All about her…

She wanted pink, blue and silver decorations, food in shapes with lots of sugary adornments, a teddy bear cake, lots of music, not too many party games, pretty goody bags to match the decorations and to share her birthday celebrations with some of her very best friends.

I reckon we pulled it off :).

This morning was sandwich making which she helped with; we had star shaped ham ones, heart shaped peanut butter ones and square shaped marmite ones. I decorated the mini cake for the teddy to hold, painted Tarly’s nails scarlet red (naturally) and they got all dressed up and ready to party:

We got to the hall just after 11am and dealt with probably my only error which was to not have arranged for Davies and Scarlett to be somewhere else while Ady and I set the hall up (next time!) but with shrieking and threats to ‘never have another party ever again!’ we got it all done. We set the table up with food to be sat and ate at (tables are a novelty round our parts so sitting at them for party food is perfectly acceptable and indeed adds to the air of festivity ;)), arranged about 100 photos of Tarly from bump and first pic at moments old to ones taken just a couple of weeks ago and everywhere inbetween. I spent a quiet ten minutes somewhere in the middle of the party getting all misty eyed looking at them all and thinking what a fab little girl she is and how well all the photos summed her up – of course if we continue at our current rate she’ll need to hire a fucking big hall for her 18th to fit in all the photos :lol:). We had table confetti, ribbons and streamers and balloons and lovely LovelyEm brought some disco lights along which really made the party :).

We had an hour or so of face painting (thanks Ros xx), some party games including one with Smarties just to get some token Nestle products in there, a bit of parachute play games and general milling about before sitting down for food. I reckon the food was about right, we brought home a bit but not stacks and I’d rather bring home a bit than run out. Scarlett ate LOADS, she stacked her plate up with several of everything that was passed round and left almost nothing on her plate :). Then we turned the lights down, the disco lights on and the music up and there was much dancing and running around to a novelty number 1s album which seemed to go down very well indeed. Scarlett spent the entire 3 1/2 hours with a massive grin on her face, running around holding hands with her friends, dancing and generally just having an absolute ball 🙂

She was utterly delightful at the end going round giving out goody bags to everyone as they left and thanking them so much for coming. I think I gave her one prompt of ‘make sure you say thanks for coming’ as I sent her off with the first one and the rest all came from her – not out of politeness, but because she really was chuffed they had all come :).

The usual team swung into action on Operation Tidyup for which we put on Lovely Em, Eve and Rei’s pressie of a mix-tape compilation cd which Tarly just adores and made us play in the car on the way home and again in the house – that will be amoung the first things to get put on her MP3 player I reckon :). We all had to stop tidying to dance to Macarena and then get down (literally) for Oops Up side your head before finishing off 🙂

Massive thanks to all for coming, it was excellent 🙂 Extra special thanks to LovelyEm for disco lights, Ros for face painting and hoovering and a special mention to Si for having 3 children but still making tea and helping tidy :). Those who didn’t make it for various reasons were missed by me certainly, but I don’t think there was anything or anyone that would have made it any better for Tarly than it already was :).