The Boy's Birthday
My darling precious bundle of happiness turned two years old at 9.35 this morning. We've had a super day celebrating his birthday. I'm absolutely shattered after all the preparation, anxiety and entertaining so will share these photos as a record of his 2nd birthday.
Presents for Breakfast
The Birthday Cake
Party Food
Sunday 12th June 2011 – 'Birthday Boy' (163/365)
Sunday 12th June 2011
Saturday 11th June 2011 – 'Party Practise' (162/365)
ShowOff ShowCase: The One About Birthdays
I like a good old birthday celebration. For my 21st my family and I went to London, for hubby's 30th I took him to Edinburgh for a surprise weekend away, on my 30th we stayed in a swish local hotel and then had a big garden party back at our house. I love it all; from the beginning stages of choosing the theme to making sure the balloons hang just so, and everyone getting their allocated party bag. Until The Boy was born, we had a little bit of a lull in reasons for a celebration. My son's first birthday was the perfect excuse to go overboard and plan a fabulous little birthday party for him.
It's The Boy's 2nd birthday tomorrow and so I am in full party-planning mode! Bring on the cast-iron cake tin, roll out the vibrant plastic 'crockery' and puff up your lungs in preparation for the balloons; he's going to be celebrating in style.
Therefore the theme for this weekend's ShowOff ShowCase is birthdays. I'd like you to dig out a post that you have on celebrating getting older; you, your children, your parents, when you were a teenager, a 'special' birthday, a magical party that you've been to, a dodgy party that you've been to!
Link up below and please add the badge using the html to your post so we can hop around and read all the other little birthday tales!
Friday 10th June 2011 – 'Cars!' (161/365)
This is the cake-mould for The Boy's birthday cake. I am apprehensive to say the least! Need to practise it tonight…
I am beginning to panic.
Why am I panicking? "You are normally a beacon for tranquility" I hear you all chorus (not quite loudly enough, especially those of you at the back)
In just over two weeks it will be The Boy's birthday. This is a time to celebrate and be happy; plan a party and have a great time spoiling my little cherub. So why am I panicking?
Because I haven't done a thing towards his party yet at all! Or so it feels like it. Last year, I'd been preparing this moment for months and months. I'd been making Very Hungry Caterpillar bunting to hang around the garden. I'd bought all the tableware. I'd weeded, or rather had cajooled husband and, on one occasion, my mother into weeding (my pelvis was still dodgy from the SPD). The patio furniture had been sanded down and everything looked stunning.
However, this time I'm having issues. Hubby is useless at weeding and I still can't physically manage it. I don't need to make bunting because I have 50 metres of the stuff from last year. I can't find any tableware to go with my theme of 'cars'. That's 'cars' with a lowercase 'c' not 'Cars' as in the Disney film because I don't want that. I want 'cars'. And here's the other problem: even if I could find tableware for the party, I don't have a table to put the stuff on since I made hubby bin the main component of our patio furniture set. Oh don't worry, the benches and chairs are going to follow in the next few days.
Why am I doing this so close to The Boy's birthday? Well the wasps are eating it. Or nesting in it. Or something. Whatever they're doing to it, it's covered in the damn things. And after nine years, I really do feel that I deserve some new patio furniture. Aside from the wasps molesting the wood, it's also had several winters of being left out uncovered and so has warped and is now splintering. Not safe, not comfortable and more importantly not attractive in my perfectly south-facing beautiful paradise.
So now, this weekend I need to find a new garden furniture set.
Which is just as well because Tesco Direct have a whole load of them on offer this forthcoming Bank Holiday weekend! Hooray for the place where every little helps!
—
This is an editorial post for which I was sponsored. The links were put in on behalf of Tesco Direct, but the rambling content is mine; they can get their own.
And I really do need new furniture because the wasps are eating it, why would I make that up?
Let them eat cake!
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
