Wordless Wednesday – 40th Birthday Party

I haven’t shared many photos of my husband’s 40th birthday party, so I thought it would be a good chance to this Wordless Wednesday. If you want to read a few details on how and what we did, head to my post about Planning a Milestone Birthday Party. But here is the night in pictorial detail.

Immy’s grand entrance
The Birthday boy and the whopping big gawdy badge my sister put on him. I wasn’t very impressed at all when I  turned around and saw him wearing that. I’m already finding something incredibly tacky for her to wear on her 40th in several years time. Except I wouldn’t be that nasty.

The room.
The triplets were ready to eat the bonbonneires (giant freckles) well before dinner was on the table.

Hanging out with my family. Mum, Dad and little sis. (I’m sure she would like me to clarify that she was not the badge giving sister.)

Alex with his family and Toby. His Mum, Dad and sister.

How boys keep themselves amused at parties in the iPad age.

Toby and Imogen packing up at the end of the evening.

Oh yeah, she knows how to work a camera!

Immy had her entrance, Toby had his exit. At the end of the night, he stood at the automatic doors and giggled hysterically at them opening and closing.

My beloved and I at the end of a lovely evening.

Linking up at these lovely places:

My Little Drummer Boys

My Little Drummer Boys

Twinkle in the Eye

Twinkle In The Eye
Ms Mystery Case
5 Minutes

for Mom

Mama to 5 Blessings

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Ladybug Party

On Saturday, my niece had a Ladybug Party for her 5th birthday. She’s such a funny little thing, my five year old niece. She makes us laugh, yet doesn’t like being the centre of attention. She is cuddly, but sometimes cuddles aren’t appropriate. She loves animals. Especially chooks. (Translation for the non-Aussie readers: Chickens.) My sister woke up one morning, opened her eyes to stare into a chooks beady eyes mere centimetres from her own. My little neice had brought the hen indoors to assist in a wake up call.

The birthday girl herself, thrilled that a lizard crashed her party.
Anyway, I should stop talking. This is for Wordless Wednesday, after all. The ladybug party was a thoroughly delightful affair. Right from Uncle Adrian carrying the triplets en masse from the car to the party. (They had just woken up from the long drive and were a bit groggy.) Unfortunately I only had one ladybug outfit, but Jayden was a stellar bug and surprised me by keeping it on the whole time.

 My two sisters had done a wonderful job with the food. Plenty of fruit and even cheese imitating ladybeetles. Including a watermelon, although it was a bit of a large freaky ladybug. I loved that Katrina put party snacks and fruit such as grapes and melon balls in cupcake papers. It made the party look all the more cheerful as well as making it easy for the children to grab food without putting grubby hands into bowls. There seemed to be less waste also.

Of course the obligatory birthday cake was a ladybug. My brother-in-law made it. He’s awesome at making kids cakes.

Grown up shennanigans.

And moments with little people waiting patiently for her Grandad to open her lollies. Complete with her “painting toes” to copy Mummy’s toes painted red and dotted with a sharpie for that ladybug look.

One more little thing that I have been remembering while celebrating my neice, Miss R’s, birthday. I’ve probably broken the Wordless Wednesday rule, (although honestly, have I not done less talking then normals?)  
Miss R was born in later in the day, but that morning I had been receiving IVF treatment. I had an embryo implanted. And that was part of beginning of Master Trent’s life.
On Miss R’s birthday, in an amazing moment of symmetry, I was once again undergoing an IVF procedure. This time, two eggs were implanted. Not long after, one of those eggs split, and hey presto, there were triplets on the way. (Read about it here)
A special day

for so many reasons.

Linking Up For Wordless Wednesday with 
My Little Drummer Boys
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The Triplet's 2nd Birthday Beach Party

On Monday our triplets turned 2 years old!

To celebrate we had a beach party. Sun, sand, water followed with balls, cupcakes, lollies, family and friends. Yep, by the conclusion of the day I had happy and tired children.

