Minion Party

So i was recently talking to a lady who was wanting to have a minion themed party for her 3 year old son but was finding it hard to find decorations that were not going to cost an arm and a leg to ship over from overseas so i suggested making some by printing off the minion eyes and mouths and sticking them on yellow plates , cups , balloons ect

She loved it and i made her up a template for her to get printed and with minions being so popular i thought i would share the idea , if you would like a template please comment below

You could also get them printed as stickers to make it easier to assemble 

Ice Cream cake

A few years ago , for my neices  16th birthday she wanted an ice cream cake so off to the shops we all went .
When we got it home an got it out of te container we noticed that all it was , was a tub of ice cream with some candles and cake frills !!

So for my partners birthday i wanted to try to make ( what i would call ) a proper ice cream cake .

I started by making two marbled white and red vanilla cakes , i then lined my cake tin with baking paper and put one of the cakes on the bottom , i then smoothed some ice cream over it to make a decent layer , followed by another cake , i then covered it with a large lid and popped it in the freezer .

Once i was happy that the ice cream would be solid again ( got a bit sloppy with smoothing it on the cakes ) i made some raspberry buttercream icing by using the raspberry syrup from the tinned raspberries .
I took the cake out of the tine ( by running a knife around it and then tipping it upside down )
I lathered the icing on the top and sides ,adding chocolate fingers around the outside .
On the top i added the tinned raspberries and grated some white chocolate
I then put it back in the freezer to keep it all together

After lunch i brought it out , my partner was amazed as were our girls

It was a triumph , very sweet though so means we are only having very small pieces :)
I also made white chocolate and raspberry love heart chocs a whole raspberry coated in white chocolate mmm yumm

Rainbow 1st birthday

Birthdays ..... A time to celebrate ..... a bit of battering for your bank account !!
For our daughter's first birthday last year we were at a loss at what to to , we wanted to give our girl the best birthday , but we had to do it on a budget .
So in this wee blog ill show you how our girl had the best day without having to spend a fortune !!
Planning ahead 
Plan months in advance for some people this may seem obscured but for those on a budget it makes perfect sense !! Every payday i would buy something we needed for the party for example packs of balloons or a food item that  i could store away such as icing sugar . I put them all into a plastic storage container so that we could keep them all together . I also wrote a list of things we needed and things i wanted to make and ticked things off once i had them ( how good does it feel ticking off a list !! )
Invites
I whipped up some invites on photoshop and then printed them off at a photo kiosk costing 12c per print , once they were printed i attached some thin colored card on the back so i could add details and personalize who it was for

Theme

I wanted a theme that i didnt think my daughter would want to do when she was older so i choose Rainbow . Which turned out to be so much fun , i mean you cant help but feel happy with all that color.

I had just discovered Pinterest so i made a board with rainbow ideas ( more planning i know ) Pinterest planning

The cake

Cakes can end up costing so much money so i decided to make my own . I made a rainbow cake with a buttercream icing and hundereds and thousands plus mini m&ms to decorate . It didnt look flash but it tasted amazing and even now almost a year later people are still talking about how good it was !! 

To make the cake 

-Use your best rising cake recipe ( a good sloppy mixture is best )

-Divide your mixure into bowls for example if you want 5 colors in your cake you will need to divide your cake mix into 5 bowls

-Once in the bowl color with food coloring until you get the color you disire ( gel food coloring seems to work best )

-Next add one of your colored mixes  to a well greased tin , then add another color directly on top of the color you have in the tin already , repeat with all remaining colors ,you will see it begin to spead out 

Next thow in the oven and follow your cake recipes cooking instructions and hey presto amaizng cake :)

Decorations

For decorating , i used lots of balloons and streamers , i also used a rainbow snake light around out fire flute ( which ended up looking great as the day outside was gloomy ) , i also made some rainbow fish out of cardboard and painted them , as well as painting a banner and a rainbow saying 

birthday banner i painted i ran out of blue paint if you cant tell :P

so colorful !!!

The rainbow snake light and rainbow quote wall

Toys

I hired a bouncy caterpillar , activity table and a squealing monkey out of our local toy library . We then also had set up to ball tents , a tunnel , a walking frame toy and a Tefal kitchen ( presents she received )

The wee kitchen

Playing in her new ball tent after waking up to find the lounge  was a wonderland

Food 

Even though i didn't think we needed much food , we would hate to under cater so we had , 

-cocktail sausages 

-Piñata cookies 

-Potato salad

-egg club sandwiches 

-Rainbow cupcakes 

- hundred and thousand biscuits 

-fruit suers

-lollies 

-savories ( mini meat pies)

-fairy bread

-fruit salad

rainbow cookie dough

piñata cookies ( quite hard almost gave up but would make them again :) ) to make them go to this link pinata cookies

some of the food 

The birthday girl enjoying the food 

We then had all this yummy food to eat days after the party with the savories being the biggest hit 

Venue

We held it at our house and we didnt have the money to hire a venue and we were only inviting a few people mostly family 

The day before we held the party my mum came up to help me ( as i was due in 2 weeks with my 2nd baby !! ) we set up as much decorations as we could and got as much of the food prep done as we could 

The day of the party it was a bit manic but we got it all done and the birthday girl was still having her nap when the guests started to arrive so she was very suprised when she woke up .

Overall she had an amazing day and was sooo happy which made us so happy to know that we could give her such a great day without having to spend too much money .

Im no in the process of organising her sisters 1st birthday and this year for her 2nd birthday we are just going to have a low key lunch as her sisters party will only be 2 weeks later :)