Ninja turtle party on a budget

Another pre Christmas post to catch up on!

Sam's birthday was in December and it was the day before James was due to head off to America so it was quite a quiet day, he had preschool all day too which I felt bad about but actually I think he loved being with his friends! We had presents opened on the bed before school and my mum popped over in the evening, he requested a picky tea and I'd made him a ninja turtle cake-his favourite character being Mikey!

 He seemed so grown up, he was super excited this year too, so proud to show off his bag with his badge on as he walked through his school gate. 

I felt bad but Sam's party was a little rushed in the planning, with James being away that week and little money it was hard knowing what to do and when to do it, in the end I had to do it when James was away, which wasn't ideal but it meant him having a party and not missing out!

He is mad on Ninja Turtles at the moment, in fact given half the chance I think he would sit there all day watching it! So the theme was easy, and I decided having a few of his friends here with my Mum's help would just about be manageable!

With my 2 included I think we had about 10 people, it was manic, especially the first half hour, but once everyone was there we sat them down at the table. 

I'd bought some green paper plates in Asda and cut some printables out to make some ninja turtle faces. I'd printed off ninja turtle colouring sheets too. I got the idea from this post on Mum's and Munchkins.

I'd also made a 'pin the mask on the ninja turtle' game for the children to play, with some only being 3 I think a few of them were a little scared to wear the blind fold to play!

After that we had all the ingredients prepared and ready to go to make some muffin pizzas, if you know ninja turtles you know pizzas are their favourite food!

These were really easy to do and were a big hit with the kids, the adults thought it was great to get the kids making the bulk of their lunch themselves too!

Simply cut muffins in half, spread with a little of tomato puree (or a mix of tomato puree and ketchup if preferred). 

Sprinkle on some grated cheese, along with any veggies, and hams and pop in the oven for about 10 minutes or so. 

Whilst I sorted food, we played pass the parcel-I always do a few extra layers just in case so it took up a fair amount of time ;)

After lunch and mini Mikey cup cakes we played some dancing games and gradually they left, and I collapsed for the afternoon whilst the boys played with the new toys, all in all the party was actually not too stressful and the kids all seemed to have fun which is the main thing. 

Alex's 7th birthday, Thor hammer cake

Firstly, happy new year to you all! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a great start tot he new year too. 

Secondly I have a couple of catch up posts to write before getting into the new year posts so here is the first!

Alex turned 7 in November, he still really wanted a party this year, so we managed to scrape some money together for a bowling party, he had a few friends from school as well as James' younger brothers and Sam. They all had a great time, and it's the first party I've ever done where all I have had to do is supply the cake and party bags...apart from the price I can see why so many people do this as there was so much less stress. 

I just didn't think I could face a party at home this year with not long getting over the morning sickness stage, so bowling was perfect, and I think that age group is a great age for it too, anything younger I think it may have been more of a challenge! 

I made a simple Smartie covered chocolate cake for the party and then a 'Thor hammer' cake for back at ours later with our families. 

This wasn't the best cake I have ever made but Alex was happy with it, so that is all that counts really! I made a chocolate sponge, but the hammer was made from rice crispie cakes, really easy if not a little messy. I let the marshmallow/rice crispie mixture cool slightly before moulding into shape. I greased my hands up with butter whilst doing this and loosely wrapped in cling film too. For the hammer handle I moulded it around a kebab skewer leaving enough to stick into the hammer head. I let this cool in the fridge for a while before icing it. 

Alex loved it, but it had a couple of crude comments from my brothers haha.  

Sam's 3rd birthday, and a Disney Cars and Planes cake

So last Wednesday my baby turned 3, and boy was he excited about it after desperately waiting after Alex's, mine and James' in recent weeks!!

Sam is a little character, every one thinks he is quiet, but he doesn't miss a trick and takes everything in! Once he gets to know you he will eventually talk, and he really can chat! He loves puzzles, cars and planes in particular, and can at times be a little lazy ;) he suddenly seems to have grown up a little, loosing his toddlerish ways, very good considering he will be starting preschool after Christmas (woop, woop)!

