Mr Meat & Potatoes has turned 4.
The festival of him was at the end of a long week and celebrations needed to be simple.
Luckily 4 year old boys are awesome party guests, since they think everything is AWESOME. ‘Cooooooooooolllllll, buzz lightyear’. ‘wwwoooooooooowwwwwwwww smarties’. ‘aaaawwwwwwwhhhhhhh, cake’. Generally they just jump around talking gibberish to each other and playing ‘Ben 10’ (slapping your wrist, making noises and charging off to fight aliens).
I kept the food simple. A massive fruit platter, sausage rolls, cheezels (essential), a bowl of smarties, and a machismo fairy bread. Being that I couldn’t be bothered making chocolate crackles, I just added nutella to the fairy bread, renamed it ‘mud bread’ and the boys were happy.
Strictly adhering to my one-colour cake policy
Rarely do I bother making a cake from scratch for kids parties. Why would I? Nope, a packet cake was the main attraction, with my foolproof, one-icing, one-colour decorating policy. This year (as you can see) it was red, with the fudge-icing-pen drawn web and a spiderman candle. Done in 15 minutes. AWESOME. Last year it was black, which was drab until we popped Lightening McQueen on top and then we had an AWESOME edible tyre.
For the girls, make it a pretty pastel green, sprinkle over flower shaped sprinkles and pop some cute plastic kittens on top. Done. Fancy cakes are well and good for the first couple of birthdays, but geez they come around often and while we all own a copy of The Women’s Weekly Kid’s Birthday Cakes cookbook, I’ve yet to find one you can knock off in less than 2 hours.
Just add Blu-tack...
And games? Well, of course we had pass the parcel. Gotta have that. And I was keen for pin the tail on the donkey, but not organised enough to buy one. But I did have some AWESOME oversized life-like bugs. A bit of Blu-tack, a pen and A3 piece of paper and we had instant pin-the-bug-on-the-boy. And then the AWESOME little dudes got to take bugs home to terrorise their parents with.
...for instant 'pin the bug on the boy' fun
Awesome time, everyone, thanks for coming. Happy Birthday to my little man.
Vegie Smugglers 
Rachael A said,
March 7, 2011 @ 11:44 am
Awesome!! Sounds like a great party. I think I will definitely be stealing that cake idea.
Antonia said,
July 15, 2011 @ 10:47 am
I love your low-fuss, down to earth ideas. Sometimes it feels like kids birthdays have become a competitive sport, and I’ll never make the rep team! I have found that little lego people are great for decorating cakes – they come in plenty of themes, like space, pirates, toy story etc., and the birthday boy gets to keep them at the end of the party! win-win
The mud-bread and pin the bug on the boy are great ideas too – thanks!