I've told you before that we take birthdays pretty seriously around here.
Not spending lots of wedge serious. Just spending lots of time and giving myself future arthritis serious.
Our recent four birthday for little O was no exception. He wanted a Gruffalo birthday party. I delivered.
The lounge room was turned into a deep dark wood, thanks to some cut price post Christmas sale Christmas trees and lots of green crepe paper.
The food was a lot of fun. We took some of the great suggestions from the book and turned them into edible delights. Gruffalo crumble, knobbly knees, scrambled snake, roasted fox, purple prickle juice, owl ice-cream. Lots of fun was had coming up with these ideas.
I also had to bust out my new cookie letter stamps. I bought these so I could write little notes on the cookies I send off to kindy and work with my lovelies but I couldn't resist giving them a work our with some of the sayings from the book.
I especially loved the Gruffalo crumble. They looked so cute peering out of their cups.
Craft was a Gruffalo mask, downloaded from the Gruffalo website.
Our party games included "pin the poisonous wart on the Gruffalo's nose" using a giant drawing of the Gruffalo that I knocked up. Doubled as decoration as well.
Once they got all hyped up on sugar it became necessary to calm down all the littlies so Nick did an impromptu reading of the book. Just what was needed to keep them still for a tiny bit of time.
What would a party be without goody bags? These ones included colouring pages from the Gruffalo website, little bags of chocolate chips labelled as "mouse droppings", balloons and Gruffalo badges that I knocked up.
The cake is always the best part of the whole day and this one was no exception. As usual I busted out a packet mix for the cake itself but I went to town handpainting the fondant icing in the style of the wood from the book. I also added figurines of each of the characters in the book, rocks, grass and some teeny tiny little toadstools. It was gorgeous.
But it didn't get eaten. Birthday cakes never do. All they have to do is look pretty.
O has already requested a pirate party for his fifth birthday party and a space party for his sixth. I will get straight on to planning them, just once I stop thinking about a second birthday party for E in six months time!!