He is a HUGE lover of films, I will admit he often watches one a day when I need to get on my work orders, and it has become a little bit of a bad habit (oops). But he is a big lover or all things Disney and will happily sit through many of the pixar films in particular. His favourites being Cars and Planes, (although Toy Story, Wreck it Ralph and The Incredibles), and although it changed many times, he eventually settled on wanting a planes and cars cake-it was always going to be a chocolate one though!

I used the same chocolate cake recipe as Alex's Iron man cake, but I must admit I think I over cooked it slightly! I made one deep cake and then two smaller cakes and layered them up with some butter icing.

Then the fun/scary bit...decorating it!

He's asked for blue icing and that's what he got, it took me a while to do all the elements but it was really fun making the bottom half look a bit like radiator springs from Disney cars and then making the top half looking like the sky and using the planes shaped logo from the film cover.

I made some mini bunting for a finishing line using paper, cocktail sticks and a black pen, a little fiddly but it was needed I thought.  I cheated and used some of our mini figures as I didn't see the point in making icing ones!

We had a few of his little friends over for a party lunch, we didn't do games just had a play as in past experience, party games with 2 and 3 year olds is not a great deal of fun! Then in the evening we had family over for cake too.

He had a great day and loved all his gifts (mainly Planes themed surprisingly!) and is now looking forward to Christmas too!

Superhero party on a budget (games and ideas)

So last Friday my eldest baby turned 6, and yes I say this every year but where did that time go?

He has flown through his first year at school and now we are almost at the Christmas nativity (in which he is one of many shepherds)!

Alex has a thirst for information and since I bought an Usbourne Atlas book for him for Christmas he has loved Geography and also finding out which things are in which country which is really great and nice to see he wants to have knowledge of it all too.

Being a typical 6 year old boy he is also in to many typical boy things like lego and superheroes so there wasn't really much surprise when he asked for me to make an Iron man cake for his birthday-I did however persuade him that making the whole of iron man would be a bit tricky and that just his face would be a lot better ;) for my cake tutorial please check in this weekend...

With money being usually tight I knew we couldn't afford a 'proper' party this year as they are just so expensive, but luckily Alex just wanted a party at home, great I thought until we saw the list of people he wanted. The thought of 16 kids in the house with just myself, mum and James to control them was a little un-nerving but we got there!

It was chaos and they were hyper but we did have some vague plans and times at which to do it! Pinterest as always was invaluable! (Here's my board for the party for more ideas).

I had spent hours making lots of super hero masks using these templates. I think I made about 20 so they had a choice and to leave extras in case any went wrong or got lost. I used cereal boxes and then covered in coloured paper, this would be a lot quicker if you have thick coloured card (I just tried to make it as cheap as I could for myself using bits we already had)!

Alex's mask

I went onto Baker Ross to find they have some super hero stickers and tattoos, I also needed star stickers, sticky back gems and elastic for the masks, they also sold glow sticks which I needed for a game and for the party bags.

They came in and made their masks straight away-this actually didn't take as long as I had hoped it would ;)

As some were finishing up their masks they gradually all queued up to play pin the badge on batman. I'd just cut a large black piece of paper up in a rough batman shape and used yellow paper to make the badges and stuck double sided foam shapes on the back.

After that Alex wanted to play traditional games such as musical bumps and statues which they all really liked as most kids that age do.

Then we played the game 3 corners (usually 4 corners but it was in our lounge so had to cut one corner out due to space) I placed a super hero in each of the three corners, the music played and they danced in the middle, when it stopped they ran to one of the corners whilst I had 3 pictures of the super heroes behind my back and picked one-whoever is on that person are out and you just play on until there is one left.

Then I manically got some of the food sorted that couldn't be done until last minute whilst they played this game, which my husband said they loved. They sat down on the floor in a circle and I got a bunch of 6 green glow sticks taped together and we called it kryptonite (which kills superman if I am correct). Basically they pass this around to music like pass the parcel, but whoever landed with the kryptonite was out and instead of waiting around they came into the kitchen to get their food. This worked really well as meant there weren't 16 kids all around the table choosing their food at the exact same time. James said it was quite hard to get to a winner so the last two spilt the 6 green glow sticks to keep in their party bags.

As we had so many children and have so few chairs in our house we put out picnic rugs on our kitchen floor for them to eat on, surprisingly they really didn't make too much mess and they also had very healthy appetites, I am not sure the school fed them lunch that day!!

