them, you have to get at least six of one variant and you have to pick up your order in Greenmeadows. (You can check out their cupcake selection along with the prices here.)

Thiry-seven (left) and Garth Vader (right) cupcakes from The Noodle Bakes

To complement our multitude of desserts, I got all of us coffee from Figaro which was just around the corner from the hotel. In the evening, we went to Glorietta 5 to do some shopping. I already got my brother a couple of shirts and some cologne but I decided to also get him shorts and sneakers in Cotton On. I also got one of my nephews a hooded jacket and the other nephew a shirt, both from Uniqlo. I had planned on us having dinner in Yabu so my family could try it but the waiting list was so long. Instead, we headed to Greenbelt 5 where we had a fantastic dinner in Kai. We ordered a few Japanese food staples but I also got some real crab California Maki, soft-shell crab tempura, and soft-shell crab roll, all of which were incredibly good.

The next day, we headed to La Cocina De Tita Moning. I once again made use of a Deal Grocer voucher so we got a big discount for our meal. It was the same set menu that we had before but I have no complaints since I really enjoy the food and the service here. I decided to purchase a couple of bottles of their salsa monja for us to take home. I would have also gotten some of their legendary bread pudding but we still had a lot of mango torte and cupcakes left. :)

table setting and set menu at La Cocina De Tita Moning

It was another great weekend that I got to spend with family and I'm happy that we got to try some new things as well as a few "old" things that we really love. I guess over the last few (many?) years, I've become the family celebration organizer and I actually really love that job. :) My grandmother will be celebrating her birthday soon as well and I've already got that all planned out.