Will's Birthday Party

Here are some photos from Will's Safari Birthday party yesterday. We all had a great time and the weather held out for the 50 odd people we had for the party. William had a great time crawling around and getting into everything!


Two tiered Carrot cake with cream cheese and fondant icing.

African sign post at our front door.

Binoculars for each of the children on the entrance hall table.
The kids had a great time looking through their binoculars.

Happy Birthday Screensaver for the TV which I made to match the invitations.

Jungle streamers over the open french doors. I also had animal noises of Elephant, hippo, lion and gorilla playing over my ipod dock in the lounge room as people came in.
Some of the children came up to me a bit concerned saying they could hear a lion! So cute!

'Will's 1st Year' wall of photos.

Safari themed bunting I made on the sewing machine to decorate the deck.
We also had safari animal stickers on the posts.
Party packs for each of the children with Tiny Teddies, lollies, bubbles and animals.

Personalised chocolate bars made by Louise from Illume Design were a big hit!

Will having fun before the party guests arrived in his Safari Tour jeep.

All the children playing Pass the Parcel to African Children's music.

My happy bubba enjoy the fun.

Cutting of the cake

After the party, Will chilled out with his friends... Aleksandar (Louise's gorgeous little boy) and Will's 'fiance' Isabella.

It was such a great day and I think everyone enjoyed themselves but particularly William who didn't want to have a midday sleep because of all the fun to be had.

We are off to the Aquarium this afternoon as our little family birthday outing which should be fun. Have a great ANZAC day long weekend.

My crash course in cake decorating

Here is the cake so far. My friend Oli is making two carrot cakes and tomorrow she is coming over and we are icing the two layers and putting them together and decorating the cake in the safari theme. Here are the little icing figures I've made so far. I have also made lots of leaves big and small like the ones in the bottom photo.

I've never done cake decorating before but it's really quite easy. You have these thick icing colourings which you mix into the white icing and then it's just like playdough!

It's been fun making the little icing characters. We've got a lot to get through tomorrow though... Mum and Dad are coming over to look after Will while Oli and I finish the cake.

Anway, back to it, I think I'll make a Rhino now :)
Have a great evening everyone.

Will's 1st Birthday party plans...

So I've been waiting my whole life for this.... my first child's birthday party!!!! YAY!
And we've decided to do a 'Going on Safari' theme. Because it ties into his room theme, and because we have so much Sth African stuff we can use.

Here is the party invitation I made, doesn't Will look so grown up in the photo!


My friend Oli has been doing cake decorating courses and has kindly offered to make the cake! She will come over the day before the party and we will mould the little animals together. This is a pic of one of the cakes she saw on the Internet which we will try and copy.


Here are some of the supplies I have stocked up already!

Toilet rolls you ask? Well I'm going to make binoculars out of them for the kids to spy all the animals which will be 'roaming' in our backyard.

The plastic animals will go on top of cupcakes which will be on my three tiered cup cake stand. And there will be lots of green jungle streamers hanging everywhere.

Here are the other ideas:

• Cardboard arrows pointing different directions, saying 2000miles to Zimbabwe etc on front door post
• Zebra table cloth
• Brown and green crape paper vines with leaves
• Green balloons
• Green Plates
• Animal noises to play on ipod as you enter the party
• Photo booth
• Snakes and other jelly animals in blue jelly
• Dress Safari (shorts, khaki, beige colours)
• Do a braii & have Sth African snacks
• Make animal crossing signs and Elephants next 2km etc
• Hippo in blue pool
• Animal prints drawn on driveway
• Pic of Will & Happy Birthday on TV screen saver
• Green streamers hanging from french doors
• Sth African table cloth on round table and drinks table
• Borrow little kids cars and write 'Safari Tour' on cardboard box stuck to roof.
• Giraffe around the palm tree
• Blow up crocodile in fish pond
• Make Binoculars out of toilet rolls and stuck together with black electrical tape and black plastic ribbon for around neck
• Green jungle cake with animals, grass and water.
• THE CAVE!!! tape boxes together and cut doorways to each box inside. Inside hang crape paper and glow sticks from the top of the boxes to give a spooky effect, stick tree branches on top of the boxes, and something to cover the entrance to the cave.

I would love to do a lolly bar with green and chocolate coloured lollies in beautiful glass jars but a) I know my friends would kill me when their kids stuff themselves full of sweets and go crazy b) glass jars for kids parties = emergency room visits.

So that's the plan. Lets see if I can find the time and energy to pull off all these ideas but I know I'm going to have heaps of fun organising. The average age of the children at the party will be about 4yo so I think they will have a great time with those activities and the Dad's will have fun chatting around the Braii (Sth African for BBQ).

What do you think? Do you have any more ideas for me?



P.S. Thank you so much for all your comments and feed back about my 'canvas BUS SCROLLS' little business.
And an update on Will - I took him to the doctor yesterday and the poor bubby has Croup :(
He has a miserable cough which hurts him and sounds awful and is so tired and grumpy (as you would feel) so hopefully with the medication the doc has given me he will start improving soon.