We did a typical party buffet of pizza, sausage and cheese rolls, sandwiches, cheese and pineapple, crisps, bread-sticks, cucumber and carrots. After their savouries we sang our happy birthday's and then moved onto dessert.

I'd made a traffic light jelly, and made plenty of cupcakes, I'd bought super hero toppers for them on eBay which Alex loved, I also put out some biscuits of party rings and chocolate fingers!

After the food we played a quick game with some t shirts and balloons, Alex and two others who he chose wore James' and my old tops and we had blown up plenty of balloon (really small) and the kids had to fill the tops up to make them look muscular like super heroes. This was a fun game but it did get rather hectic so would may be better with slightly fewer children!

I loved how Alex ended up looking

After that we had about 10/15 minutes to spare and we were reaching the end of our tether slightly as they were bouncing off the walls, James put his projector on in the playroom and they started watching The Incredibles until their parents arrived-they were sat down so quietly for this and it actually worked out really well for pick up time too as we just called them out with their parent was there.

Alex had a great party, and although hectic there were no problems and for the most part the kids did behave (James did however move his TV upstairs after it nearly being knocked a few times in the first few minutes!), I am hoping next year Alex will choose slightly less children though ;) As ever my mum who works in a nursery was the best of help too, don't know how I would do it without her help!

We had our family over literally straight after so I didn't get to sit down until late at night and then couldn't sleep until gone 2.30am, Sam delightfully woke me at 6.30 too...! The next few days we spent building and playing new Lego sets mainly as he was so lucky and had lots of new sets along with lots of other cool gifts too! I would say that's all the birthday's over for a while but it was mine yesterday, James' on the 3rd and Sam's on the 9th Dec!

A Lego themed party on a budget!

Now Alex, like many boys loves Lego! It was a no brainer that his party would involve a loosely Lego theme! We booked a hall and had around 20 5 year olds to entertain (thankfully with the help of Mum who is a nursery teacher-phew)!

Lego colouring
As with all parties you don't get everyone turn up at once so we had printed various colouring sheets for the children-these were all found online and there are plenty to choose room. We had a range of the Lego movie characters mainly.

Create a Lego Man
One evening I had a really great time cutting out 20+ Lego figures out of yellow card. I manage to fit 3 on one sheet of A4 to give you a rough size. I had ordered lots of stickers and googly eyes for the children to decorate them with and gave this as an option as well as the colouring. Some of them really came out well and my two are pleased there are plenty left for them to use when we draw and make now.

Lego brick game
This is a twist from a game my Mum plays with nursery children at her school. Have four coloured cards behind your back and 4 coloured blocks in each corner of the hall. I had decorated them to look like Lego bricks by covering boxes in wrapping paper and then super-gluing circles to the top of them (the things we do eh)! Basically when the music is playing the children dance and jump about and when it stops they have to run to corner. I am sure you can guess what is next...when the person holding the cards pulls one out the children on that colour are out. When you get down to 4 children or less they have to run to different coloured blocks rather than being on the same one. The kids really enjoyed this and we played it quite a few times!

Pin the piece of resistance on Emmet
It couldn't be a Lego party without Emmet involoved or of course a pin the...game! I actually drew this the morning of the party in a rush-the boys have since enjoyed colouring it in. I just cut out red paper 'pieces of resistance' and took blue tac with us. This is quite a good game to do whislt someone brings the food out!

Lego head cake
I simply baked egg sponge in a brownie tin I have which is square with rounded edges, and also a 2 egg sponge in a loaf tin. The square shape made the perfect Lego head shape, and I just cut the loaf cake into the right lengths for the top and bottom parts. I spread yellow icing all over (I used butter icing because I suck at rolled icing!) and then cut two circles for the eyes and cut a shape for the mouth out of black rolled icing.

Lego moulds
These were probably the only thing I really spent money on-Lego figure and Lego brick moulds that I bought on eBay. I melted chocolate into the brick moulds (I had tried using food colouring with white chocolate but it didn't work out) and left to set and then used fondant icing to make the coloured Lego figures-bit tricky to get out so if anyone has any tips on that I would be grateful! These would be great if you wanted to use for making your own crayons too.

