OCTONAUTS, TO THE LAUNCH BAY - WE'VE GOT A BIRTHDAY TO CELEBRATE

With bambino number two due a mere three days after Will's official birthday, we decided not to tempt fate and celebrated the chunky monkey's big day a few weeks in advance.

For the past two years we've kept these occasions to small affairs, celebrated with family. This year, faced with a drought in the family department, we threw caution to the wind and invited a few nursery/family friends to join us for 1 1/2 hours of 3 year old party mayhem.

I'm a big fan of kids parties (I get a little weak at the knees at the mere promise of buttercream frosting) and Master nearly 3 was explicit in his birthday request. Octonauts. Please. Mummy. A quick internet search confirmed my suspicions. Gone are the days of fairy-bread and traffic light jelly folks. Armed with a plethora of inspired ideas (Pinterest...bye-bye social life) I set about creating a simple, yet effective party for my little Octonaut. 

Because I know most of you are interested in the pictures, I've included a summary of the day and the links to what I used at the bottom.

Sorry there's not more pics of the day - once things got underway it was all hands on deck so for the most part I've just put up the "decorations" - I'll whack up a more 'intimate' post soon.

Love

Jacq

PS - The only thing not in theme is Will...he's wearing a Robin Hood outfit from my wonderful friends Gab & Zoe...coincidentally it looks just like Tree Foo Tom. Outfit-win!

Here's the spread - set out in the awesome decor of Scott's office:

Unfortunately I think this is the best shot I have of the cake - nothing like icing a cake in 20 minutes at 11:00pm the night before...

While highly unnecessary, these ice-fish were a particular favourite of mine...

A few of our tasty treats - the Octo-fruit pods were a hit with young & old and a great "healthy" party option

I loved the Peso Medi-Bag party kit idea - we included crayons, a pirate patch & some stickers which left plenty of room for take home food

If nothing else the Chunky-Monkey loved his cake - which (for the record) is half eaten in the bottom three pictures after I realised I had no pictures of Will with it

Despite a small hiccup with the weather (of course Saturday would be the ONLY day it rained this week) -there was only one reported case of party tears. By all accounts it was a raving success.

For those of you reading this in search of suggestions here's my top three party wins:

1. Keep things short and sweet - The party ran for 1 1/2 hours total. We started at 10:30am to avoid any morning naps/feeding times for small ones and finished by midday - by which time everyone (including the parents) was ready to head home for a nap.
2. Few & Simple - Knowing how excitable my 3 year old can get I planned one hour of "party-time" with the extra 1/2 hour for wind down and eating before people headed off. In this time I thought we could probably fit in two games comfortably so planned a small Treasure Hunt and Pass the Parcel and had a few craft activities set out for the time in between. We had four 3 year olds at the party and this approach worked brilliantly, particularly as it rained and everything was relocated indoors.
   * For the treasure hunt I made "octoscopes" out of paper towel rolls for each of the kids (painted in their favourite colour) and created six octo-clues which we hid around the house. The kids simply had to find all six of the octo-clues (great for the 3 year old age group I found), once they had done this they got the treasure.
   * I didn't manage to get a good picture of the craft station but this was a surprise hit. I bought some paper plates, coloured paper & glue sticks from Tescoes for a few pounds, then cut out the face shapes for Captain Barnacles, Peso and Kwazi so the kids could put together images of their favourite characters. This was a bit of work upfront but looked effective and was a nice take home afterwards (I'll try and get a photo up so you can see what it looked like)
   
3. Limit the sugar - Okay...so this one is personal preference but for me the thought of my toddler fueled solely by sugar is enough to send me to the bottle. I tried to use/find recipes that limited the sugar for the kids and had a separate table for adults with some more "decadent" treats located in the kitchen. As it was the Octo-fruit Pods went down a treat with the wee ones as did the smaller Capt. Barnacles cake pops. If anyone is interested in the recipes I used let me know.

Like what you see? Here's what I used for the above:
Decorations
- Octonatus Party Kit - Party Pieces
- Peso Medi-kit Party Bags - I purchased the containers from Hobbycraft & printed the logo designs from here
- Food labels - Logo design from here

Food
- Captain Barnacles Cake-Pops - I got the idea from here & purchased the lolli-pop sticks from Hobbycraft
Ice-Fish cubes (used in juice) - IKEA
- Cake - Will wanted the Gup-X which was perfect, particularly because I iced it at about 11:00pm the night before in around 30 minutes using fondant from Hobbycraft
- Octo-fruit Pods - Half oranges, scoop out insides, place in a dish and cover with boiling water for 1 minute (it gets the rest of the flesh out), run under cold water, dry and then fill with fruit salad
- Shark Biscuits - I used my trusty Vanilla Beings recipe here with a cutter from Hobbycraft