Caramel, princesses and unicorns for an early birthday treat

Both our girls are quite gregarious, and have lots of friends in their class and outwith school.  But our kitchen table has only 6 chairs, so parties at home are limited in size.  I feel it makes for a more enjoyable occasion, as no-one tends to feel left out when there are only a small group of friends to entertain.  And the girls have certainly never complained, they enjoy the attention too.

In this case, Mini-2 had a group of friends who all lived very near one another and we'd arranged that L was going to come to our house one day after school to play.  But of course, as young kids do, they chatted about it and then G, E, A and K wanted to come too.  Uh, ok sure I said, then racked my brain as to the least stressful way to do that for her...

As her birthday was only a week or so after the planned playdate, we decided to call it an early birthday party and have cake and cupcakes and fun!

Mini-2 chose caramel as her cake flavour, and these super cute picks and cardboard wraps for the table decorations.

We ended up with a 6" cake and a dozen or more cupcakes, so the girls took them home as party favours.

The food boxes match the napkins and cupcake wraps - cute huh?  

Happy early birthday sweet girl.

Cookie decorating parties are such fun

Our girls are, possibly sickeningly for some, the light of our lives.  Really.  They drive us insane at times, but we really are glad they're about.  Would have been all sorts of fun with Mini-3 too, but sometimes you just need to deal with the hand you're dealt.  

Mini-2 has a birthday coming up soon, and a school friend who wanted to come over for a playdate.  Now this particular girl in Mini-2's class lives on a street with about 4 or 5 other girls in their year group.  And when they found out that L was coming over, well, they all wanted to come!  As you do when you're 6.  So they all came.  And I guessed it would be a madhouse for a couple of hours, so figured I'd call it an early birthday party and try to contain the excitement slightly.

Mini-2 chose the cake she wanted (see details in a separate post) and then chose cookie decorating as the activity.  Remember those edible food markers I bought a year or so ago for her 5th birthday cake?  Well they still worked, so were put to good use by the girls at the party.  As with last year, they all had a blast and were thrilled to take home their arty efforts.  Well done girls!

Big sis went for the stripy cupcake case and sprinkles with the red cherry again - ha ha.

Little sis (and birthday girl) decided to write herself a happy message

 Not everyone managed to complete their designs, but they were all happy with them.

Great work girls!

Halloween mallows and pretzels, not at all scary

Halloween isn't my favourite holiday - simply because I'm a bit of a wuss and don't like scary things.  In case you hadn't realised by now, I'm a hearts and flowers kind of girl, so with all the ghouls and ghosts and spiders around about now, I'm not in my element!  We have a DVD in the house that the girls really enjoy, called ummm, gosh, I can't recall what is called just now, (will add in the name when it comes to me.  Oh, I remember!  It's called Hocus Pocus) and it's about Halloween and that's fun, but hey ho.

So, how does Becca do Halloween in a non-scary way then?  Lucky you, you're about to find out...  I really like the crunchy salty and sweet contrast within chocolate covered pretzels, and had some black candy melts in the house.  Why, you ask?  Why indeed.  I simply couldn't recall what on earth I could have bought them for - I mean, me and black decorations?  It just doesn't make sense.  So anyway, I had these black candy melts just sitting around, plus some orange ones (I know, that doesn't look like a coincidence, but it was - honest!) so got to work.

A little bit of time and a lot of fun later, we had double-dipped marshmallows and pretzels with halloween sprinkles!  These were great fun to make, and so much more fun to eat!

 Mmm, thick chocolate on crunchy salty pretzels...

And how fun are marshmallows?  With chocolate and sprinkles, why yes thank you!