Birthday party for Miss E

This is a catch up post for Miss E's birthday party which we held before we went back to Australia for our holiday.  Miss E has not had a proper birthday party for 4 years (due to moving twice right around her birthday and other factors) so I decided to put a bit of effort in this year!  E wanted a sleepover party (ugh - not my favourite thing) so she was allowed to invite 5 friends over and I stuck with a very simple party plan.  I did quite a big party for her 5th birthday and I actually made notes of things I liked about it and what I would do differently.  Here is a list of my basic party planning rules (from my vast experience of like two proper parties..lol):

1. Keep it SIMPLE.  Children really just want to run around and play most of the time anyway.
2. Have only one or two scheduled activities.
3. Don't have a heap of food and make it simple too.  The children are too excited to eat much generally (although maybe this rule will not be as important as they get older).

I had six girls in all coming for dinner, party, sleepover and breakfast and it was actually pretty easy to pull off (although I did have the help of a wonderful friend to help get it all done on time - thanks Dawn!!).

The girls arrived before dinner and I had platters of fruit, vegies and dip plus some potato chips out for them.  Yep, I am one of those Mum's that doesn't like to sugar up the kids (especially when I know they have to go to sleep at my house!).  I remember my sister doing a party for my nephew once and, amongst the fun foods (ie. lollies - aka candy - etc.) she had a platter of fruit kebobs.  The kids descended on them in a frenzy and it always stayed with me (this was well before I had my kids).

After the girls had played for awhile I got them organised with a craft activity.  I have been buying up embroidery hoops whenever I can from thrift stores and had just the right number in this size for the girls to whip up a little bunny outline (I printed a shape off the internet and traced over it to get the outline).  You can still see the blue water soluble marker in this shot.  I forgot to take a photo after they had rinsed them out.  My favourite part of this craft was my idea to provide mini pompoms for them to add as the bunny tail!  I think it worked out so cute.  They all did a great job after a very quick lesson on how to do a basic back stitch.

Dinner was easy - I figured panini type toasted sandwiches would be easy and the girls could customise their fillings.  I have a super hot panini press which toasts them very fast so that helped too.

Dessert was the cake plus orange cupcakes and lemonade (there is enough sugar there for them I figure).  Now, I seem to be missing the decorated cake gene.  I like to try most things and I love to bake and decorate at times but for some reason the whole themed party cake motivation has eluded me.  For E's cake I made a favourite family chocolate fudge cake recipe.  I cut it to make a layer cake and filled it with fresh whipped cream and strawberries then poured chocolate icing over the top.  My lame attempt at decorating was sitting a few of her favourite Schleich animal figurines on top to which I added some miniature bunting which took me just a couple of minutes to make.  I cut out tiny triangles of paper, used a sewing needle and cotton to thread them on and then tied the cotton to two short skewers.  I loved the bunting and I thought the cake looked quite festive (crappy photo aside).  Anyway, despite it not being very elaborate, it tasted marvellous!

I also made cupcake picks using cute little animal photos I got from the internet.  I didn't get a decent photo of those though so another blurry photo will have to do!  Ugh, I didn't have time to check my photos during this.

After that, the girl's watched a movie, went to bed (and to sleep - finally!) and, in the morning, I put out a breakfast of mini croissants, cereals, fruit and juice boxes.  The girls were even brave enough to try a little piece of toast with vegemite on it (most of them did not like it - I guess you have to grow up with it).  It has been a surprising offshoot of our expat lifestyle, this being a vegemite ambassador...

Now, I may have lucked out on the decorated cake gene but I really love to make the goody bag something special (and useful).  I have actually thought about opening an Etsy shop for goodie bags I think about it that much.  I am just not a big fan of the little plastic bag full of candy (no offence to those of you who are happy with them - to each his own!).  For each of the girls I made up these lined calico bags that are big enough to use as library bags.  Now, one note about these.  I got a little ambitious and put a little more time into them than I would normally for goodie bags but just couldn't stop myself once I got started.  So, anyway, they ended up with these cute bags with their initials appliqued on the front.  I used a combination of fabrics that I had in my stash and some I had found at thrift stores in remnant bins.  A quick note about thrift store fabric finds - always WASH THEM WELL.  I am not germ phobic at all but, really, you have no idea where those fabrics have been so wash, wash, wash them.

Now, before this blog post becomes a novel, the last thing I did was add a few little personalised items to the bags.  I put in a little bag of candy which I personalised with a tag with a cute animal photo and a message from E.  I bought some cheap little items from the Target dollar section as well.  There was a little matchbox style notebook and pretty decorated pencil along with these bubble bottles that I personalised by replacing the label with a personalised one I whipped up on the computer.  You get a bag of four of those mini bubbles for $1 and the same for the notebooks and pencils (2 for notebook and 8 for pencils) so it is very cost effective as party favours.

I will do another post about how to personalise those little candy/lolly bags and the bubble bottles.  They were really quick and easy and looked great.

Have a great weekend!