Kids Birthday Party food and getting it all done mostly alone...

Warning - don't do this unless you're a bit crazy and you are not too attached to your lists.  You may need to change plan and go with the flow a bit and stay up a bit later than normal to get everything done.  Luckily I'm okay with that so this approach worked for me.

David is TWO! I thought the birthday party would just be a 'play-date' with a bit of cake on the side. But my creative juices got flowing and I couldn't not do the things I had thought of.  So would I do it differently next time... YES but only by trying not to let it stress me out.  The best part was that most of the Dads came by after work. As Keith said, Friday nights are needed to wind down, and most working Dads need a drink by Friday!  And hiring the aeroplane was a great idea.  I was hoping they would collect it on Monday so we could have a few more days of asking 'Where's David?' 

Everybody came and David knew exactly what was going on.  He blew his candles out unprompted - probably because I had been priming him for weeks beforehand about candles and singing.  So we tucked into 'Happy Cake' and Gingerbread men and ladies, and the kids had just about finished it all off before it was dark and dinner time. 

I bought the Gingerbread cutters from a kitchen shop in Parkhurst and they were so easy to make.  Inspired by the ones at Fournos which I sampled last week when I took David for tea and treat - mostly because I was desperate for a break inbetween the shopping! I've NEVER made biscuits before so I was quite happy with how they turned out, as were the little Tots who used them for teething on. You can see a coulple of them got sampled, the smarties got eaten first!

 The Aeroplane cake was also SO easy with a shaped cake tin.  No fancy fiddly cutting.  Just bake and ice.  It's crazy how much red food colouring you need to make red.  And horrors but the boy nearly had a very bright pink cake at one stage. I also found the cute little edible stars at the same Parkhurst shop, and with a few googled images of plane cakes, I came up with my own version. The candyfloss clouds and coloured dessicated coconut really finished it off well.   It was a bit fiddly cutting the liquorice strips which is the black outline - but I have excellent knives so that was okay.  (I am very very fussy about having sharp knives in the kitchen)  No pics of my gorgeous cupcakes so you'll just have to take my word for it that they were very good.  I  used PURE cocoa on them to decorate and in the icing.  My new favourite thing is Willie's Madagascan Black now at Woolworths.  Love the stuff and do yourself a favour and make your own hot chocolate.  It's worth the effort of boiling it slowly on the stove with milk, sugar and a bit of water.  It will be pure laziness if  I go back to the instant - just add boiling water version.

Thank goodness I had extra hands with the decorations.  So on the morning all I had to do was attend to my 'other work' (conference call) and put the sails on the jelly boats, do the flowers. make the fruit hedgehog and set the food out on the tables. I was big on doing the baking beforehand, and with icing on, the cake didn't dry out too much, but I definitely noticed it was a bit dry.  Don't freeze cakesor cupcakes iced, only un-iced is the rule.  But I made the call that I needed to ice the night before otherwise I wouldn't have managed.
Jelly boats are also simple to make and kids seem to love them. 

I made a few notes about the cute things David is saying - 'Space Wocket' (Space Rocket). Today he told me that 'Mommy's face cross'. So I wonder if I look like that a lot! He's being my mirror sooner than I thought. And sadly I couldn't remember why I was cross at that moment.