Lego party cake cups
Now this year I just did not have the money to spend on plastic tat for party bags, neither the money to buy Lego stickers or anything remotely good to give so I decided the main part Alex usually gets excited about is the sweets anyway! So I filled up some normal plastic cups with some sweets and the Lego chocolate bricks and placed a cupcake on top which had yellow icing and a Lego icing man on top too. Wrapped and tied with cellophane and ribbon to make something simple look a bit nicer!

Hope these ideas will be helpful for you, apologies for some iffy photos I forgot to take proper ones on the day as was too busy preparing food and getting everything together!

Alex's Disney Cars themed party

Last Friday I had Alex's NCT friends over for a party at home, as we couldn't afford a party elsewhere/have a small home unfortunately we couldn't have preschool friends over too.

As the last few months in particular Alex has been mad on Disney Cars it was quite obvious the party would be loosely themed on this!

As usual I had a good look for ideas on Pinterest, obviously there were a few ideas that were a bit wasted on a child's birthday party in my opinion, but I selected the simple ones!

Alex's 4th birthday board

The cake

I knew I had to make some sort of lightening McQueen cake for Alex at his request! I didn't have a plan as such, I must admit I usually don't and wing it a bit when it comes to cakes. I knew I wanted to make it white and black like the chequered race flags, so did this on the bottom layers, next I will buy ready coloured icing though as it was a nightmare getting white icing black and getting it the right consistency! I was going to make the top layer light blue like some of the examples above, but the butter icing went odd when I added the food colouring for some reason, so out came the ready to roll icing again.

We have a Duplo Lightening McQueen so used this for the top of the cake as it was just the right size, I used two skewers and created paper chequered flags (these were very rushed and last minute so not as neat as I would have liked!) and then wrote 'Ka-chow Alex is 4'. The cake was a big hit with Alex and it actually tasted so much better than it looked! We had this cake on the Wednesday Alex actually turned 4 but still had half the cake left.

The decorations

I got red, white and black balloons, bunched into 3 and dotted around the lounge. 

I also made some chequered flag bunting to hang from the window. I used white card and cut out black squares to stick on, punched holes and threaded on some ribbon-much cheaper than buying some and only took half an hour.

The Party

Pin the tow hook on Mater

I drew out a large mater first in pencil then went over with a sharpie. Cut out some hook shapes and wrote names on them in preparation for the party, along with a dab of blue tack on the back.

Musical bumps, statues, and pass the parcel

For all of these games I had got some music from the cars films to play and also other various Disney films to play throughout the party too. 

Traffic light play dough

For some of the party games I gave out some prizes of some hand made play dough, I coloured it in red, yellow (as I didn't orange) and green, rolled into balls, put on a skewer, placed on black card and put into a clear cellophane bag to present.

Excuse Alex's fingers!

The food

Rocky Road

I took this name quite literally, melt some chocolate and butter, add crushed biscuits, marshmallows and raisins, cover with more melted chocolate. I then added marshmallows which were cut into strips to make road lines, cool and chop up. 

Traffic light cupcakes

Simply bought cupcakes with icing and red, orange and green Smarties on top.

Spare tyres

Chocolate mini doughnuts.

I could've done more themed food but thought it was a little wasted on doing that for 4 year olds, some ideas were fruit cups for Fillimore's organic fuel, oil dipsticks (bread sticks and veggie sticks), Sally's cosy cones (orange coated ice cream cones filled with goodies), there are plenty of other ideas on Pinterest!

Anyway everyone seemed to have a good time, the party picnic went down well and not as messy as I'd expected!

  

How to make a 25th Wedding Anniversary fruit cake: The recipe

The cake was a massive success at my parent's 25th Wedding Anniversary party, I had lots of of "wow you made that, I thought it was bought" comments which really made all the hard work worth it.

The cake itself was a fruit cake, I have made a fruit cake the last couple of years at Christmas and although last years one was really tasty it wasn't a traditional fruit cake in my eyes. Eventually I decided to try Nigella's  traditional recipe from her 'Nigella Christmas' book, however I changed some of the bits around to suit peoples taste so here is my version.

I used a 25cm round cake tin, so was a huge cake! (There was about half left at the end of the party).

