She's older than yesterday!

Happy 5th Birthday Matilda-girl!

We were really, really, really fortunate to have the most magnificently sunny winters morning to have Matilda's birthday party (with a ridiculous number of kids - note to self, just because her birthday is in the school holidays and on a public holiday does not mean you need to over-invite - I forget that families with 5 year olds don't really go away!!).  Anyway, 20+ kids descended on the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens for a Carousel Party to celebrate my daughter safely surviving (and in fact thriving) the last 5 years.

And now that I have completed my study I seem to have a bit more time to go over the top with party planning!  Apart from the obligatory cheesels and chips we made most of the other party food including the incredibly easy, ridiculously popular but stupidly time-consuming rainbow jelly cups.

I also attempted my own transportable version of a carousel cake using a cake stand (rather than trying to balance a massive cake on a cardboard tube on my knees in the car as suggested by the WW Kids Cake Book) surrounded by some cupcakes with cut-out carousel horses (yes, I was cutting those out at 11pm last night).  I think it needed the party-goers to use their imagination a little bit - but that's meant to be good for kinder kids isn't it?  The cake is a fail-safe boiled chocolate cake that can be easily adapted to be dairy-free (and works well with egg-replacer too).  I'll post the recipe sometime!

We played pass the parcel and managed to wrangle the kids up to the carousel using a photo treasure hunt around the Gardens (to run off all that jelly and cake)!

 

And the big hit for the party was a ride on The Gallopers Carousel.  I can't rave about Judy and Mark enough (they're the restorers/owners/operators of the carousel) - they were so helpful in accommodating a large group and Judy is always lovely to anyone on the ride (her day job is in childcare).

And (because this blog is all about me!!) the piece-de-resistance were the party bags which contained colouring books (thanks to the plethora of freebies images available on the internet - happy to share the pdf, just ask!!) and little boxes of pencils (thanks to Bunnings, but disguised with more carousel horses - although Trev did say the dads would have been impressed if I'd just left them as-is), and a restrained amount of lollies (I think).

Thanks to all our little friends and family for coming along and making Matilda's day so special.  I think my gorgeous girl has had a lovely day and we look forward to another year of fun together!!

Oh, and the invitations we made for the party are over here!!