Pirate cake

My husband made Finley's amazing pirate cake for his 3rd birthday party 

I can't explain much about how he did it but will try to show with photos! I know he made about 4 rectangle cakes and used chocolate fudge buttercream on top! 

The finished cake with some pretty impressive candles and fountains! 

Pirate party

Finley wanted a pirate party for his 3rd birthday and I loved the idea too! So from Christmas to February I spent my time searching for anything piratey! I also love a bargain so I'm always searching for the best deal.
We booked a larger hall than in pervious years so we could have the food table all set up and ready to go. And purchased Sainsbury's range of party wear I liked the black red and white colour combination.
I looked into entertainers but all so expensive and limited to numbers! (We invited 27 children and 27 came!) And Finley really wanted a traditional party with musical bumps, pass the parcel and a piñata (wish we hadn't done this one will explain later) so that's what we did, although I was more stressed at doing this but made sure hubby was to organise the children!
So back to party preparations! We had a new vacuum cleaner and the box looked ideal for a treasure box so we paper mâchéd it and added some detail to make a treasure box to hold all the party bags and I also made a smaller shoe box one to hold the prizes and chocolate coin treasure to win.

  

Then thought maybe we should get some invites made! I dressed Finley up into his pirate outfit and took some photos then uploaded them to a app called "Halftone" I had used it a few times and its great for superhero photos because it makes then look like a comic strip but I used less "dots" for the pirate theme and made the background look like old treasure map paper then added the text in speech bubbles. Once happy I just uploaded them to Tesco's and picked them up a few hours later for 6p a invite a whole lot cheaper than most I looked at.

So children invited, next party bags!

Me and hubby liked the pirate skull idea but I needed black bags and then somehow get skulls onto the bags, then I thought of just getting gold treasure bags! But hubby liked the skull bags more! So we got black bags off eBay and printed skulls out and cut and stuck them on (had to use a double sided tape roller!)

 

I spent a few months searching for anything pirate themed for the bags ended up with pirate bubbles, pencil and rubber, stickers and tattoos, then girly stickers, magic wands, rings and bracelets for the girls ( I had some bigger gifts for the bigger children 20p Hello kitty books I'd found, and £1 baby book sets for the tiny guests!) 

I always cheat with the cake and make or buy a sweetie tray bake because I don't have time to cut cake at the party for 27 children!  

I brought these inflatable "props" off eBay to set the scene but also for my corner game! So much less stressful than choosing children in musical bumps and statues that we had to do! 

Corner game involves dancing in the middle then choosing a corner when the music stops I then had a photo of each of the corner props and who ever is in that corner that is picked is out. 

We then played the dreaded bumps and statues then pass the parcel with golden treasure in each layer and a £3 DVD as the winning prize. 

Then food time! 

We had a mixture of sandwiches, sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, grapes, tomatoes, cucumber, crisps and then pirate chocolate biscuits and party rings! 

I found this shark on Pinterest and bought the watermelon in hopes my husband would create it for me haha I'm no good at this kind of thing or it would take me 3 or 4 melons to get it right! I love the little ships he made too!

I made the cupcakes just vanilla and added pirate flags and golden treasure balls on top in pirate cupcake cases and my bargain pirate cupcake stands (1.49p each) 

My husband is also the genius behide the pirate cake! ( I might picture blog some step by step photos for the cake) 

So after the lighting of the cake we played Finley's final wish the piñata!! 

Cost lots took loads to fill and hard to find how to hang it! We used a old broom handle to hang it from. 

And lastly is was bloody impossible to break!!! So I had a go thinking I've spent good money on this thing it will break and ended up whacking a poor child luckily not that hard and no damage done but boy did I feel bad that's it for me and piñata's!! 

So that's Finley's party, everyone had a lovely time and I had many a comment about it being "a fantastic party" and "Gemma you know how to throw a party"

Makes all the hard work worth it. 

Wedding activity book

I'm not very good at this blogging lark am I?
But I've made a wedding activity book for my best friends wedding so thought I'd share it with you.
I got a lot of ideas from pinterest and tried to make it to suit the children.

Front Cover made for each individual child

Wedding Scramble and some loving Disney characters 

Wedding I Spy (I'm hoping the children will all take some photos of these things in the poem)

More Disney colouring and People Bingo

Wedding word search and some Disney loving dogs

Disney sweethearts and noughts and crosses

Just Married Shrek and Fiona and heart maze 

More Colouring 

Love Maze and I Spy

Wedding cake and the bride & groom leaving for their honeymoon

Lovely day on the Farm

We have been to Hoo Farm with the toddler group that I run today in Telford, this was a different place for us this year as we have spent the last 5/6 years at another farm.
Was a bit unsure to start with as it was hard to find where we needed to be at the times they set out for us, but the staff were all very friendly and helped us out! Finley loved all the hands on activities: feeding the goats with a bottle of milk , petting some animals (skunk, lizard, baby hedgehog and a Meerkat) collecting a egg (although Finn and me expected to maybe keep it and not just place it in a basket!)
Finley loved "milking" a plastic cow, shame it was empty! And our day came to a wonderful end when Finley picked the winning sheep in the sheep race! Number 2 of course as he's 2!
I was impressed with the amount of different animals they had, from foxes, owls, snakes, turtles, rabbits, meerkats, lizards, sheep, goats, horses, wallabies, ducks, parrots and I'm sure lots more I can't remember!
There were also lots of play things for them to play on! Just wish we had longer to get round more.
Can't wait for a return visit!

Milking the cow

Feeding the kid goats their milk

Someone picked the winning sheep in the race!

loads of play equipment to play on

beautiful Owl

Cheeky Meerkats

indoor ball pit fun

This is me and my sweet little boy!

My first EVER blog post

Hi everyone, I thought I'd start a blog just to talk about anything and everything to do with Me and my little boy Finley! (hence the name ;) )
I'm finishing my childminding soon, so I thought this might give me something to do each day or week not sure yet! Anyway welcome to our blog and I hope you enjoy reading it.
Gemma and Finley x x