We didn’t have to pretend that we were having a beach party – we were really at the beach! It was a long weekend – the triplet’s birthday fell on Queensland’s Labour Day. We were staying at my family’s beach house in Bargara because I had a school reunion in Bundaberg on the Saturday night.

A beach party can be a perfect opportunity to keep things low key. Although, perhaps my mother would not agree with me, since she did a lot of the work while we were over at the beach with the kids! God bless her. (Love you Mum!) Unfortunately due to a severe lack of shortage in the fridge, I was unable to prepare the salads in advance. Although Mum looked pretty tired by the end of the day, I think she was happy to compromise to be salad chef if it meant not going to the beach. Mum hates the beach – particularly the sand! She always has. It would appear that little Imogen Jennifer – Mum’s namesake – didn’t inherit Grandma’s abhorrence of the sand. She loves it and spent the majority of her time at the beach building sandcastles!

But truly, it was a very easy birthday party to pull together. Which was great, because when you are away from home, you really don’t want to spend your entire holiday doing party preparations. The schedule was simply have the guests arrive, allow the children to have a quick play and the triplet’s open their presents. Slap on swimwear and suncream, eat an ice-cream and walk across to the beach. After playing on the beach, we returned home, ate cheese and nibbles, drank wine (adults) and soft drink for the kids (and non-drinkers!) then had a BBQ lunch simply with steak and salad for the adults and the kids had sausages (and mainly opted out of the salad, rather having sausages on rolls). Dessert was the birthday cupcakes. Easy Peasy!

The triplets with myself and my two sisters.

It was also simple because we had a small guest list. Although anything with my family is not small, since my sister has a lot of kids also! My mother had come to babysit my children on Saturday night and my 2 sisters came, one stopping in on her way home from a holiday up north with the family and my baby sister and her boyfriend drove from our home town. Also, my best friend (since year one) came. Katrina, Kylie and I all have five kids apiece. Just because we are wonder-women. Kylie had her two eldest missing, so altogether there were 13 children. I’m fairly certain the neighbours are grateful we don’t live there every week. The children had a lovely time playing together.

I had a few games in my head that we might be able to play if we needed to. (In case you were interested, I thought we could do “Throw the thong” (Americans, please don’t gasp, in Australia, a thong is footwear, as opposed to the more raunchy thongs you have!) The person who threw the thong the longest distance would win. Sandcastle building competitions. And sand races. However, I didn’t need to do any of this. I was correct in assuming that the children would keep themselves occupied. Not only did the children stay busy, so did the men. We were hanging out in the bend between the ocean and a lagoon. There was a natural rock formation there, but at the start my brother-in-law started throwing rocks onto it to force the water to flow to a particular area to make it faster on the boogie boards.

Before long the other two men started to get involved in the project. By the end, they were so engrossed in their ‘work’ that they were carting huge boulders from all over the beach to ford their little part of the outgoing tide!

The kids also took interest in the project and used their boogie boards to cart rocks over to Uncle Adrian who was chief engineer. I think it’s safe to say, they spent a lot more time building the wall then they spent cannoning through the inlet!

Apart from this, there was lots of swimming.

Playing in the sand.

Squirting with water bottles.

Playing with balls.

Chatting mothers.

Boogie Board fun.

And just general beach fun!

The triplet’s were so tired by the time we got home that we actually gave them a sandwich and then let them blow out their candles and eat their cupcakes.

The boys are completely mesmerised by the candles. Immy is just struggling to stay awake.
They all thought the cake was particularly yummy.

So much so that when Toby stole Immy’s, she dissolved into a puddle of tears.

Which was pretty well an indication that it was naptime. They completely zonked out for a couple of hours. (They would have slept longer if their cousins and friends weren’t playing enthusiastically on the same premises, but the triplets were happy enough to rejoin the fun!)

In order to keep it simple, I had chosen cupcakes. Not that it turned out as simple as I planned, because the oven wouldn’t work. So I had to find a time that was convenient and drive to Kylie’s house to bake them. Only to discover the next day that I simply had been pressing the wrong combination of buttons, and in fact the oven did work. Oh my, oh my. (She blushes at her own stupidity.)

