Turning 40

A few people have asked me what I got...  

A framed vintage scarf. 

 R confessed me to me that he had no idea what to get me and I pointed him in the direction of the Table Tonic shop in Avalon.  A few weeks ago Jane from My Pear Tree House wrote a lovely post on blue and white scarves and included a photo of a divine framed scarf available for sale in the Table Tonic shop.  Lovely I thought but almost certainly snapped up already!  Then just before we left for Byron I was having a quick coffee with Carolyn and her lovely Beach House Brat in the cafe just outside Table Tonic and spotted it immediately.  If R hasn't bought me a present for my 40th this is what I want I announced to her and well... now it is hanging in my kitchen and looking beyond fabulous!!!

I only picked it up on Tuesday but it has already given me so much pleasure!!  Thank you R!! xx

Best Birthday Party Ever - The Busytown Birthday Party

We have all been super sick here at Pirate HQ.  Three visits to the GP, two at home visits from the after hours Doctor and one little Pirate with a fever so high he started hallucinating, kind of sick.  Possibly the real flu our GP thinks.  Nevertheless, by Thursday evening we were given the all clear and so decided to go ahead and have The Best Birthday Party Ever! 

Thursday and Friday were thus spent whipping up all sorts of brightly coloured party food.  Remarkably almost all of it was made with natural colours!

I couldn't bring myself to bake the ubiquitous rainbow cake though, he got a basic butter cake with 100s and 1000s on top instead!

Felt Lowly Worms from Scarry's  Best Make It Book Ever he did get though! He adored them and sat watching me make them fascinated by the process. (They are super easy if any one is scared of giving it a go!)

The cup cake toppers I made using a scrap booking hole punch thing from Spotlight, double sided sticky tape, toothpicks and a dog-eared, scribbled all over copy of an old Scarry Golden Book.

We set up a play Busytown using the Thomas train tracks turned over to the road side and various wooden cars and trucks.  Running down the centre of the table we had the fold out Busytown Lift the Flap Book.

Party games included the great Goldbug scavenger hunt.  I gathered all the kids together and showed them how in Cars and Trucks and Things that Go there is a Goldbug hidden on every page.  Then explained that they had to go and find all the Goldbugs hidden in the garden.  

There was also the great sack race.....

     
                                                                  ..... which did end in tears....

Happy Birthday Mr 4!

The Captain's Bush Detectives Party

So.. this was a little while ago, but for the sake of posterity I thought I should document the event with a few photos:

Yes... they came across three of them during the course of the party and yes... it is a Red Belly Black Snake.

Happy Sixth Birthday Captain!  At six years old you are a passionate Lego engineer and can spend hours either creating a masterpiece of your own design or following the instructions to build the model.   Playmobil, Superstructs, the vintage Thunderbirds toys, craft and reading are your other biggest passions.  Your favourite books are The Secret Seven series, The Magic Tree House, The Famous Five and more recently the Just So Stories.  It started off with me reading to you and now we are taking turns at reading pages to each other. 

You love school and regularly tell me that you are friends with everyone in your class.  You often play goodies and baddies and divide yourselves into Teams which you refer to as the BB Team and the Fairy House Team.  You leave the house for school looking pristine and come home filthy.  At school this year you have learnt how to play chess, the basics of fencing, about respect, to recite verses of Shakespeare, about friendship, the Pause and you earnt so many Merit cards that I could probably wallpaper a wall in your room with them!  Your buddy Ethan from the sixth class helped you settle in and was a great role model for you.  You will miss him next year when he goes off to high school.   

At home when you are not busy destroying our backyard with your brother creating dams and construction sites, you love to swim in the pool, swing on the swing out the front (you both LOVE that swing), have your dad (not so much me) throw a cricket ball for you to bat and throw paper planes off the deck.  You keep pestering me to get you some more tadpoles.  You are onto your third Venus Fly Trap plant, you solemnly promised not to feed this one any insects and so far so good.  I think it is about 4-5 months old now!

Your favourite food is pizza made by your Dad.  Your favourite DVDs are The Thunderbird Movie, The Adventures of Clutch Powers, the Lego Megafactories Documentary, Tom and Jerry and Miniscule.  I am pleased to say that you really have no idea about computers and certainly have no clue what a DS or Wii are.  Please let it stay that way for as long as possible my darling! 

You told me once that you are my precious and it is quite right, you truly are my precious boy.

Happy Birthday Captain - The Pirate Party

I woke on Saturday morning to the Captain standing next to the bed, fully dressed in his pirate outfit.  It was 6.03 am and the first thing he said was, "how long until everyone gets here?"  Blinking in the light shining in through the shutters he had opened, I was so thrilled to see it was a beautiful day. 

A sign outside the house welcoming our guests!

Eye-patches, bandannas, cutlasses and hats ready to hand out to the little pirates.

Warning sign on the pool fence.  As the decking is still unfinished we wanted to avoid anyone going into this part of the garden for safety reasons.

Baby Pirate.

The ship cake.

Cup-cakes.

The "thank you for coming" favours.  We wrapped little chocolate bars in gold paper as "ingots" and the skull shaped cookie cutter I found on the Thurs at Aldi of all places, after trying all the more obvious baking suppliers unsuccessfully!

Finally, some pirates arrived and so did Pirate Peacock.  From the moment these little pirates spotted Pirate Peacock sauntering down our street, lugging his pirate chest full of treasure, they were mesmerised.  Apparently he had docked his ship nearby and was looking for some buccaneers. 

Pass theTreasure Chest.

Tug-O-War (the little pirates LOVED this activity!)

Even this super-cute Pirate Princess had to walk the plank for being rude to the Queen.  (Pirate Peacock was also very funny!)

The Treasure Hunt

Where is that treasure?  The X is on the ship wrecked dinghy!

Finally they found it and had to whack it open with their cutlasses to get to the Pieces of Eight!

The Captain and his cake.

Thank you for coming to my party! 

For those that have asked about Pirate Peacock contact:

 http://www.fairycrystal.com.au/

He was absolutely fantastic!  Brilliant at keeping in character and entertaining the children, I could not recommend him more highly!

Pirate Party - Preparations Continue.

Preparations for the Pirate Party this weekend are well and truly underway now.   So far we have made the treasure map,  as you can see the Captain got into the spirit of things:

The clues for the treasure map are stored inside these little pouches I found at a $2 shop.  The sword is the final clue and is the weapon to "open" the Treasure Chest pinata:

Filling the pinata full of "pieces of eight" (chocolate coins):

Making the pinata shell, hopefully when it is finished it will loosely resemble a Treasure Chest:

I am making 21 of these newspaper swords, see Alphamom for the tutorial: 

The Captain's hearty approval:

Lastly I chopped up the sun-shade umbrella to begin converting the outdoor table into a pirate ship.  Do you think my husband will be cross?  As he has been in Melbourne, gallivanting about and wining and dining with friends and I have been at home, alone with two children.  Left to deal with amongst other day to day things, a rogue snake (eeek!) and a broken dishwasher (gah!), he had better not say anything:

More on the rogue snake and other recent domestic issues tomorrow!