Today, our darling baby wombat turns 2 years old. Happy Birthday Carter!!

And, for the first time, I decided to do a birthday party that was self-decorated and self-catered. People thought it was pure insanity, but truth be told, as long as you’re very organised about it (which I was, I planned the whole thing like a military operation) and have people around you for support (predominantly my parents that helped look after the kids to keep them.. errr.. out of the way), it’s actually OK and do-able. And, frankly, I was actually LESS TIRED than the previous birthday parties!

Because of one big difference – the party was tiny. I kept the guest list short and sharp, with just 8 families. The decision was simple – I printed out paper invitations and gave them to all the kids we met up with in the 3 months prior to the party. I figured, if we hadn’t seen someone in over 3 months, then they probably aren’t close enough anymore to include in. It was the only way I could think of to keep the party small! (side note: Hunter’s will be a much larger party, where I’ll invite alllll my friends!)

So, anyway, this was the party decor:

The theme was baby jungle animals. It was actually pretty tough to pick a theme for Carter, because he doesn’t really like stuff, as in, objects. He likes activities and people, and only really likes toys when there’s something to play it with. However, he does love animals in general!

I started the doing the DIY decorations one month earlier, so they were done way ahead of time – hurray!

 

And this was my self-catered food. 8 baked or cooked dishes (not all pictured above), with 4 ‘instant’ bowls of food like biscuits/jelly cups/etc. People were pretty surprised there was so much food, but actually, I’d thought I’d made too little food until I had it all laid out and then it looked like quite a spread.

It wasn’t that difficult catering the food either, because I started 2 days prior, on food that could be kept refrigerated. All the recipes have appeared in this blog before, and are very simple, quick-to-do dishes. Our main headache was transporting everything down to the party location!

 

Sooooo….. ARE YOU READY TO PARTY???

 

Our kids parties are always held poolside. We like the outdoorsy ambiance, and it’s fun and free entertainment for the kids. This kiddy pool was awesome, because it was really shallow and great for toddlers. It also meant the adults could chill by the side and not have to change into swimmers. Plus, the clubroom was situated right there, and had wall-to-ceiling glass, so people could look out at the pool to check that their kids were OK.

 

The kids played around in the clubroom after their swim, munching on the food and playing with the balloons. They all generally got along with no major fights, so I guess that’s a good thing 😉

 

Oh, I got the boys personalised shirts off Etsy, each with their favourite animal and name printed on the tee. I love em!!

 

Singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to baby wombat. He was rather shellshocked to see so many people staring at him, so didn’t sing along, but he did blow out a candle successfully!

 

I got a rainbow cake made, with ombre buttercream icing. I decorated it myself. Made up a mini bunting, bought some cute candles off eBay, and some vinyl animals off Amazon. It was very simple, but I rather liked it! And Carter noticed the animals too, so I was happy!

 

We attempted a kids photo. So here I am, bribing all the kids with “BISCUITS EVERYONE!!!!” so they would all come to the middle and take a pic 😉 Cousin Elliot is not impressed, haha!

 

And….. this was the best photo we managed to get of the kids, minus a few here and there! Not too shabby though, and kinda captured the chaos and randomness of the moment 😉

 

And one of the mums and bubs! As you can see, my friends and I obviously love the whole lets-have-multiple-kids concept… with the number of kids here WAY more than the number of mums 😉 And one isn’t a mum yet so actually there’s even less mums in this pic! And 2 more kids aren’t in this photo so there’s even more kids between us than it looks like in this pic! Phwoar.

 

A nice little family shot of us 🙂 I got to chat with everyone and the kids had fun, so I was really happy with how it turned out. Makes me realise there is much benefit in having small parties….

And it makes me panic a little when I realise Hunter’s 4th birthday party will be coming up in 6 months time… eek!!