Birthday treats

My big girl turns 7 this week and had a get-together yesterday with a few buddies. It was set to be a low key play date rather than a full party (which could not have been arranged with 4 days notice - she had changed her mind at the last minute, but that's another story ;-) So rather than doing party bags I thought I'd make a couple of little things for the kids to take home and also have a lucky dip, which I find is always popular.

The toffee lollipops was an idea that came from Kate at Foxs Lane. She had posted a pic on Instagram, which I've just joined, incidentally (come follow me, I'm bubala_jo, and I can follow you too ;-). They took me back to my old primary school fetes. My goodness, I ate quite a few of those things! Maybe that's why my teeth have given me so many problems! I thought putting a little on a paddle pop stick was a great idea and limits the portion size. Of course I made the girls promise to brush their teeth extra well when they got home (and hopefully the parents won't hate me!).

And the little felt owl came about because I wanted to give each child some kind of badge so I could identify them quickly in the play centre crowd of squealing children. I decided to make it a purse with a zip in the back and a clasp at the top so it could be put on their clothes on the afternoon and then they could clip it on their school bag or wherever later.

After making one prototype I got into full production mode and spent a bit of time cutting, pinning, sewing and finishing. My big girl suggested we have some owls asleep and some awake, which I loved. Then we added in the winking ones ;-) My big girl sewed on the buttons with me looking on proudly.

For once I was organised and took photos at each step, so that I can do a tutorial for them... hopefully soon :-)

Party craft

We had a birthday party in a local park on the weekend for our boy's 2nd birthday, and of course I couldn't let the opportunity to do some craft slip past!

The craft centred loosely around a ball theme (for the ball-mad boy of course) and including orange and green colours. I made an invitation from a photo of birthday boy kicking a ball, a pom pom garland in a great grassy green yarn, and little round take-home parcels.


I'd seen a few examples of little sewn parcels around (good one including tutorial here) and wanted to try them. I used an old (but beautiful) furniture catalogue, from which I cut CD sized circles, and sewed 2 together, leaving a gap for filling, adding a large ribbon tag and then sewed up the gap, leaving a couple of millimetres for ease of tearing.



Whenever we have a kids party I agonise over take-home 'party bags', as I know many friends do... firstly, to do them or not to? Kids love them (and expect them!), but packing them with cheap plastic toys seems wrong, as they'll surely end up as landfill sometime soon. Decent little toys end up very expensive when you're buying in bulk. And as for lollies (sweets/candy)... generally the kids have consumed quite a bit of sweet food already by the time the party's over, so should we be sending them home with their poor parents to either eat more and run around on sugar highs, or have screaming tantrums because they're not allowed to eat them? Both are familiar to our family and neither is fun. We've seen a lot of tantrums over 'treats' lately and frankly I'd like to go and clear our pantry of anything sweet, ban buying and receiving gifts of sweets and have a sweet-free month, I'm that over the whole the sweets mania. Argh, I've obviously got an issue going on here!! I could write a whole post on this topic, but I won't bore you with that ;-). Lets just say that I hoped that the novelty of ripping open their little parcels would make up for the small quantity of sweets (just enough M&M's to fill out the parcel).



It was a simple party and we tried to keep it age appropriate (despite pressure from the 6 year old big sister who would have liked Pass-the-parcel etc ;-). Balls to kick around of course, a game of Crocodile Crocodile, big bubble blowers and chalk to draw on the paths.



OK, yes, this is the boy with his face in his cake! If you can't get icing all over your face when it's your birthday, when can you, right?

* Party pics courtesy of my lovely friend L who knows I always forget to take photos so takes my camera and gives it back to me full of great images. Thank goodness for you L :-)

A birthday sleepover part 2

Continuing on from yesterday's post...

After the sleepover bags were thoroughly raided the girls got started on their craft activity. It is a must to do craft before a sleepover, apparently (girls after my own heart :-). They decorated a pillowcase each using the fabulous fabric crayons pictured above. It was the quickest and least messy activity I could think of that related to bedtime.



After dinner was The Cake - do you find that the cake is often the most anticipated part of a birthday? I just love how excited children get about it. My girls talk about their cake all through the year, even when their birthdays are ages away!!

Big girl had excitedly gone through our favourite celebration cake cookbook, The Australian Womens Weekly's "Kids Party Cakes" in the weeks before the event and decided on this moon cake to suit the sleepover theme.



