Last week I shared the invitations for Reuben’s pizza party and now I’m back to share the details of the party. I felt really blessed that coronavirus restrictions eased in time for us to have a group of up to twenty to celebrate. My parents were also able to join us (they brought up a load of grain they had sold to a local farmer), so the whole occasion felt very festive!
Reuben loves pizza, so this theme was really fitting to celebrate his eleventh birthday. He’s growing too old for cutesy party food and decorations, so I had to restrain myself a little! I went for an Italian themed table with the ubiquitous red and white checked tablecloth and candle in an old wine bottle. I also used some Italian placemats I made from an old calendar. The food was fairly simple, as pizza was the star of the show! We had fruit pizza, bocconcini, basil and tomato kebabs, lolly kebabs and a chocolate cake made to look like a pizza with various toppings.
I made the dough for the pizzas the day before the party and left it in the fridge to rise overnight. I chopped up lots of toppings and each guest rolled out their dough and created their own pizza masterpiece, which Murray cooked outside in our portable pizza oven. This was a great activity for this age group, but quite intense, hence unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the pizza making or cooking.
I used a garland I had made for Reuben’s seventh birthday party from fabric scraps as a decoration and added in some free pizza printables I found on Pinterest. This was one of my favourite parties. The boys were so lovely and enjoyed pizza making, a game of spotlight and a few games on the Nintendo Switch.
Are your kids getting too old for themed birthday parties or do they still love them?
Recently we celebrated Portia’s thirteenth birthday with a breakfast party. She loves breakfast food, so this was a fun idea and quite simple to put together. Portia also loves pastels, so I used this for the styling theme.
I love the styling aspect of a party, as each time I get to use some ideas from my Pinterest board. This time my girls and I painted some jars on the inside with pretty pastel colours to use as vases. I also enjoyed making a hanging flower wall as a backdrop with some washi tape. Both were very simple projects which looked effective.
Not a day in this case, but a party! My daughter, Portia has a very cheeky dog called Popcorn who she adores, so her birthday party last year was a celebration of all things dogs. Popcorn even had a look in on the celebrations! It was a quick party to pull together – I was very busy at the time, so this was a real bonus. For invitations we used a photo of Popcorn. I made some cupcakes (some with Oreo and smartie dog paws on them), and also used some dog toys I got from the Reject Shop as cupcake toppers. The cake was a rosewater vanilla layer cake (recipe 
The food was simple to put together and fun to label. I used free food label printables from 
The girls played guess the amount of dog treats in the jar and also went on a treasure hunt with Popcorn in tow around our neighbourhood. I think I had as much fun as the girls, thinking up rhyming clues and leaving them at locations for them to find. The clues led back to a treasure chest which contained a lip balm for each guest and was hidden in our tree house. The treasure hunt was inspired by the ones Mum prepared for my parties growing up on the farm. They were the best! Would still love to go on another one of those treasure hunts, even as an adult.
Harriet recently turned eight and we celebrated with a spa party! The inspiration for this came from some sleep masks I was gifted by a friend several years ago, which I used for the invitations. I used a free printable from 
This was a fun party to put together! I borrowed three foot spas for the girls to enjoy and also an essential oil diffuser to create a special atmosphere. I kept the beauty treatments simple with just some face masks and nail polish for manicures. We also made some lip balm with jelly crystals, petroleum jelly and coconut oil at the party. The girls decorated tiny pots I bought from a discount store to put the lip balm in. This was a popular activity! The lip balm recipe can be found 
Lastly, but not least, the favour bags consisted of lip balm wrapped up in a homemade scrunchie which I enjoyed making on my sewing machine. The girls went home refreshed and pampered after a long week at school!
I had a lot of fun preparing for this party. Reuben turned nine and we celebrated with a bang! We conducted lots of exploding, flying, popping, and foaming experiments which boys of that age love. The invites were a free printable from 
The party food was also a lot of fun to make. My husband (who helpfully is a doctor), carved a watermelon into a brain pattern and supplied some syringes which I set jelly inside (they were a huge hit)! We also had little “petri dish” jellys with sour worms set in them. I made eyeballs from babybel cheeses (instructions 
For decorations I used some test tubes filled with coloured water, and some beakers filled with lollies with hobby fill “smoke” coming out of the top. I also used some gross items missing from certain family members (gallstones and wisdom teeth)!, as well as some dried out and preserved lizards Reuben had collected. I placed some toy snakes and lizards in some jars of coloured water to make them look like they were pickled, as well as some eyeball bouncy balls. My husband drew some scientific formulas (all those years at uni paid off) onto a chalk board and I printed out some periodic tables (from 
The experiments were largely carried out on a plastic covered table outside to help contain the mess. Each child was given a jar in which to conduct their experiments. I tested some of the ones I wasn’t sure about ahead of time and had a surprisingly good time doing so! One of my favourites involved lighting a piece of paper and dropping it inside a glass bottle and then placing a peeled hard boiled egg on the top of the bottle and watching it get sucked inside! Lighting up empty teabags and watching them turn into rockets (instructions 
We also had fun with diet coke and mentos and the skittle experiment (where you make a ring of them on a plate and add a little water, to make a rainbow pattern).
Do you have a favourite science experiment?
I remember this party so well! I’m on the far left and Mum is cutting the cake. I love the look of joy and anticipation on my face (and on some of my friends’ faces). I have photos of my kids, capturing this same look at birthday cake cutting time – it’s a special moment. This party had a circus theme and was complete with sideshow alley stalls and a toffee apple and popcorn seller. I remember thinking the circus carousel cake was absolutely magical. My Mum is one of the best party planners I know and has been my greatest inspiration for hosting events.
Mum wrote up all her parties in her scrapbooks and I loved reading them as a child, just as I still do now. The party written about above was another birthday for me with a Wind in the Willows theme. I was given (and still have) a Wind in the Willows cookbook and a lot of the party food came from there.
Another book which really sparked my imagination growing up, and set me on a path of joyful party planning was Mum’s copy of The Australian Hostess Cookbook. I was fascinated by the descriptions of actual events the contributors to the book had hosted all over Australia – some on far flung stations in the outback and some in city locations. The descriptions of how these parties were hosted, what the host and guests wore and the menus, is today a really interesting historical reflection of this era.