The birthday that blew away
This weekend we celebrated Litte A’s 2nd birthday with a small party in the park. The illustration above is from his invite (drawn by me and minus all the type and info).
It started out as a marvellously warm day with a gentle breeze but by lunch time the breeze had turned to gail force winds which saw people scrambling to grab toys/plates/hats/cups as they were violently blown about. Having most of the gathering blown away signalled the end of a (until then) delightfully successful birthday party.
But before that all happened I arrived early to bags the only pagoda in the incredibly large park (go figure!) and set to decorating the shelter with homemade paper garlands, vintage tissue balls (left overs from our wedding), vintage sheets, pom-poms, vintage birthday cards and the pièce de résistance a very large number 2 piñata hand made by my generous sister, Ursula (who joined me early to help decorate and document).
SAH and Little A arrived before the guests and we were able to give him his last gift: a Micro Mini Scooter from his Oma and Pop (my parents who couldn’t make it to party because they are in New York, lucky things). And as predicted it was a smash hit, Little A was a natural and adored scooting around like crazy.
But the scooter was quickly thrown over when our guests arrived and the absolute hit of the day was a little rocket launcher toy, given to Little A by his Aunt Emma. Hands down the favourite party game favoured by every kid in attendance, we highly recommend it!
We vowed to make this year less stressful in the prep than last year (wowee did a lot go into last year’s party!) and we were working on a very strict budget, so the cake this year was modest. Homemade using the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cake book we created a hybrid swimming pool/zoo cake to make a Seal enclosure cake. So pleased with seals Little A didn’t even want to blow out his candle, he just wanted to play with the seal toys and that jelly water (which we didn’t let him do BTW as people had to eat it!).
After a few moderate whacks from the smaller children, it took 2 of Flynn’s expert batter swings to make the piñata explode in style, sending confetti and toys flying and small children scattering to collect them (no lollies in this piñata as we are firm believers in restricting lollies and chocolates intake for kids).
People sat and chatted, kids ran about and played, the sun shone, the wind blew, people brought delicious platters of food to share and the birthday boy had a fabulous time.
Thank you all who came and made this day such a success.
