Reality check: Charlotte is turning 1

I've been dreading this for the past 4 weeks. I had a little tiny baby, I sneezed and now my little baby is about to turn 1. I have on my hands a toddler.

Every morning for the past month I've had a different random thought on what to do for her party. My first crazy idea was a bookworm party. She just LOVES LOVES LOVES books. Every day, she goes to her little set of shelves and pulls down every book she owns and devours them (yes, literally, corners missing everywhere). Lately, she sits with them, turning the pages, and makes lots of gorgeous gobbledy-gook sounds. It's SO cute!



I thought we could get a 'Hungry Little Caterpillar' cake made out of cupcakes and all. But then I got a bit stuck when trying to work out whether she'd need a costume for a book party or not..., in the end, decided to shelve it for now... though I reserve the right to the idea next year!

Next thought was a rainbow party. This was Pauline's great idea, basically based around the fact that I had no idea, and we found that draping tablecloth material from the marquee looked gorgeous for Amelia's party, and that we could get disposable tablecloths in the 7 colours of the rainbow (don't you hate it when some books only show 6!?!) and -- voila! I like this idea actually, but Charlotte hasn't really ever seen a rainbow so I felt it had little relevance just yet.

So, what have I decided?? In the end, (and now I'm committed because I just wrote all the invites today!) I've gone for a 'Making Music' party. Cha cha just LOVES music and will jive along to any song that she hears. Decorations wise we'll just have lots of colourful things, but for the party favours I'm going to give out little percussion instruments - maracas, tambourines, castanets, even maybe wrist-chimes for the tiny babies! - and we'll put on some groovy kiddy music and they can sing, dance, shake along to it. I'm going to use the 'Freckles' Party from our range, just because it's got lots of nice funky colours.


Anyway, invites going out in this afternoon's post, so cross your fingers that I don't change my mind... again!!

Bec xx

Amelia's Party - Part II

So how did I go about entertaining 15 little fairy princesses?

I had some craft set up for children to do when they arrived. It was a picture of a fairy ready for them to colour, paste and glitter to create a magical masterpiece! We practically had to drag the little fairies away from the activity to start the next game. The girls were so engrossed that you could hear a pin drop! If only I knew what a success it would be, I would have just given the children lots of paper and other art materials and let them do their thing!

After craft, we played the much loved Pass the Parcel (or as Amelia calls it "Pass the Castle"). Instead of wrapping a present in each layer (which is the politically correct thing to do these days!) I placed 16 presents in a gift box with a lid. Each time the music stopped, the child would open the gift box and choose one of the gifts.

The little fairies then flew off to our front yard (the only part of our garden that has plants) and went on a lady bug hunt followed by bubble blowing. After lunch and cake, we squeezed in a home made game of pin the star on the fairy wand.