To keep with the beach theme, we had tiny teddies hanging out on the beach, stretched luxuriously on their beach towels (sour straps) under an umbrella. Complete with dolphin swimming in the water!

The party favour that the children took home was a ‘beach ball’. (Although for most it was just a ball, netball, soccer, basketball or otherwise.) The kids all had a play with them before they went home. They were so excited to get them!

But the best part of these favours (in my opinion, not the kids) was that they looked great as decorations! Especially hanging some beach spades and buckets up before we went to the beach.

I can’t believe I have three two year olds now! I am so incredibly blessed to have each one of them in my life. Happy Birthday Toby, Jayden and Imogen!

I’m linking with Essentially Jess today.

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Triplet's 1st Birthday Cake Smash

Triplets first birthday cake smash. Cute much? Definitely! So I thought I would share some extreme cute with you since I just got back photos of their 12 month cake smash. Thanks to the wonderful Zara Jane for doing this for us. Check out her facebook page here.
So here they are. Eyeing the cake with anticipation and curiosity!

The first tentative touches.

Toby.

It didn’t take Jayden long to realise that this was lots of fun.

Here he starts some serious mooshing.

Miss Imogen decided that blue looked very pretty so started getting a piece of her brother’s action. Jayden was preoccupied in his own world of mess.

After awhile the pink and blue started becoming purple on her leg!

 Cheeky girl!

Oh my, Jayden just loved this whole experience so much, and hands down was the messiest baby. Although the red icing rather resembles a blood bath.

Getting towards the end of the session.

Looks like he has war paint on his cheek now!

 Messy bubba.

I am sure Jayden was only trying to be friendly, but Miss Im is not impressed with a friendly hand on the shoulder.

Yes, she is not impressed at all.

Toby having his last of his sugar overload.

Picking up Jayden because he kept trying to do a runner. (Note footprints…)

 The aftermath.

Of course there was heavy duty bathing required.

A glimpse of Imogen as Daddy bends over scrubbing the boys.

It was such fun! Thanks again to Zara for her beautiful images and great memories!

Today I’m linking with Essentially Jess for IBOT. (I Blog On Tuesdays)

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A 3rd Birthday Party

3 year olds are full of fun, imagination and celebrating the small things in life with passion and joy. I wanted T-Star to have a party which would mirror the excitement and exuberance of a being three.

I’ve already talked about my special 3 year old and his birthday here. If you follow me on facebook, you would have seen that before T-Star’s birthday I was on the hunt for a birthday party theme.  There were several possibilities including monsters, dragons, motorbikes and fruit. Then J Boy threw in some suggestions and tried to indoctrinate T-Star to chose Diego. T-Star instantly said he wanted a dragon birthday. Done! Then I double checked, and he changed to an ice-cream party. Wasn’t on the party menu, but I thought, yep. I can do that. Done. “So, you want an ice-cream party?” No. It changed to a monster party. It then changed six million times. (Well, close to that amount) And I realised that I was the one that wanted a theme more than him. He just wanted a party and so long there were people he loved there, his friends, junk food, a cake and some games, he was going to be happy.

Oh, and then he had a request. He wanted a motorbike at his party.

Well, why not? He has got a grandfather who is a farmer, who does own a quad bike that T-Star adores riding. So, I got T-Star to ring Grandad up requesting to have his party at their house, which also has the added bonus of being able to use Grandma and Grandad’s pool. Of course, how could Grandad could not refuse, even though it would mean some major work helping the pool to recover from lying dormant over winter.

The party was starting to take shape. In the end, Grandad got right into the spirit and attached a trailer and bought some nice soft hay to take the kids for hay rides. They loved it. T-Star always insisted on driving with Grandad and was as proud as punch.

The pool was actually freezing. But it didn’t stop the kids! Which meant the parents demonstrated their unconditional love once again and got in to help them out and keep them safe.

After the swim it was time for some afternoon tea. T-Star (who wouldn’t swim) he was declared that we were having a ‘picnic’.

