Happily Ranting

Vintage tea

More cooking and entertaining has abounded, this time for the wonderful Fay and her then Bump, now beautiful bouncing boy.   As Fay exudes class we went for a vintage tea with doilys galore - even adorning chocolate cakes in the icing. 

As a hater of chocolate cake, the enjoyment was all in the making - but apparently it was yummy, so all is good.   In a more food related fail, my doily biscuits weren’t quite the master piece of their pinterest residing cousins! 

and my tarts define the word ‘rustic’!

The star of the show was definitely this amazing carrot and courgette tart made by one of my friends - she claimed it was easy to do!  I think I lack the grace or the patience.

Every guest was given their own tea cup for the event (handmade by an amazing artist friend) and got to take it home as a souvenir of the day.

It was a great day, and all the guests had a go at decorating a baby grow for the bump to be with wonderful array of fabrics and stencils.

It was wonderful seeing the varied and creative results.

All in all a fab afternoon.

One fish, Ivy’s two fish. Seuss Birthday

Eek, can you believe my baby is two - so I guess no longer a baby then! We had great fun celebrating a Seusstastic day.

I had so much fun creating lots of Seuss inspired treats for the tea - because lets be honest - we really do it for bragging rights and fun of creating!

We decorated the table with lots of Seuss pictures (from a calendar) and books that the food was inspired from.

The cupcakes were inspired by Thing 2 (seemed appropriate) and were vanilla butter cream and blue candy-floss topped.

I made cat in the hat pizzas, pepperoni or tomato

and three cheese trees

There was humous and veg pockets

and of course green eggs and ham!

I made the eggs green using home-made rocket pesto - and I must say they were my favourite taste on the table. I made two Pasta dishes - one a mac and cheese called ‘poodles eating cheesy noodles’ (from fox in socks) and I made it using curly tube pasta, and my personal favourite of ‘seuss’ links, a Cindy-Lou bow tomato pasta, (from the grinch) which I made using farfalle pasta (bow-tie pasta), which made me giggle if no one else. We had hop on Pop(corn) and Truffula tree fruit and jelly.

Cinnamon rolls were the hardest thing to seussify - but a must at any of Ivy’s birthday spreads as she was born on world cinnamon roll day. Cinnamon rolls have an important place in our family - but will probably talk about that another day! But I landed on them looking like thinks and went from there.

For me the triumph of the day was her birthday cake.

Inspired by Oh the places you’ll go - which I think is an amazing book that every child should have read to them, and then read themselves as they grow older. If Ivy’s face is anything to go by, she loved it!

Deadly 60 party.

When we asked our foster son how he wanted to celebrate his 7th birthday told us he wanted a deadly 60 party.  Deadly 60 is a BBC children’s program all about animals.  I think I was as excited as him with all the fun planning and making I got to do.

First the food

With lots of help from my friends we managed to create an ‘animal’ spread!

Amazing ‘snake 7s’ biscuits by the ever talented Sam

Shark infested fruit jelly.

Martha Stewart inspired animal cupcakes

and a personal fave as it was so easy, yet effective tiger pizza!

all topped off with a 3d snake birthday cake!

So to the activities.  As the children asked to add their print to the birthday boys guest tree!

They were each then given an empty bag (their ‘party bag’) which they filled as the party went on.   We organised several  activity tables which the children spent the first half of the party milling around and having a go at as they wished.  I roped in my friends to host the tables.

Animal bean bags.

Hawk fliers (gloried paper airplanes which the birthday boy was obsessed with at the time)

Bat masks

spider biscuits

and hangers for doors.

All the children, and parents that stayed got stuck in and seem to enjoy making their own party bag gifts.

All the time the crafts were on we also had an ‘animal’ room!

We hired a company to bring a range of animals for the children to get up close and personal to!

Lots of giggles were had

friends were made

and fears were overcome! 

after hands were washed and food was eaten, we enjoyed some animal inspired group party games all together before it was time to go home.

All in all a great day full of wonderful memories.

Kate’s Baby Shower

I love planning, cooking and creating parties.  This week I really enjoyed getting involved in organising a baby shower ‘tea’.  Now I can not take any credit for for the bulk of the work or planning as that was my wonderful friend Sam, but I had lots of fun getting out my tea set and having some fun in the kitchen for the ‘books and bunting’ afternoon.

Along with my fellow bakers and planners I was impressed with our spread!

For an age I have been meaning to have a go at making my own tea stands and this shower gave me the kick up the butt i needed to actually do it! Inspired by something I had seen, I quite fancied using vintage teacups in between the plates for height however after searching for a few months I was struggling.  Vintage tea cups it would seem are the holy grail for crafters at the mo so snapped up in a moment!  So after rooting in a few flea market I hatched a new plan - sherry glasses.  Sherry glasses I thought still had that vintage feel, the desired height, but just not so trendy! Here are the end products.

I was quite happy with the result.  However I also stumbled across some mini vases, so had a go with them as well.

As well as making the stands I had great fun coming up with yummy food.  After lots of experiments with food colouring I was delighted with the pastel meringues

and strawberry bunting cake

although it was the leek tartlets that I only made to use up the egg yolks left from the meringues that made the guest of honor cheer!!!

The bunting also let me get creative learning how to crochet triangles

and re-purpose an appalling chick lit book!  (my amazing friend Sam made the mini books)

All in all a fab afternoon that has left me looking forward to the next opportunity to entertain.