We started our recent holiday with a weekend with my sister Jennie & her family, beginning with my niece Izzy’s 4th birthday party. We had a great time and all the kids looked super cute dressed up as pirates. Lydia especially looked pretty adorable as a mini pirate; she just looked so darn cute in her pirate outfit (borrowed temporarily from our stay & play group’s dressing up box).
There was absolutely loads to keep the kids entertained and there wasn’t a bored pirate in the hall, and very few strops and squabbles. My sister is a great organiser so I was unsurprised to witness a perfectly planned party; she even got asked a few times if they got in a party planning company to do it… maybe she should consider going into the biz!
Jennie & her friend (it was a joint party with one of Izzy’s friends) planned all sorts of activities and loads of effort went into the party, with Toucan Box inner boxes being hoarded for months in advance to be used as treasure chests for the children to decorate. Gold foil and cardboard pirate coins were available to fill up the boxes, with all sorts of glittery and sparkly decorations laid out on the tables for the kids to stick on.
My brother-in-law is learning about woodwork and joinery and he made a fantastic plank for the kids to “walk” during the party. This was a huge hit, all the children really enjoyed balancing along and jumping off with great drama.
As well as the treasure chests and plank, there was a huge bouncy castle (with slide), parrot decorating, fruit boxes & cardboard tubes as make-believe boats and planks, and a temporary tattoo/sticker station. The kids played a made game of pass-the-parcel with a huge circle of children and about a dozen parcels between them.
Of course, there was party food as well – but instead of a load of bowls & plates of food in the middle, they provided little colour-in lunch boxes for each child; each one containing a fruit shoot, frube, chocolate biscuit, box of raisins & a roll with cheese or ham. Georgie and Lydia found these terribly exciting and the children were kept amused with a supply of crayons to colour in their boxes.
The kids enjoyed some birthday cake, yum yum yum.
Party bags with books from the Ladybird Read it Yourself Collection, pirate stickers & some chocolate coins were a great way to end the extravaganza – I love seeing party bags that aren’t all junk food or plastic tat so getting two new books for our home library was really nice. The collection is one £30 for 50 books on Bookpeople at the moment so we might even add it to the girls’ Christmas list this year, for one of their grandparents to get them, as the two books we got at the party have been very much enjoyed already.
They look so cute in their pirate outfits! x