and realised that I’d never wrapped up the party planning posts properly.

First, here are all the posts

Venue

Decor

Food and cake

Party favours

Thank-you notes

Things that worked well

1. The printable party theme set from Etsy (I already have 3 in my shopping cart til next year rolls round…) – I just loved having a cohesive theme
2. Buying the cakes instead of trying to be Supermom and baking them myself
3. Food was plentiful but not way too much, and easy since I delegated some of it
4. Party favours were just my style – repurposed, practical and useful
5. Having the party at home was a huge stress relief
6. I think we invited just the right amount of kids.
7. People seemed to enjoy the handwritten thank-you notes.
8. Once I got the photos from the photographer, I made prints and sent each family about 3 – 4 each. This was something everyone loved – if I do it again, I’ll try and hold off on those thank-yous so I incur one set of postage

Things I would change

1. I’ll never do paper, in-the-mail invites again even though those are my preferred style. Not only were they more expensive because of postage but the RSVPs took sweet forever to come in, and I must confess, I had to hound about half the people for responses.
2. Next time I’ll pretty up the cake before photos with a ribbon or something.
3. I don’t know if I’ll go with a professional photographer again. I do agree that the photographer needs to be someone other than us though so we can enjoy the party. The photos were stunning but my expectations were probably mismatched because I didn’t get many of my family and I thought we would. That said, we have made an additional appointment and we’re going to get some two-year-old pics in two weeks time.

As I was typing this, I realised I enjoy doing an analysis of what went right and wrong.

It makes me feel more mindful.

I do this at the end of every month anyway when I look at my goals for the month that’s just been and the one ahead.

Do you like taking stock?

PS Pic by my friend, Caren.

PPS This post is also going to be useful next year when I’ve forgotten what went well and what could be improved

I said before in this series that I know what I wanted.

This, party favours, are my thing.

I love doing them and they never feel like a burden.

My thinking

1. I didn’t just want sweets (candy) and chips. I don’t allow our kids to eat these things normally so didn’t feel it fair to dump it on other kids.
2. I wanted something useful.
3. I wanted to use up some formula cans we had.

I initially thought of making the cans into buckets and adding spades.

That would have worked but in the end it came down to what I had around the house because I wanted to use existing things as far as possible.

So I made little packs of gel pens/ pencil crayons (each child got 5), added a brightly coloured exercise book and put in a covered formula can. The cans were then placed in cellophane bags and had thank-you tags attached.

The idea was for the kids to repurpose the formula can holders into pencil/ crayon holders.

Exactly what my kids do with their crayons

I was VERY happy with how they turned out – very cute and useful.

Here’s what they looked like:

These 3 pics were taken by our photographer, Jeanette Verster.

and these were taken by me

So, do you do party favours? What kinds of things do you do?

PS I’m not averse to receiving sweets and chips from other people – more snacks for Dion and me!

I’m still talking about my babies’ second birthday party.

Here is post 1
Here is post 2

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Last year I overcatered in a major, major way.

I had a freezer full of food even after giving everyone doggy bags. Which drove me a bit crazy – I like regular inflow and outflow.

This year I decided that I would do just enough.

I still overcatered somewhat but not on the perishable things. I didn’t mind eating jelly sweets for a few days afterwards

Cake

I love knowing who I am and more importantly, who I’m not.

For some people the cake is their “thing”. For me, not so much. The cake is food, that’s it

The theme was a garden party with ladybugs, worms and so on, so I decided to go with chocolate cakes only.

I knew I didn’t want to go all out but I briefly considered the thought of baking the kids’ cake myself and then I reminded myself that I don’t want to be Superwoman (yes, really) and that a cake from Woolworths would do just fine. And that’s what we did.

I have a teeny-tiny regret. I wish I’d thought to make a lining for the cake from the printables but I didn’t. Oh well. I actually only thought of it when I saw the pics.

We stuck two blue and two pink candles in the cake, sang for each kid individually, helped them blow their candles and that was that.

I bought 4 packs of cupcakes from Pick and Pay, added a cupcake topper and a worm, and called it a day.

Easy-peasy.

Other food

Our party was from 2 – 4 pm, clearly after lunch, so I felt like we didn’t have to provide a proper meal.

For the big people I asked my mother in law to make two long French breads with two different fillings, we then cut it and arranged it like a caterpillar on trays. I wonder if anyone even noticed that!

There was also some tuna spread with two types of crackers, some chips and bug-shaped pretzels.

For the other food, I had some bowls with worms in them, some chips for kids, popcorn (Connor calls it “hopcorn” and when we correct him, he says “po… hopcorn” – isn’t he adorable?), some biscuits I stuck craft sticks into to make flowers.

Drinks

I wanted only red drinks so I had cranberry iced tea, a berry juice for kids (Bug juice) and Sparberry soda. Of course, tea, coffee and water were also available.

I arranged ice blocks in a tiny red ice bucket with a spade as an ice scoop. The straws were placed in a red watering can with a ladybug and I had red and green plastic glasses.

Desserts

For dessert we had the cupcakes (so glad I got those as I had just 4 left – a far cry from last year when I had about 24!), the real cake and I also made a sticky toffee pudding (from a box) with custard.

(I am a girl who loves hot puddings with custard so really, this was mainly for me… and because it’s winter)

Is anyone reading these posts? Do you like the detail? Not so much?

No-one seems to be commenting besides you, Julia

PS It won’t change my posting style – I am doing this as much for my own memory as for a blog post – I do think it is interesting to get inside the head of an organising blogger for these sorts of things so I thought I’d share