BIRTHDAY ALLEY

It may be the beginning of April, but something on the horizon lingers.

Birthday Alley.

In this household there is a one month period of frenzy. William's birthday is late May, while Julia's falls 10 days later at the beginning of June.

In this day and age kids parties appear to have taken on a life of their own. You can disappear down a rabbit warren of pinterest, instagram until it is all quite overwhelming.

While I am not immune from the tantalising photos adorning social media, there comes a point when you have to get a grip. This is a children's party. For the most part they come to see their friends and eat cake. I'm sure there is a lesson in this...

To inspire me into creation, I thought I might share some of our birthday's from previous years. Hopefully you'll find something to inspire you too.


William's 5th BMX Bandit Birthday

One of my favourite to date.

On arrival the kids were given a party bag which contained streamers, stickers and other pieces which they used to decorate their bikes.

We then had a parade (within 5 seconds three kids had fallen off...there was screaming and tears...and that was just me).

I didn't have a huge amount of time in the lead up, so turned to the incredible Karinne at Glamour & Grace who provided the back drop, cupcake toppers, bag tags, bottle wraps and personalised cards.

Julia's 3rd Fairy Princess Party

As a young girl I never dreamt of being a Fairy Princess. If my mother ever deigned adorn my hair with bows, they would be ripped out....along with fistfuls of blonde ringlets.

I've been gifted a daughter who is determined that none of us miss out on the deluxe Princess experience.

Lucky for us we have Fairies on speed-dial in this household and the day was more than a little magical. 

Julia's 2nd Birthday - Butterfly & Cloud Dream Cakes

I realise "double cakes" are crazy but when you have children in daycare they are also a necessity. 

This Butterfly still gives me nightmares. 

William's 4th Birthday - Spiderman Cakes

Question. Is there anything better than a superhero cake? 

Answer. Two superhero cakes!? 

The second of the two cakes took me about 30 minutes to ice and turned out brilliantly. Small win. If you don't have children and can't understand one day you will. Oh you will. 

Julia's 1st Birthday - Wish Bear

Nothing says Happy 1st Birthday like a Care Bear. 

Nothing!

William's 3rd Birthday - Octonauts

If you're not familiar with the Octonauts I suggest you look them up. We were first introduced to this seafaring gang back in 2012 while living in the UK. 

I was in a pinch and the Gup X turned out to be perfectly delicious. 

William's 2nd Birthday - Thomas the Tank Engine

I think I was even more excited than Will, that his 2nd birthday cake turned out so well!

William's 1st Birthday - Rufus

My sister-in-law and I have fond memories of decorating this cake close to midnight the day before Will's 1st birthday party. 

So many lessons were learned in the making of this cake. 

So many fond memories. 

PS: This should go without saying but I wanted to add it anyway. Most of the above pictures are as shot out of my camera. I am simply working at posting. Not prettying. Be kind.

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

THE 2 CREW

Sorry readrino's,

Realise 100% of posts this week have been brought to you by the number 2. We're just so gosh darn excited about this milestone.

I'm so tired I stood in the hallway staring at a wall for about 20 seconds before I remembered what I had set out to do (which, for the record, was to go to bed).

Wanted to share a picture of the coffee group birthday party today - ch ch ch check out the 2 crew :)

Yes...they are holding hands....squeal

PS - Jai, Izzie, Maddison & families - we missed you

xox

L - R: Will, Kip, Maggie & Kody

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED

Try again tomorrow.

In the meantime don't let technology get in the way of some gorgeous pictures.

Let me introduce Emily (she's the wee dot with the pig tails about four pictures down wielding a strawberry). Emily and Will met at daycare and on Friday Emily turned two, that's right the big Tee-Double-Yew-Ohhh. The invite arrived at the height of my last gastro bug. To say it was the highlight of my day would be somewhat of an understatement.

It was Will's very first daycare party, and I believe I can speak for the both of us when I say I was 100% more excited about the fun, frivolities & party food than he was. He'll learn.

Check out the amazing Elmo cupcakes Keisha made. They tasted every bit as good as they look. Trust me. I ate about four...

Happy Birthday Emily! Hope you liked the hat

x

PS - It's late. Please ignore the fact I've managed to "crop" some of my logos....bedtime