1kg          Raisins
650g        Dried fruit of your choice (I used cranberries, apricots, and a bag of mix dried fruit)
600ml      Sherry (bourbon or brandy)
450g        Butter
275g        Dark brown sugar
3 tsp        Lemon zest (grated)
6              Large eggs
3 tbsp      Black treacle (or molasses)
1 1/2 tsp  Almond essence
450g        Plain flour
225g        Ground almonds
3/4 tsp     Ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp  Ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp     Ground ginger



1. Place all the dried fruit in a saucepan, add the alcohol and bring to the boil. Take off the heat, covering once cooled and let it steep over night.

2. The next day preheat the oven to 150C/gas mark 2 and prepare your tin. *

3. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the lemon zest.

4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating with each addition, then beat in the black treacle and almond extract.

5. Sift the dry ingredients together, and mix the soaked fruit alternatively with the dry ingredients, into the creamed mixture.

6. Put the cake mix into the prepared tin, and bake. Reduce to 140C/gas mark 1 after an hour. Cooking time 3 3/4- 4 1/4 hours or until a skewer or cake tester comes out cleanish.

7. Once the cake is cooked, brush with a couple of tablespoons of your chosen alcohol again, wrap immediately in it's tin using a double thickness of foil-this traps the heat and form steam which helps keep the cake soft on top.

8. When completely cool remove the cake from the tin re-wrap in foil, storing in an airtight container for at least 3 weeks to improve the flavour. If you are making the cake to keep for longer wrap it in a double layer of greaseproof paper and then foil. Add some more alcohol every few weeks to feed the cake keeping it moist.


* To prepare for a fruit cake you will need greaseproof paper or baking parchment. Line the bottom of the tin with 2 layers of the paper, then cut two long strips to double line the sides of the tin, making sure that the paper comes about 10cm above the top of the tin. To make these strips sit better in the tin cut small slits at 2cm intervals along the bottom to make a frill to help hold it in place. Make sure that you use butter to help stick the paper to the tin and also to each layer. When making a large fruit cake it is also best to double wrap the tin with brown paper also coming up about 10cm higher than the top of the tin.

Let's party! A 25th Wedding celebration (as well as 21st and 18th birthday's)

So Saturday 31st was finally party day-a day I had been loosely planning for a few months.

This party was more than a a 25th Anniversary party for my parents (and partly my brother's 21st and 18th birthday's), I wanted to do something positive for them after a really crap few years, and also as they do so much to help with the boys too.

As much work as it was it was really lovely to do something for them for a change.

I couldn't have done it all without the help of extended family-we all chipped in a bought food with us, we kept it simple with just finger foods.

A finger food I made which I'd not done before went down well was loosely based on this pin, I used olives, feta, and thin slices of chorizo.

party food

Something I had been working on for a long time was a photobook as a present from me and my brothers. Whilst they were away for their actual anniversary I sneaked up into their loft and got all the photo albums from 1988-2013 collecting ones that were still around the house too. I also had albums up to about 1997 from my Nana too. I painstakingly spent days scanning in the photos I wanted, editing any that I needed to, sorting them into year groups etc. Finally I had them all sorted when I had problems with my laptop (typical) so had to get James to set up an old PC on the coffee table- cue a numb bum whilst making the actual photobook.

I used Photobox, I've not made a photobook so don't have anything to compare to but I am pleased with their software as it was very easy to use, I am also pleased with the final project too, there are just a couple of pages I want to query them on as they look like they have been printed a bit orange (oompa lumpas- spelling)?! In my haste to get it finished before they got back from holiday I stupidly made a monumental mistake-I entered the wrong year in the date on the spine and also on their wedding page-DOH! But my parents found it funny-I was in tears the day before the party though when I'd realised!! Everyone commented on how lovely the book was though, many saying it's a lifetime of memories, and how well I'd done getting it done with the boys about! And my parents really loved it which is the main thing. 

The other BIG thing I'd been working on was a huge traditional fruit cake which was 23cm, I'd made it about a month ago and marzipanned and iced it in the last week. A few people thought I'd bought the cake which was a great compliment as it's the first proper fruitcake I have made for a public appearance so to speak rather than my personal Christmas cake! 

