My eldest turns Twelve - Brooke's Birthday Celebration

Hope you had a great day/night/morning Brooke! Brooke had a couple of her good friends over and then after dinner in the evening, the boys went home and the girls stayed for sleepover and cooked breakfast. I asked Brooke to do out a 'party plan' request list and most of her requests were met, in terms of party food, dinner (home made burgers, salads etc).

one of the birds did catch on fire shhh - roast pheasant anyone?! - and was quickly dunked in a cup of water.

Where I set up the table inside looked great with the white behind, but with the light coming in from the window behind it wasn't the best for photos. So the blues are actually a little lighter than they show here and I'm mildly annoyed I couldn't get a good pic! I also should have hung the pom poms lower (where I initially had them and the banner) but wanted to be able to fit the kids in there for a photo... apparently they're not that tall!

Anyway, regardless Brooke was pleased with it all, the colour (her favourite) and had a good time with her mates and that is what counts.

the banner is a very simple very 'rustic' one I put together with some simple triangles and printed out letters. The ribbon is the same as used to suspend the 'pom poms', that I already had in the 'wrapping etc' box.

getting ready...

tried to lighten the pic but lost some colour depth along the way
bit by bit, following the casual plan

Cake. Very simple. White top layer, strawberry bottom layer, white vanilla frosting and hand made toppers. I just chose an image from a quick google as the sillhouette for the birds and the flag is from Fog and Thistle free download. They go from 1-9 so I just printed out a little '12' and cut and pasted.


The retro blue striped straws must have had a very magic wand waved over them as I ordered them on the Wed afternoon and they arrived platinum express from Sydney on Thursday morning while I was still making porridge for breakfast! I've never had anything arrive that quick from over east before! Thankyou guys at the Party Parlour! I was also stocking up on some baking cups so it all worked out quite well.

The Party thankyous were simple cups from IKEA with contents as requested by the Birthday Girl, in cello bags and with the same Cupcake toppers cut out as squares, and a 'thankyou' cut out and pasted over the top. I figure if the kids don't want to use the cups as drinking cups they can use them on their desks for pencils etc

The 'poms poms' were going to be around $13 odd each online so I checked out the Martha Stewart site and sure enough... instructions. I did make one big one initially and that took one full pack of tissue paper. The next two I cut the laid out tissue paper from one full pack in half and made two smaller ones. For two smaller ones it was $1 each for the tissue paper ($2 for one pack, making two per pack) and maybe 10c for the florists wire per pom pom. Quite an economical decoration which could be used again, or hang in Brooke's room as is.


At one stage Brooke planned to become an ornothologist and is still very much into birds. So above we did different bird biscuits using the following cutters: goose, hummingbird, cardinal, dove and sea gull. Also there was a bowl of tiny dove biscuits. They were a standard gingerbread recipe with a little less ginger and more mixed spice.

Cupcake toppers are the Anna and Blue Paperie ones, another free download.

Here's four of them having a ball with 'The Chocolate Game' - at least one other guest is actually eating the chocolate and waiting for some one to hopefully not roll a six!

Happy Birthday Brooke! xo