I was really pleased with what was on offer at the food table. Although there could have been more. Probably because I just didn’t have the time to prepare, the table was empty by the end. I always prefer leftovers, I hate to think of anyone leaving hungry. In this case, the kids certainly did not! They feasted! The adults probably could have nibbled a bit more, but I think there was enough for everyone to be content at least!

Anyway, here’s a closer look at what was on offer.

Tiny Teddy Cars.

Wormy Apples. (T-Star’s absolute favourite food!)

Had to include more fruit since T-Star just adores anything fruity. Watermelon stars

 Orange Fish

A Monster. The boys said he was spewing fruit salad. Apparantly it’s very cool to eat spewed fruit.

A friendly fire breathing dragon (especially one the candles were poked in his mouth!) was the birthday cake.   

My main idea for this cake came from here. I did modify it a little. Here is what my cake looked like before icing. I used one 20cm round cake and 2 bar cakes. After taking this photo, I put the cake in the freezer for half a day. I always ice frozen cakes. It makes it easier because the crumbs don’t get stuck in the icing as much.

All the hours of work making the cake is certainly worthwhile with the joy on his little face when he looked in wonder at the cake and blew out the candles.

 And ate it!!!

I had some games planned, but in the end we just did two time honoured favourites.

Pass the Parcel.

And a dragon pinata. You kind have to use your imagination to see that he’s a fire breathing dragon.

But he was lots of fun to smash.

And of course there were party bags to take home. The dragon dough eggs are playdough.

So altogether it was a lovely day. I just love doing parties for my kids! And their smiles really do make it all worthwhile!

Today I’m linking up with Essentially Jess‘s IBOT.

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The Triplet's Owl First Birthday Party

An owl theme for a birthday party was a lot of fun to prepare and there were so many cute owl themed ideas to implement to make the day special.

I’ve shared in the previous post about what the triplet’s did throughout the day they turned one. See it here

In this post, I thought I would go into further detail about some finer details of their actual party.

The theme was all things owls. Quite a simple theme to choose, since their nursery (See a picture of their nursery here) has been decorated in an owl theme. Most of my ideas came from Pinterest, feel free to check out my “Owl Party” board. There’s heaps of ideas that I would have loved to do, but quite frankly, I just didn’t have the time.

To start with nibbles, an owl cheese ball? Surely that’s not to cheesy?

I got the recipe here, which was really quite simple. 125g cream cheese, 125g grated cheese, 3 tablespoons gherkin relish. I threw it all in the mix master. It was very easy to shape. I’ve covered it in crushed pecans, flaked almonds for the tummy, carrot for beak and claws and the eyes are olives, apricots and sundried tomatoes. Plus I made double the recipe and made the 2nd into a ball and rolled it in paprika and curry powder and brought it to a party that we went to the day before. Add crackers and even a little kabana and it was popular with everyone.

I was going to make some owl devilled eggs. I googled a recipe, but didn’t think it looked as nice as Mum’s, so I rang Mum up to find out her secret. She promptly offered to make them for me, owl themed and all. She may have later regretted her offer, but oh well, I wasn’t going to turn down the offer! Look, aren’t they cute?

It was a beautifully hot day, so the owl ice cream cupcakes went down a treat. I was going to make regular owl cupcakes. Miss Rachael had made the cupcakes ready for me to ice, but at the last moment I had a brainwave that ice-cream would be better since we would already have so much birthday cake. (As it turned out, I have already iced them with left over birthday cake icing and they are frozen ready for T-Star’s playgroup on his birthday!) I softened regular vanilla ice cream and then spooned it into muffin tins lined with plastic wrap. Then it was simply a case of lifting the plastic out and decorating the circles of ice-cream. We had to do a fair bit of improvising according to what I had in the house, since my sister Julienne was helping me late at night. Chocolate ripple looked best for the wings, (the mint slice wings were yummy though also), lifesavers for eyes, (maltesers were a good substitute). An orange Jelly-bean cut up for a beak and chocolate buttons cut up for the eye brows.

At the beginning of the week I had commissioned Miss Rachael and the big boys the job of making a pinata. It looked great, don’t you agree? So cute! Although admittedly, the boys participation was limited. We will have to work on building their involvement and enthusiasm for the project for the next pinata project for T-Star’s November birthday!

