I'm a little bit OCD. Mainly in my work environment, but it does spill into my real life. So when I take on a 'project', if I'm going to do it, I will do it properly. The reason I give this background information is because when a friend suggested a theme for The Boy's 1st birthday, I may have gone a little over the top with it.
It didn't help that The Very Hungry Caterpillar was everywhere last year. When I say "it didn't help", I mean it did because it made finding everything for the party so much easier, but it didn't because it then meant that I had to have the party bags, badges, table-cloth, napkins and balloons. I would like to add that my mother bought all of those things that I've just mentioned. I had said no because of cost. She also bought the party hats and dishes. I love her, I knew I got my OCD from her really!
For months before, my crimping scissors and sewing machine were on over-drive, making bunting for the party. The garden was festooned with 50 metres of Very Hungry Caterpillar bunting strung from the trees and pergola. Birthday parties in the summer months are easy; throw a load of toys in the garden and have the party food on blankets for an instant picnic! The food, while I mention it, was of course straight out of the pages of the Eric Carle classic; watermelon, chocolate cake, gherkins (ok it was cucumber but who the hell likes gherkins anyway? They're the first things to come out of hamburgers!), swiss cheese, cocktail sausages, salami, the whole lot! The table looked really enticing.
And so to the centrepiece: the birthday cake.
I spent hours trawling the Internet to find a good idea, and stumbled upon a fabulous one designed by a cupcake company in Vancouver. Shipping, I could foresee, was going to be a problem which meant of course, that I had to make it myself. I scoured the cookbooks for a healthier option to a buttercream topping. What's the point in carefully monitoring your baby's diet, and introducing foods at an appropriate age to aid the development of their digestive system, if on their first birthday you chuck a load of sugar at them? So we had mascarpone & icing sugar topping (straight from Delia's bible). It was scrummy! I adore tiramisu so loved it. Everyone wolfed it down, and I only found one discarded topping, not bad for 15 babies and parents!
Imagine my dismay today when sat in the staffroom, two 'friends' (who have babies two months older or younger than The Boy) decided to completely rip the p*ss out of the fairy cakes I made for him. And I mean, absolutely ridicule! Infront of the other members of staff, some of whom had also been invited to, what I considered his really special celebration. I half-heartedly laughed along with it and over-exaggerated my outrage to hide my rapidly-sinking heart. I asked one of them afterwards if it was really that bad, and she looked shocked. Admittedly at the time, she did say 'Jesus Christ, where's the sugar?' , but when I confronted her today, she was mortified! Maybe she should have considered that before criticising my child's first birthday party?
Next time, I'm going to do a reverse Marie-Antoinette: they can eat stale bread and like it!
That's if I even invite them!
Linked to ShowOff ShowCase: The One About Birthdays
The vast majority of John Cusack films are brilliant. I won't mention that daft 'Being John Malkovich' one. Some he's kinda sold-out on, everyone has to pay the mortgage, but GPB is classic Mr. Cusack. I debated High Fidelity, but prefer this one. It's funny, romantic, clever, stupid and, quite frankly, kick-arse. I can even tolerate the Driver woman in it.
As far as I am concerned this is my favourite Brat-pack film because it doesn't have the predictable members in it. The story of five teenagers in detention on a Saturday morning is so relatable (not that I ever had a detention, I was a good girl). All different, yet all the same underneath; the cool guy (phwoargh by the way), the geek, the jock, the pretty girl and the emo. A voyage of discovery and clubbing together to overcome the evil teacher who enjoys ridiculing them each in turn. Ally Sheedy is genius in this film.
However, in the past six months he has become obsessed with them! Some days are toy days and others are book days, when all he will want to do all day long is 'read' every book that he owns. It always amazes me how much children learn from books, even at this tender age; he's never seen a tiger but he knows what one looks like. We're working on colours and shapes at the moment, so when the lovely people at 
'Something Beginning with Blue' is a delightful and beautifully illustrated book based on all the different colours of the rainbow. It takes the 'I spy' theme and transfers it to the colours of an object; e.g. 'I spy with my little eye, something beginning with… blue!'. It then lists a couple of things that it isn't and gives factual clues as to what it might be. On the opposite page to the text is a picture of a child with peep-holes for the eyes. When you look through, you can get a growing picture of what the item might be.
The tracks that appeal to me most from their greatest hits album (purchased in France on a school exchange when I was trying to impress my host's snotty male friend) are the aforementioned finger-tapping 'Happy Hour' and of course the classic 'Caravan of Love'.
