Joey's 5th Birthday...party food, cake and scavenger hunt

 Finally here some pictures of the rest of Joey's 5th birthday party back in July!!

We had lots of yummy food, choc dipped strawberries, cupcakes, cheerios, raspberry coconut white choc chip muffins, fruit, special teacup biscuits and a few other things cause it was that long ago I've forgotten!

 Here are Joey's version of the teacup lolly biscuits, no handles, smarties on top- something different from the girlie teacup.

A couple of years ago, Stephen built me a 3m not so wide trestle table esp for kids parties, it also doubles as my sewing table.  Each year I make a new tablecloth for it using Spotlights spots and stripes.  I get about 3.5m and just hem each end, and it makes the perfect tablecloth, this year I added a blue spotty one to our collection.

There were over 25 kids at the party, it was cold and to be honest am a bit over party games esp pass the parcel.  My clever cousin suggested a scavenger hunt!  I drew 8 items that  you would find at a park (we did a trial hunt to test it!) and printed out 25 copies and glued them on brown paper bags.

It didn't take the kids long to gather the items.  We scattered around a few feathers for them to find as well.

Here is Joey and Poppa scavenging at the park.  The game suited all ages as the pictures helped the little ones who couldn't read.

Here is the line up presenting their bags and me checking the items.  I think I gave them a freddo frog each for all items, some big kids were sent back to get the correct stuff!

Here is Lilly's collection of stuff.

And now the birthday cake, the brief was lollies, milky way tiny teddy cars, soccer, aeroplanes!

So I just made a number 5 cake and went crazy with all those things.  Joey loved it and helped me decorate it too.

It was a cold cold day but very colourful!

Happy 5th Birthday big boy, love you lots.

Joey's 5th Birthday Part 1...making of the Pinata

As requested I made a pinata for Joey's birthday party.  This time, I allowed enough time to get it dry between layers of newspapers instead of putting the wet mess every night in the bathroom with the heater light on as I had to do for Lilly earlier this year.

I did this pinata properly, adding the rope to hang it between the layers of paper.  p.s. I use newspaper and pva glue watered down to make the pinata over a big balloon and for the last layer, instead of the glue, I make a thick floury paste to coat the newspaper.  This makes it really hard, you can see the coating of flour in the pic above.  When its dried well, you cut a small opening and pop the balloon and do your best to remove the balloon bits.

Then add lollies, wrapped ones are best since they'll be heading for the ground!

This is a photo inside the pinata.  Then seal up the trap door with some more paper and glue and allow to dry.  Joey decorated his pinata with streamers and his sister made some cute signs to go on it, see pic below.

Here is the birthday boy in the park with his pinata.

He loved it!  I loved it, so colourful!

You are too cute Joe boy! I love yoU!

Time to smash it!

All the kids got a go of giving it a good whack with the soft baseball bat.

Joey got the final hit making a big hole in the side.

Scavenging for lollies!

These things cost next to nothing to make and are way better to smash up than the bought ones, they do take time to make though but well worth it.

Stay tuned for the party food segment and the awesome party game segment...

My Girl Turns 7

We had a beautiful party for Lilly on her Birthday this Anzac Day.

This is the gorgeous cake we made together.  Yep, front cover of one of the Women's Weekly Cake books, I love it every time I get that book off the shelf.

I could not get plain green wrapping paper with hours to spare so settled for this colourful spotty stuff, I am too fussy.  Lilly designed the tulip flowers on the fairy house with delicious sugared almonds in pastel colours and mini musk lollies.  I esp love the marshmallow toadstalls, they are so simple yet so cute.  This year I used packet cake mixes and I think I will be doing this again, too easy and they really are quite nice and hold together well for this sort of thing.

We also made a pinata!  It was the most awesome thing ever (except for the hot pink pig pinata Stephen and I made for Lilly's 2nd birthday).  Lilly and Joey helped me work on it all week prior to the party, adding layers of newspaper with PVA glue until the final coat where I used flour and water in a thick paste to really make it tough! 

This is the inside of the pinata just after we tipped in lollies, toys, glitter and sparkles. 