Look at them all lined up and ready to give it their best shot to smash it to smithereens. Poor little fellow. He really didn’t deserve it.

I’ve already shared on Caitlin’s Happy Heart Facebook Page the favours I have made. Wherever possible, I like to present party favours that have a little bit of quality. Homemade gifts are the perfect way to achieve this aim. Which is why I made owl beanbags for this party.

Aren’t they adorable? Not only do they suit our theme, but they are great gifts for children. They have been very popular at our house for throwing and catching. (Although we are working on the difference of throwing the beanbag TO someone as opposed as throwing the beanbag AT someone) They boys also are having fun tossing the beanbags at a target and into a bucket. Even just holding the bags is a great sensory experience, which is always good for kinaesthetic learners such as my sons.

They are all a little bit unique, (a very loving way to describe my limited sewing ability!). I made a cardboard template, cut 2 pieces of fabric out. Sewed it wrong sides together, turned it out, sewed the eyes onto felt circle cut outs, then glue gunned the eyes and beak. Lastly I filled the owls with rice before sewing the last opening at the base.

Oh, and as a nice touch. The fabric I used was from the Triplet’s Monthly Project.

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2 months (November 2011) and 4 months (January 2012)

My children would be severely disappointed if they are ever sent home without something edible, (preferably including lollies), so I wouldn’t dare to omit these just because I wasn’t sending them home with a ‘loot bag’. Instead they went home with a cute little owl lolly jar!

Here are the cute little jars, just waiting to be filled.

The good thing about having triplets is that it’s very easy to collect 16 baby food jars. (Although later I realised I could have had minus four since the babies who were present didn’t need them!) I used a scrapbooking circle cutter and then glued googly eyes on. Then I hot glued the eyes, felt beak and feathers onto the jar. The big boys love sticking some owl stickers to pretty up the lids.

We made sure we had triplet coloured lollies! Blue mentos for Joey, Pink Marshmallows for Missy and Red Raspberries and Strawberries and Cream for Chook. (Not that any of them got to sample them!) The flowers in the background was to say Thank You to three special ladies who helped us throughout the past year. Our Mums and our Pastor’s wife who has ironed for us every week for over a year now.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of the kids filling their jars. But be assured, they were very cute holding their glass jars oh so very carefully and choosing the perfect delectables to fill the jar! But prior to the choice, the anticipation of eating the lollies was great.

Altogether it was a lovely day and a great party for my beautiful triplets.

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Party and Perspective

Just a quick update that I do not have time to do from party central. This morning I spent a couple of hours tidying my pantry. Just what I needed to do almost 24 hours before the triplet’s party! T-Star can open child locks. So this morning he got into a cupboard, then relocated a 2 litre container of vinegar into the pantry, unscrewed the lid, then walked away leaving the pantry door open ready for a baby to crawl in and spill it everywhere. Unfortunately I had a lot of cardboard boxes on the floor. So frustrating when I have a million things to do!

To add to it, while I was cleaning up, (not very graciously), T-Star, (who is definitely not a star today) brought two handfuls of sand inside and threw it over his sister. You know. Something to do. I tell you, that boy.

I’ve got 2 teething children who are pretty consistently crying and my scoliosis is giving me severe back pain.

But all of this is nothing.  A girl who was in my class at school with had her toddler drown this week. She has been constantly on my mind. It keeps it all this small stuff in perspective.

My children are such a blessing.

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Party Preparations

Hello if you follow me on facebook, (Click here to like my page!), you will have seen that packages are arriving and the excitement in the house at the moment is centred around the impending triple birthday on Sunday. That’s right, the triplets are turning one!

In fact today they received their very first first birthday cards and presents! Handmade patchwork owls made by Mrs T. onto shirts made in the triplet’s colours. Simply gorgeous!

And if you are crafty and would like a closer look, feel free to “Oooooh” and “Aaaaah”. I certainly did!

Clever lady, isn’t she? Thank you so much Mrs T!

