When Reuben Turned THREE!

This absolutely gorgeous boy turned three back in April! Three! Can you believe it? He is growing into such a beautiful little fella. He still owns the cheekiest smile ever, with a contagious laugh to match. He is just so much fun to be around. He has a great sense of humour and the biggest heart. He's loud and loves all the boy things. Dinosaurs, trucks, trains, planes, cars, superheroes. All the boy stuff.

So Reuben asked for a Superhero party for his birthday, and boy did Mama deliver.



I decided to make it a party where the kids could do stuff, so we turned the party into a Superhero training boot camp!

Each guest got one of these checklists, and each party game fulfilled one "competency". (***see the end of this post for a link to the prints!!***) When they had completed the whole list, they were presented with a certificate of completion. And yeah, I may have laminated stuff. I'm so a teacher.

First up they had to look the part... they came up with names, decorated capes (really simple ones I made with pieces of white cotton with a hem sewn at one end with elastic threaded through it), and had their faces painted.

They pinned the star on the SHIELD...

Single-handedly demolished "brick walls"...

Rescued a baby from a burning building... (and yeah, my husband does own a smoke machine)

Made their way through a laser maze...

And for their final challenge, they had to work together to defeat the evil villains (played by my brother and his BFF who turned up on motorbikes just at the right moment). The kids went to town on them with silly string and foam swords and karate chops.

The food was all allergy free, and I made little labels for each thing stating which superhero power it helps to build... like 'builds muscles', 'every blast', 'increases elasticity', 'boosts invisibility' and so on.

It was so much fun. The kids had a fabulous time, and I really enjoyed putting it on.

I also took allergy free cupcakes to kindy for him to share with his friends later that week...

All in all Reuben had a VERY happy birthday.

And now he's THREE!!! My beautiful big boy.

***If you're interested in the printable I made for Reuben's party VISIT THIS LINK. You will find the training checklist, the food labels, and the certificates. Enjoy!!

party like it’s the 1920’s

May is a big month in our family. With a bazillion birthdays AND mother’s day we are usually well and truly broke by the end of it. It was actually quite a kindness that Reuben decided to arrive a few weeks before his May due date!

This year was particularly special, as my dad and sister (whose birthdays are 5 days apart) both had big ones: a 50th and a 21st! It was decided that they would combine celebrations and before we knew it a great big 21st/50th 1920’s themed birthday bash was in the works!

The party was on Saturday night, and such a great time. It’s truly wonderful when you have a themed party and pretty much everyone joins in the fun and dresses up! And the 1920’s is a great era for dressing up.

We hired a gorgeous hall built in the early 1900’s, and which has been well maintained but not changed, and was the perfect character for our party. We decorated tastefully and simply with buntings and pompoms and strings of balloons, and a gorgeous dessert table.

The table decorations were strips of hessian with candles and flowers and looked so cute! We played fabulous swing music and ate delicious food and danced and had speeches and caught up with so many wonderful friends and family, old and new. It was a beautiful party, a lovely celebration of two of my favourite people. We even had four surprise visitors from WA arrive the night before the party, which made the whole thing even more special.

Most unfortunate was the fact that when we pulled out our DSLR to take photos, we discovered that the batteries were flat! Thank the Lord for smart phones eh? I don’t feel like we took nearly enough photos of the night – isn’t that always the way when you’re having a fabulous time? – but here are some of the ones we did manage to take:

One of the awesome features of the hall was the old ticket booth. We didn’t need to sell tickets but we sure had fun using the space as a photo booth! Such fun.

Even Reuben got dressed up! I made him the cute little bowtie, and the headpieces for Mayana and myself. Aside from my gloves, everything else we already had in our wardrobe!

My lovely Aunty/Godmother was one of our surprise Perth visitors. Our hall was in the country, and it was quite cool but our long gloves and faux fur and dancing helped to keep us warm. Oh, and the wine of course.

Mayana’s Godparents and our very dear friends Daniel and Katherine (and baby Max!) also came from Brisbane to party with us.

I think this photo of Daniel and Peter has to be one of my favourites from the night!

My Perth uncle and my brother Jordan look very dapper, don’t you think?

It’s not very often I get to have both of my beautiful grandmothers together! Don’t they look so lovely?

Oh so much fun in the ‘photobooth’!

1920’s is SUCH a fun theme for dressing up!

Did you do something fun on the weekend? We’re planning a pirate party for Pete’s 30th next month… what’s your favourite dress-up theme for a party?

A Sugar-Free First Birthday Party

Reuben’s first birthday party was a hastily-organised do held at a local park. We were very blessed to have plenty of friends and family come to celebrate our beautiful boy’s first year of life. It was a fairly casual affair with a playground and duck-pond to entertain the kids, and plenty of time for catching up and chatting for the grown-ups. Okay so maybe some of the grown-ups made use of the playground too.

The guest of honour spent most of his time enjoying cuddles from favourite people and showing off his newest party trick: walking!

He also shared a clandestine cup of grapes under the table with his betrothed friend, Grace.

I decorated simply, but meaningfully too, with a string of photos and string of handmade bunting.

