Happy Birthday Noah

Well it's over again for another year and although I have breathed a sigh of relief I can't help but start thinking about next year.  I absolutely adore coming up with a theme (or stealing a good idea from someone else) and although it is a lot of hard work - it's so much fun that one birthday per year is simply not enough.

Soooo that's why we had 2 parties this year.  The plan was to have one party for family and another for our friends and their children.  It soon became clear that idea wouldn't work as the family wanted a chance to see Noah playing and interacting with his friends - I secretly think they just wanted to play pass the parcel!!

Noah's current favourite animals seem to be owls and turtles so we decided to use these as themes.  I am so totally in love with Etsy (an online shop) and managed to find party packs for both owls and turtles.  It's so cool because clever people will either design for you (or you can buy an existing design) and then sell you a PDF of all the goodies - invites, cupcake toppers, banners, treat bag toppers etc etc.  So I just print it all off and do a lot of cutting out and constructing and voila - gorgeous personalised party goods for $20 - $30 and a bit of time and effort.

Anyhow for the owl party we ended up having a lovely intimate afternoon with my two school friends and their husbands and their children.  It was such a great fun time with just 6 adults and 4 kids we were able to do a few extra touches.  Rob and I even made our own pinata and it turned out soooo much better than we imagined it would.

The second party was of course 'the big one' but we still aimed to keep it as small as possible.  Our immediate family alone numbers about 15 then we only invited a couple of friends - in particular those with kids that Noah has a personal relationship with.  We have so many friends with little kids but with a winter birthday the risk is always that the party might have to be moved inside so we had to keep that in mind.

In the end we got a glorious sunny winter day and lots of 'turtlin' fun was had by all.  The kids all played together beautifully and Noah of course was spoiled with loads of pressies.  Rob's 'fishing' game was a huge hit and wonderful in it's simplicity.

The most important thing is we got to celebrate how lucky we are to have this wonderful boy in our lives.  We ate, we drank and we laughed and we can't wait till the next party.