Anyway, if I’m a little quiet at the moment, one of the reasons would be that I am in party preparing mode. I decided to keep the party small. Except I invited our family. Which is not small. And just added a few close friends. Now we’ve got an attendance list of 20 adults and 16 kids. (And the kids are only from four families! Mine included.)

Why is it that even though you know an event is coming up, my preparations are always left until the last minute? I’ve been so tired lately that I’ve been procrastinating doing anything and choosing to go to bed. Which has been wise. Except it always means that at this rate I’m going to end up really tired on party day. I think this has happened every time my child has had a birthday. I could say that I will go to bed on time the next three nights to prevent that. But I know I won’t. I’ve had two post midnight nights the past couple of nights, so maybe I should retire very soon tonight. After all, after three nights, I’ve finished a project.

Meet my owl army.

They are actually bean bags to giveaway to the children as favours. I really dislike filling loot bags with cheap Chinese plastic toys that every mother is just waiting for an opportunity to throw out. It is true the children do enjoy them, so I have been known to buy them, however, I try to be a bit creative normally when it comes to party favours. I thought these little guys were cute when I found them here. Already my boys have had lots of fun throwing and catching the prototype I made.

So, owl favours are now complete. I still have to make all food, do the grocery shopping for all food, make some party decorations, make part two of the party favours, wrap the pass the parcel, make the food and make three birthday cakes. Sheesh! And all during the school holidays, so I am constantly being interrupted! And I have another party to go to on Saturday, so last minute preps will be somewhat inhibited. Somehow it always does come together on the day. Fingers crossed this is no different!

I’ll look forward to sharing more about their birthday next week with you.

When you plan parties and events, are you a last minute organiser or do you get planned well in advance?

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Spy Party

I don’t know how J Boy gained his interest in spies at such a tender age, but he has become rather obsessed with them of late. After seeing on TV that overseas spies had been jailed after being caught there was a brief week when his resolve weakened his desire ‘to become a spy when he was a man.’ During that week, he decided he might become a farmer instead. However, then the toy sales came, and he decided that the thrill of using the myriad of spy gadgets trumped the danger involved with espionage.

This means creeping around the house, covert missions, binoculars and secrets are all favourite occupations of my eldest son.

So, a spy party was the obvious theme when celebrating J Boy’s 6th birthday this year.

With the triplets taking so much time, I tried to keep everything as simple as possible. Easy food and simple games were a must. I wasn’t able to spend as much time preparing as I normally might, so even some of the easy games that required preparation ended up being abandoned. However, I think the day went well in the end and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, and that, as they say, is the main thing.

So here is how the party progressed.

1. Arrival – Security Scan. Photographed. Fill in Sign on Sheet. Obtain Code Name.

Agent Daddy looked very official as he scanned all the Junior Agents with J Boy’s new toy as they entered. Miss Rachael became as efficient as Moneypenny when getting the kids to fill out their names and take their fingerprints. Two words were picked from two separate containers (one of nouns, and one pre-dominantly of verbs) to make into a code name. Some of the classics were Marshmallow Booger, Snot Chaser, Lion Creeper and the birthday boy was Ant Zoomer. The kids thought it was hilarious.

The little ones being processed.
Oh dear. I think Agent Daddy is planning to frisk Agent Mummy.
The secret agents who turned up at Mission Headquarters for an elite spy training program.  The invitation said to come dressed as a spy or in disguise. They did a wonderful job! I particularly liked Agent 99 and Chief in the top left hand corner!

2. Laser Maze
The mission: Get through the course without touching the laser beams. (Red crepe paper, yellow warning tape.)

The course. Training has begun.
Special Agent Dr. Lion (Codename) completed the course with finesse.

I got this idea from pinterest, although the original idea was an indoor laser maze., To avoid extra mess and chaos I avoided bringing the troops inside. So, we decided to do an outdoor maze. Agent Daddy had the brilliant idea of setting it up under the trampoline. The kids loved crawling through the play equipment to get there and then bending and twisting to get through the obstacle course without touching the laser beams. Thankfully it was only a training course, otherwise I’m afraid a few alarms may have sounded…!