Each time I've used this cookbook I've picked up some new tip or trick, and this time it was the coloured textured icing. It's a standard butter icing coloured yellow, which is then sprinkled with sugar that you tint yellow. The sugar smooths off the surface and can be scattered around any dips in the icing, so it's very forgiving of wonky application! It looks great, but just don't think about the fact that you're eating pure sugar. Hmm, maybe that's why sleep came pretty late to the lovely girls :-) (The cake is this favourite quick and easy egg-free chocolate cake).

OK, one birthday down for the year, 2 more to go...

A birthday sleepover part 1

We had a very very exciting event here a few weekends ago, my big girl's 6th birthday sleepover. After a huge party last year where her whole class and other friends were invited the Mr and I were exhausted and there and then decided we'd skip the big party the following year. So we told her she could invite her 2 best buddies over for a sleepover, and of course I had to incorporate some craft, especially considering all 3 girls love to make things.

As soon as the girls arrived big girl delighted in giving them their 'sleepover bags'. Wanting there to be a few fun touches to the evening, I'd come up with the idea of making a simple drawstring bag for each of the 3 and including some things to do with bedtime. It was the element of surprise that I thought the girls would enjoy.



After a bit of thought, the items in the bags ended up being some bubble bath, a lip balm, a torch (for creating finger shapes on the wall & general fun), a treat to eat and a sleep mask, as well as a set of matching pyjamas that I'd been working on for a while:



These are made with the Oliver & S 'bedtime stories' pattern, which includes a kimono style top. I chose a bird print flanelette from Spotlight (very happy to find this amongst all the garish prints!) and for the trim a lilac coloured soft lawn. For the ties I used ribbon in the matching lilac. I love this pattern, it's so well considered and beautifully detailed.



Then for the sleep mask I thought it would be quicker to make them rather than trying to hunt some down (especially as they were just a gimick really and would only be used briefly, if at all). I made them out of some scrap fabric, elastic and pinking shears, and amazingly they turned out pretty well (and were very satisfying to make)!

Tomorrow I'll post the craft activity and cake...

Birthday boy

This time exactly one year ago I was pottering around at home, wondering when my baby boy was going to come out into the world and meet us. Little did I know that later that evening we would be greeting him. My baby boy turns 1 today!

We had a hastily organised little celebration for him in the local park yesterday which I think he enjoyed, despite needing a little nap in the middle of it! He got to show off his new walking skills, as well as waving, clapping and doing his little dance to the music playing. Where has my baby gone?!!


His big sisters are always very excited to have a birthday in the family to celebrate, but particularly for their beloved baby, who they fuss over like mother hens! Of course they wanted to open his presents ASAP in the morning and burnt themselves out with excitement before it was time for the party! The things most anticipated were 1. the cake (isn't that always the way) and 2. the lucky dip we'd organised. I remember absolutely loving lucky dips when I was a child - the anticipation of putting your hand into the box or bag, picking something out and unwrapping it was huge! What a pity things don't excite us so much as adults!

As usual at our birthday celebrations I didn't take nearly enough photos, or rather not the right sort of photos. Lots of blurry group shots with kids running around but noone looking at the camera, but not so much the carefully planned details, like the loving wrapped lucky dip parcels being eagerly handed from one child to another (all chosen and wrapped by the big girl), and none of the CAKE! It astounds me that I can take so long making and decorating the cake then forget all about photographing it! So please forgive the dodgy zoomed-in detail shot.

It's become tradition that the kids all have a teddy cake on their first birthday - the one from this great kids cake cookbook. So here's what it's supposed to look like below. I used a bit more cocoa in the butter icing so he was a chocolate brown bear - which satisfied the chocoholics in this family.




And my chocolate apple cake is also a tradition with us now. The recipe was found by my mum when the big girl was little and we were hunting for egg-free cake recipes. It's a bit more special than our everyday egg-free chocolate cake. It's a good cake to cut into shapes as it holds its form well, plus I can kid myself that it's a little bit healthy as it contains apple (just don't think about all that butter icing on top ;-)



Chocolate apple cake

400g stewed apple
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
125g butter or margarine
1 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 cups self-raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 180c. Lightly grease and line a shallow 16 x 26cm pan. Place the apple, bicarb and milk in a saucepan and stir over a low heat for 2-3 minutes. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar, add the vanilla. Sift over the flour and cocoa and gently fold together. Fold through the warm apple mixture.

Spoon into the prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes then turn onto a cake rack to cool completely.


Happy Birthday Mr Milo!