Aarrgh-some Pirate Party

We were lucky enough to go to an amazing pirate party last weekend, some friends went all out for birthday #4. After a pirate ship table was spotted on pinterest, Dad was asked to rig something up - but he built a wooden ship around his desk instead! It was incredible.

Dad also happens to be a painter, how cute is this?

My daughter is pirate-obsessed so she loved everything, including pin-the-parrot-on-the-pirate.

The cupcakes were yummy and the 'Sea Water' was shark lollies in jelly (like Aimee's 'Fishpond jelly' here) .

A wooden treasure chest had also been constructed, with take-home treasure for everyone at the end of  a photo-clue treasure hunt.

(My exhausted babies at the end of a very busy party - couture pirate vest by Nana!)

(Note: The pirate ship attachments are actually for sale on TradeMe this week if you can see a pirate party in your future...)

Other party posts:

• Under the Sea 5th birthday


• Fairground Fun 1st birthday

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Little Miss Lily Pad's Fifth birthday....

Blue fishpond jelly; takeaway popcorn boxes; LouLou making mermaid gingerbreads; frothy wave cupcakes.

























Maddie in her costume; her Mermaid Barbie cake; making popcorn boxes.

Sunday was my first daughter Maddie's fifth birthday party, and it was chaos -but fantastic fun. In typical Lily Pad style, between the two of us we 'designed' a party made from a lot of homemade, handmade items - and had an absolute ball preparing together.

The theme was 'Under the Sea' - an idea which we stretched our imaginations a bit for, in order to make her original idea of a Barbie Mermaid party suit all our friends, boys included. Maddie hates to leave out her two best boy buddies, Tyler and Campbell, so she suggested the wider theme. We asked them if they'd like to come as pirates (they looked fantastic) - and lead the 'treasure hunt'. To make the treasure hunt, we hid gladwrap sandwich bags of small balls, packs of playing cards, gold chocolate coins, notebooks and pencils in the clam shell pit, then Maddie drew a map with "X marks the spot", and hubby traipsed the two pirates, Maddie, and all the other littlies on a wild goose chase all around the property and back to the clam shells. There they 'dug for treasure' with teaspoons til all the prizes were found.

The second game was 'pin the tail on the mermaid', which Maddie and I drew together earlier in the week, and she painted. Our decorating theme included giving each child a pair of paper 'googles' to wear under the sea (a ceiling full of blue balloons and green seaweed), a table of food sitting on top of a striped picnic rug, instead of a table cloth, bunting flags (another great excuse to use the free alphabet bunting downloads I love on ruffled) and an activity getting the kids to decorate gingerbread mermaid and starfish cookies with coloured icing and sprinkles.

Once all the welcome games and activities were over, the kids had a picnic on a blue beach towel, with 'takeaway popcorn' in boxes, 'fish 'n' chips' wrapped in takeaway packages of newspaper and wax paper, and 'goldfish bowl' blue jelly with fish lollies inside.

Instead of a loot bag, each child took home their googles, a balloon, and their own gingerbread cookies.

I have to admit I went all out for this party and made a mermaid outfit for Maddie, as well as a 'guppie' outfit (skirt and tail) for my little one year old. They looked so cute!

I also spent a lot of time thinking about her cake, which I made the night before, and kept a big secret. She was quite overwhelmed/excited/blown away and unfortunately cried when it was time to blow out the candles! Oops - too much for one small child!

It's quite wierd now, with the big party over, and the waiting game of two weeks of school holidays before she's off to school for her first day. Lots of time to write names on clothing and stationary, but also a big build up! I hope it goes well.

Love you HEAPs Maddie Moo, and I'm so proud of you

xxx

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My Creative Space - Easy Ribbon Necklace

A 2 year-old's birthday gave me the excuse to try this awesome tutorial from Prudent Baby, and it is just the kind of small, fiddly project I like.

She doesn't usually wear pink so I went with purple and blue, a pale blush and some craft ribbon with flowers. All you have to do is sew each loop on your machine, then tidy up the join by melting the ends back on to the back of the loop (don't worry, it is explained much better in the tutorial!)

Instead of a ribbon tie at each end, I used one main ribbon and sewed it on to both of the end loops, so the 2 year old could just pull the necklace on and off without worrying about it coming untied.

Let us know if you try this one yourself - it took me about half an hour - and check out this grown-up looking version from Prudent Baby (one of our favourite blogs by the way, they also had the dress tutorial Aimee used here).

The creative space game is back for 2011 at www.kootoyoo.com, check it out!

p.s. you could also use this idea for ribbon (or fabric) scraps left over from other projects, so I will call it a re-design too!

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Lori-lou's first birthday: fairground fun

Lori-Lou is officially our little ray of sunshine, so we had her first birthday party the other day, and themed it around the best type of childhood fun in the sun - playing at a old style fairground.

The bunting I'd made earlier set the scene, and I reused the image on her party invitations too.

We used an ice-cream machine to whip up 'soft serve' ice creams, which we served in little striped punnets, like in the olden days, with lashings of toppings like chocolate sauce, M and Ms, and fruit sticks like Mr Whippy uses. I downloaded some PDFs to make vintage pop corn boxes (as seen on Lil Magoolie a couple of months ago - I saved the idea) and we made club sandwiches too.

The cake was just a simple chocolate cake, but I dressed it up with fruit kebabs cut into flower shapes with cookie cutters to look like a flower bed. My four year old and I did it together the day before, so it was a stress free morning. She'd actually been the one to 'find' the idea of fruit kebabs from her preschooler's magazine, Sparkleworld. I just developed it into a cake idea....as well as the flower bed, we mixed coconut into the icing to make it look really 'grassy', like a field.

It was a lovely, laid back party without a stress in the world to organise. Lori-lou looked divine in a special rose covered party dress bought in Australia by her Nanny and smiled her whole way through it. I hope you enjoy seeing the photos as much as I enjoyed organising it :)

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My Creative Space....bunting, bunting

I’m officially obsessed with different ways to make bunting at the moment. As well as a nursery room decoration, I’ve used it as a party decoration for my daughter’s first birthday.

I discovered this gorgeous free downloadable ‘alphabet’ bunting and made a string of bunting with “Loren-is-one” out of scrapbooking paper. It prints with a pattern on the front, so I used the print of the scrapbooking on the back so it's fully reversible. I simply sewed the scrapbooking paper onto a ribbon – whola! I wrote about it for Baby Bites magazine here. I love it so much I’ve now transferred it to her bedroom wall.

Working with the paper to make the celebratory-themed bunting has led me down the road of two new ideas now.

I’m making ‘mini’ Christmas themed bunting for my Christmas tree, instead of tinsel. For first one I’m using the scraps left over from my Christmas Card Keepers (don’t forget our giveaway, ending this weekend!).

But once I’ve finished that, I’m going to go and buy a whole bunch of red and green scrapbooking paper, and some high quality Christmas wrapping paper, to make some 'mini tree bunting' to sell at my upcoming markets – the Summer Fair at the Michael Park School, Ellerslie next weekend Nov 6, and the Devonport Craft Market, Nov 21.

Fun, fun! Hop over to Kirsty’s for more creative projects coming to life....

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