Sorry I didn't get around to a really good photo so hoping my family have one I can pinch!

There were about 50 of us over all, family, extended family and family friends, some of which we haven't seen for many, many years. My Dad's best man and the bridesmaids all managed to come which made it extra special! It was lovely to have everyone together for a happy occasion, and actually apart from the stress of getting the cake there in one piece it was quite a stress free time surprisingly! There was me worried about food and we had loads left-typical-but it made good picky food the next few days!

All the immediate family-small as don't want to put a large photo up of everyone :)

Party panic

Well it's safe to say that I am starting to get into a panic about my parent's 25th wedding anniversary party. It seems to be suddenly coming around faster than I'd like!

The photo book as been ordered after hours and days of scanning old photos, sorting digital ones, asking sly questions to my mum about when they did 'such and such' to try and organise their digital ones with the wrong dates! I just hope it comes it time now as it apparently takes longer than it advertises!

I've made the huge fruit cake which weighs a tonne but actually looks really good so hope it tastes as nice as it looks and smells. I have a few ideas of how to decorate it, but just need to stick with one idea rather than fluttering between them. I think I will be watching many beginners 'how to' videos in the next couple of weeks!

I quite like this one, although mine is only one tier and my flower cutter I order I am sure is larger than I was supposed to get-oops!

http://pinterest.com/pin/410531322253378557/

I have all the silver plates, bought some silver sugared almonds-I just had no idea so few shops stock anything for 25th anniversaries, or just normal anniversaries for that matter.

I want to print some A3 posters for the hall from my parent's wedding day-however not on photo paper so need to source somewhere I can do that ASAP, if you know of anywhere do let me know :)

With two weeks to go the numbers keep on growing, it's turned from a small family gathering to 50+ people, my idea of having a full on buffet got vetoed so we are just doing finger food which is leaving me to panic now as it means we need a LOT of finger food, I thought having salads etc would bulk people up a bit more but hey ho.

Must admit as much as I am looking forward to the party I cannot wait for it to be over in some ways! As much as my family are helping I am getting a tad fed up of calls late at asking what table cloths to buy etc hehe.

So any good finger food ideas would be gratefully received, we have sandwiches, sausage rolls, Indian selections, nibbles, dips, pizza, cheese boards etc, but I can't help but think most of that is 'brown food' so anything veggie that you have tried and tested?

I just need my brothers to help me out a bit more too I think-give them a kick up the bum to do so!

Son's 2nd Birthday: How to make a digger cake

Am I mad, we have a small house and I had 17 people including ourselves to feed and entertain for our son's second birthday! My little boy is mad about diggers, and I love to make birthday cakes myself rather than buy them from shops. Saves a bit of cash and I think they taste nicer! I had looked at photos of digger cakes for ideas and was shocked to find all these 3D masterpieces so had to find something a lot simpler, because I knew the cake would be on the floor the night before my son's birthday if I even attempted to try and make a 3d cake!

Building site cake
Anyway this is what I came up with, 2 rectangle tins each with a 4 egg sponge mix in, cooked & cooled. Then iced with a melted dark chocolate butter icing between the two layers and all over the outside sponge. I scooped out 1/2 a layer of sponge in the centre of the cake, placed a toy digger next to the hole and placed some of the spare sponge in the bucket of the digger. With a toy dumper truck I ran the wheels over the icing and then mixed the rest of the spare sponge with some butter icing so it looked a bit like mud and placed into the dumper truck.

I then decorated the cake with some chocolate covered honeycomb pieces to look like boulders, and used chocolate fingers to create a wall in one corner of the cake,placing them so they overlapped and using icing to 'cement' them down.

I had some ready roll icing left over from another cake and coloured this yellow, rolled, and cut into a wavy line, wrote with some tube icing and lightly placed onto the cake. In hindsight it would have been easier to write on the icing after it was placed onto the cake though!

The cake was a great success with my son (the diggers didn't stay on the cake for long after blowing out the candles) and we had plenty left over even though some had seconds at the party! I always try and make my cakes slightly larger than I need so I have some leftover ;)

The diggers came in a pack of 4 from a bargain store, didn't use all of them although could have, so my son got an extra present as well as a big cake!