It was massive.  I got the biggest balloon you can buy from Spotlight and it ended up very big.  The kids painted it and Joey worked so hard glueing on strips of crepe paper to decorate it.  We decided it looked like a jelly fish, so it ended up a Rainbow Jellyfish Pinata!  It was so big, I had to wrap the rope around the whole thing to secure it.  A better way is to paper maiche the securing rope/twine into the layers as you go but with only the week to get it done- I had to cut corners!!  We dried it each night in the bathroom with the heater lights!

It took a bit of smashing!  But everyone got a go and then scrambled for the toys and lollies!

For something that costs roughly $5 if that, plus the filling which you would buy anyway with a store bought pinata - it is such a good idea to make your own.  For a crafty family we had a great time creating it and it ended up looking pretty cool and more intriguing to smash and bash since it wasn't  your average 'character themed' pinata!

For an extra special surprise treat, we booked a balloon twisting clown who did magic!

This is the Lady Beetle she made for my wrist- so cute.

...and she turned this lot of balloons into...

...this so cute monkey up a tree! 

She was very talented and kept the kids entertained for 2 hours with her magic show, tricks, magic cake cooking, juggling and balloon twisting.  The jokes were pretty good too, I had sore cheeks from laughing and smiling for 2 hours!  Thanks Miss Donna!

Happy Birthday beautiful Lilly xxx

4th Birthday Boy

My little boy turned 4 on the 4th of July.

I just love him!

I made him Very Hungry Caterpillar cupcakes to take to kindy.


and a number 4 chocolate racing car cake for his Maze Mania birthday party.

This is my gorgeous boy... post party, filthy dirty, sweaty and fired up ready for more cake. He is wearing a Joey appliqued singlet, he looked cute, he is cute, I love him, said that!

six

Happy 6th Birthday to my little Lilly!

Born on Anzac Day, such a special girl, we did the Anzac Day parade for the first time marching with our school this year in full school uniform, remembering those brave people that lost their lives for us.

We will never forget, ever.

After the parade and service we went on a special tour of the Australian Wildlife Hospital at Australia Zoo. It was great, we saw a Koala, snake and possum all having different operations, we saw all the different wards with lots of patients, the orphaned Koala's learning how to be grown up wild Koala's and much much more.

Lilly got this Sea Turtle Puppet, in pic above for her birthday, since she loves Sea Turtles and has been fascinated with Puppets since seeing this recently!
Then we stopped off at a nearby dam and found some water lily leaves for her cake since we couldn't buy any plastic ones! This year Lilly helped me make her cake, she came up with the whole idea and I think we did a pretty good job.

The Frog Pond.

We had Roast Pork as requested for dinner and a couple more presents at bedtime.

A very busy but so much fun day it was!

Happy Birthday Beautiful Girl!

Chocolate Factory Party

Happy 3rd Birthday to my beautiful little boy!

We had a chocolate factory party for Joey complete with Golden Ticket invites. The factory was made out of fridge boxes, alot of them! It had purple and gold double doors leading into a crepe paper choc waterfall, then a turn to the right but before that- a pull-out chocolate drop trap door, then a pretty painted room, another couple of turns, another waterfall, a bubble room, more turns, then another slide-out chocolate trap door, more turns and finished with a piece of twisted pipe where after pressing a button (a battery operated door bell!) a gob-stopper came down the pipe and into your hand if you were ready, then out the flap door...and line up again! I had 4 adults working the factory, one letting the guests through in turn so there wasn't a stampede, and 3 on the trap-door and door bell lolly drops!

We also made a 'lolly shop' which my daughter and my nephew were in charge of. Hidden around the garden were tiny golden tickets for Joey's Lolly Shop. The shop had an open and closed sign, so when the shop was open you could line up and exchange mini tickets for free lollies. We had those noodle boxes for all the kids to get filled. They did a good job of the shop, it is still a shop here in the playroom but it doesn't sell lollies anymore!

We had a 'lolly pop tree' in our mango tree and a freddo frog balloon pop. The cake was a double batch mudcake covered in thomas track with every imaginable choc coated lolly you can think of on top. He had a great time, completely chocced out! When asked what his favourite was at his party, he said 'going in the factory and opening pessents'. So cute Joey. I love you.