4. Spy Tins
Target practise throwing balls at tins painted as enemy spies.

Ze enemy is in ze tin.

This had been a craft project in our house over the last couple of weeks. An excellent opportunity to use up all those formula tins!

5. Pass the Parcel

Classic party game.

You will have disappointed guests at any child’s party if this game is missing. We made it fit the theme by downloading Mission Impossible and James Bond theme songs on I Tunes and playing them as the music. Admittedly, the significance was probably missed on the children who have not watched either movie. My nephew asked why we were playing ballet music. Ballet music apparently is anything instrumental.

6. Food!
Standard party junk food fodder.

Dinosaur fairy bread

To keep things simple, I had a fair few bought treats on the party table such jam tarts, mini pies and sausage rolls, chips and lollies, etc. The kids were mainly concerned with only the lollies anyway, even though we had just had a chocolate treasure hunt. I did have some fairy bread, homemade brownies, cake pops and the birthday cake.

The cake pops were little mini bombs. The little fuses were painted red on the end.

Warning! Explosives. Bomb Cake Pops.

I have been wanting to make a rainbow cake for a little while, so I suggested this be J Boy’s cake this year because I knew that it would be relatively simple to make. To keep with the spy theme said that it was a “Mystery Cake” because no one knew what was inside. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I was generous with the colouring, which resulted in lovely vivid colours. The gasps of approval when I cut the cake was very rewarding!

7. Drinks.

SPY-ders and Water with a twist – Truth Serum!


Proving that consumption is often to do with marketing, the water nearly all disappeared! How often does that happen at a kids party?

We also made spiders/spy-ders. I don’t know if this is just an Aussie thing, but if you aren’t familiar with it, it’s soft drink (soda) with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream in which makes a frothy creamy drink. Always a popular choice with kids. (Sorry, I didn’t get a photo of that one.)

8. Spy Mission.

Operation Retrieve Party Bag.

Towards the end of the party I gathered the kids together and very seriously told them that despite all our security checks at the gate, an enemy agent had got in and had stolen the box of party bags. (Agent 99 was quite alarmed at this news and had a mild panic attack.)  I had previously written out some badly rhyming clues to lead them to the next clues hidden throughout the backyard. The final clue led them to the box of party bags. I then held a spy training course on how to use the secret invisible ink spy pens with the ultra-violet light built into the pen’s lid. Very impressive stuff. (I bought these from Mad About Science. I was so proud to have a party bag that didn’t consist of mere cheap Chinese plastic rubbish toys that get thrown out in two minutes.)

A spy party was lots of fun. It’s a shame that once all the guests went home, the days finale had to be The Accountant severing an artery in his arm while doing odd jobs around the yard. This required an emergency trip to the doctors and six stitches. But apart from that I consider the day a success and my little 006 agent had a super day, and that is the main thing.

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How to make Bunting

I’ve taken awhile to get back to posting about preparations for Liz’s 30th Party. To help achieve a classy but fun party atmosphere, I decided to make some bunting – polka dot of course. I bought a variety of polka dot fabrics (on sale at Lincraft, hooray!). I used four different fabrics and bought 0.5m of each, there was a few triangles left over. I made a simple triangle template (using an old cereal box!) and used it to mark out the triangles to cut with tailors chalk.

I had folded the fabric in half, which made it easy because there were then two triangles together ready to sew. Basically then it was a simple case of sewing the two wrong sides together. I left the top open. Turned it out the right way, using a blunt pencil to push the seam in at the tip of the triangle. I also found giving the tip a bit of a trim helped it sit nice. Then I ironed the triangles so the seams sat flat.

I bought two lots of 5 metre cotton tape. I ironed the tape in half, then placed the top flat edge inside the folded tape pinned them all in place, then simply zig zag stitched all the triangles to the the tap. I also folded the tape over in a loop at the end to make it easy to hang.

A simple little project I have been wanting to do. All up it cost less then $30, which I thought was pretty reasonable. I’m already planning what colour combo’s I would use to make another bunting one day. Such fun!

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