Not Now Later

The new wedding?

In this momversation episode  Girls' Gone Child, Rebbeca Woolf describes the child's birthday party as 'the new wedding.' I didn't have a traditional wedding. Like Rebecca I got married in Las Vegas, but unlike Rebecca I think there is (or rather was) a frustrated bride to be in there somewhere. I went totally overboard on my son's fourth birthday party. 

He had a seaside themed party and I've mentioned the preparations on here a few times before. There was the postcard invitation. There was the Punch and Judy booth that my dad and I made.

There were bucket and spades for party bags filled with seaside themed sweets ,sunglasses, paper pinwheels and stickers. There was the (more or less inedible) sandcastle birthday cake and the horsey hoppers for donkey rides. I drew the line at filling the church hall with sand and creating a beach, but I was tempted. There were 35 hyper kids running around to the sound of a carefully compiled seaside playlist. I got a theme and I got totally carried away. 

So, yes maybe Louis' birthday party almost turned into a wedding scale production, but it was huge fun to plan and gave me an excuse to make stuff and be creative and honestly, there wasn't a seating plan! 

Cupcakes and cookie cutters

With Louis' fourth birthday fast approaching I've been honing my cupcake technique. I say honing, when in fact I have very little experience with cupcakes beyond eating them. Anyway, yesterday I dug out my apron and dusted down the Kitchenaid. Et voila!

Ok, not quite Hummingbird Bakery standard, but the kids couldn't quite believe their luck and demolished in no time them with the help of their friends.  Boozlebox kindly directed me towards these shark cakes so I'm going to have to do a bit more practising.

Louis is having a traditional British seaside themed party (yeah, yeah he'd probably  rather have a Power Rangers/ Ben 10/ superhero party, but I reckon I can get away with doing it my way this year)  and I was at a bit of a loss when it came to ideas for a birthday cake until I saw this. Perhaps ridiculously ambitious for somebody like me, but I'm going to give it a go. Plus, I got some fancy cookie cutters  so I can try out making these.

Haribo, Pimms and sweaty superheroes

Another day, another 4th birthday party. 

So far this year there have been parties in church halls, parties at home, garden parties and soft play parties, but this one was being held in a pub. One of Louis' friends is the daughter of a local pub landlady and for me, an afternoon spent in a pub garden is infinitely more appealing than an afternoon spent in a steaming, noisy play barn. Today also happened to be one of the hottest days of the year so far and birthday girl's mum had rather attentively laid on jugs of ice cold Pimms and lemonade for the parents. So while the kids ran around pouring sweat in their heavily padded superhero outfits, high on Haribo and melted mini Mars bars, the parents got to sit back and pretend that rather than attending a kiddy party, that they were just spending a sunny afternoon having a drink with friends. 

Well sort of. I had Tilly, an over-excited eighteen monther on my hands who, not content with juice and mini donuts, was intent on getting her chocolate-y hands on some alcohol.

Party Planner

Louis is 4 in August. Whoa! How did four whole years pass so quickly? I never cease to be amazed that we managed to produce a fully functioning human being who has made it to (almost) four years old! 

Neither of the kids have ever had a fully fledged birthday party with a guest list and invites and cupcakes and party bags. Last Halloween came close when I invited around 15 or so local kids to dress up and come and play pass the pumpkin, eat ghost shaped cookies and dance to my carefully composed playlist of spooky songs. The house was trashed, but the children enjoyed themselves and I was in my element. I loved it. 

This year, because Louis is at nursery school and has got a bit more of a grasp of what a birthday is all about, I've decided that he can have a full-blown (though on a budget, of course, recessionistas) birthday party experience.

I've already hired a venue and I've even got Ed involved. Last night he spent ages fiddling around in Photoshop with some images that I'd found for the invitation. He made this and I was suitably impressed.

We recently spent a long, weekend in the twee seaside town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk which might explain my current obsession with beach huts and fish and chips. And might explain why, like it or not, Louis is having an old fashion, British, seaside fun themed sort of knees-up with Punch and Judy and ice creams and end of the pier fun.  Not of course that I really know how on earth I'm going to recreate a traditional British seaside setting in a church hall, but it'll be fun and with two months to sort it out I should be able to come up with something. Louis' birthday falls in the middle of the long Summer holidays so I guess we could spend weeks on end sitting at the kichen table making, crabs out of old egg boxes and painting strings of deckchair striped bunting.

So, can I get away with this?  He'd probably give anything for a Ben 10 party at the local soft play centre. Let's face it the party is for him and he'll have a great time, but the planning is all for me. I could never be bothered to plan my own wedding as I couldn't face being the star of the show so we buggered off to Vegas, but this is different. It's Louis who has to blow out the candles and I get to make up little bucket and spade party bags and release my inner Martha.

 

Now, I need suggestions for a playlist. Already come up with Bad Manners version of Oi I do like to be beside the seaside.