You remember those weekly photo collages I’ve shared on the blog of Reuben’s life? I had each one printed (all 52 weeks of his life) and laminated, then strung them together. On the back I wrote some highlights of each week. It was like a timeline of Reuben so far. Everyone enjoyed looking at our gorgeous baby’s photos and reading his little stories, and they were a great talking point. I’m really glad I took the time to put it together!

In planning Reuben’s party I made the decision to cater completely sugar-free. I knew I would have to a be a little creative to achieve this for a kid’s party, but (with the exception of one treat of fairy bread) I’m proud to say that I succeeded!

We had ham sandwhiches, nuts, crackers, vegetables and homemade dips, little cups of grapes (in cupcake papers – this was a great idea, very novel for the kids and a good little amount of grapes), almond & coconut fish cakes (fish by shape only, not flavour!), potato chips and fairy bread.

The cake was a sugar-free carrot cake, and there was not a crumb left of it!

Reuben was thoroughly spoilt with loving and gifts and we all felt completely blessed to have the presence of so many people who love him (and us!).

Thanks to everyone who came, we hope you had as much fun as we did!

A Mermaid Party

Mayana’s fourth birthday party was over a week ago now… with all the floods and everything that has happened since then it feels like a month ago! I’ve finally gotten time to write a post about her party… better late than never. Enjoy!

Pretty much since her third birthday Pancake Party, Mayana has been asking for her fourth birthday to be a Mermaid Party.

And so, after much pinterest research (what would we do without that wonderful website?) and creative thinking, we managed to do just that… we pulled off a Mermaid Party for Mayana’s fourth birthday.

I designed the invitations, asking people to dress up either as a mermaid or their favourite sea creature. Mayana was quite insistent that her friend Max had to be Prince Eric, but other than that people could be whatever they wanted to be.

I found an awesome tutorial for making a mermaid tail online, and Mayana chose a deep turquoise velvet, so that she could look like Ariel. I drew the line at colouring her hair though! (just a note if you’re looking at the tutorial – I used velvet instead of the stretchy sequinned fabric, and tulle – soooo cheap, and much easier to work with, no fraying!- instead of the organza)

My sister and I spent half an hour plaiting Mayana’s hair in tiny sections so that she would have super-wavy mermaid hair for the party instead.

We originally intended for the party to be outside, turning the trampoline into a giant sea anemone and setting up ball games and other things to keep sugar-hyped kids entertained. Unfortunately the great rains started on Friday, so we had to change tactics. We cleared the furniture in our dining/family room area and set up the party there… food at one end and a mat at the other for sitting on to eat, play games and open presents. I had made a huge… I don’t know what you would call it.. banner maybe? decoration out of tulle and ribbon, and bought three paper lanterns to hang above the table.

The morning of the party we were very busy, finishing off the decorating, the food and dressing up our beautiful mermaid… Before we knew it Mayana’s friends were arriving!

I had planned a game of pass the parcel, and other than that the games turned out to happen organically – a round of musical statues, and then an impromptu dance party. Mayana has a thing for dance parties at the moment, and most of her friends were keen enough to join in eventually!

The cake was a Lady Flo butter cake, with buttercream icing and white chocolate decorations, topped with a mermaid Lala-Loopsy. I couldn’t quite get my head around a mermaid cake, and thought this was a pretty good alternative.

I had gone all out with the food… while there was nothing especially fancy, we had gotten very imaginative with the names, and everything had an under-the-sea theme, complete with a little mermaid label describing what it was.

We had chocolate fish, and the tiny coloured biscuits I’d made along with some multi-coloured jube lollies became ‘mermaid treasures’. Drumstick biscuits were ‘shark bait’ and carrot sticks in tatziki dip became ‘crablegs with seaweed dip’ (these were a huge hit actually, the kids and adults both loved them… I liked the idea of individual serves, because kids are notorious for double dipping!)

Triangles of cheese were ‘shark teeth’ and a bowl of potato chips were ‘sand dollars’. I’d made colourful rainbow fruit kebabs and named them ‘fruits of the sea’.

I think for novelty value, the ‘octopus in a blanket’ were probably the biggest hit. They were a cheerio/small frankfurt sausage cut into 8 legs, with the head wrapped in puff pastry then baked. As they cooked the legs separated and splayed out, turning them into octopuses! More simple were the ‘fish egg’ jelly beans.

I usually over cater and have heaps of food left over, but someone this time I did well. At most there were only a few things left.. everyone was satisfied and we weren’t eating sea-food for the rest of the weekend!

For drinks, I poured a bottle of lemonade into my funky new punch bowl, and added a few drops of blue food colouring. I had been making up the ‘goldfish’ all week, by freezing orange juice onto a fish mould I had bought from Ikea for 99c. It looked very effective, and the kids loved drinking it out of the cute little milk bottles (purchased from The Big Little Company for last year’s party) with the paper straws that I picked up from Typo!

All of the kids and some of the adults dressed up. We had a handful of  mermaids, some sharks, a crocodile.. a Poseidon (Greek God of the Sea) and a Neptune.. it was lovely and Mayana appreciated it so much!

Mermaid Mayana and her Prince Eric!

Peter and I loved putting on this party for our girl, it was so worth it to see her big smile and watching her have fun with all her favourite people.