Shirley's party advice thread part 2

[stealthsquiggle]

...can I take the liberty of starting another thread, since the other one filled up?

Just for DrsW's DD - baby dragons having piggy back rides

Tonight - I have.......

......taken DS to swimming and just about managed to knock up some pasta whe we got home. Sorry to disappoint.

DS has done all about Chinese new year at school though and has even been eating noodles with chopsticks so we'll do our Chinese feast tomorrow when I'm not so tired and have a spare hour to cook the now well marinated chicken.

I did ring the pizza place about the party though

Stealth where did you aquire all these dragons??

Ah blathers....roll on tomorrow then. So what plans are finalised for the party now? I've had a day looking at 'blue christening ideas' until now i've been convinced this is a girl so i'm bracing myself for being faced with a teeny scrotum!! Eeek.

once you start adopting dragons, they attract more dragons

Babies were from DS's knights party (I had some spare!), the patient dragon they are riding on (Bertie) was a present to DS from PIL, the blue dragon with the whisky came from The White Company sale, the red one staring into her glass and wondering where her whisky went started the whole thing about 6.5 years ago when we met her at Warwick Castle and she's my favourite. They all have names and characters (except the babies, who are collectively a PITA but are indistinguishable apart from the fact that red ones are boys and black ones are girls, so they don't have names)

..and Blathers - no pressure - you have at least 10 days left .

Her marinated chicken may not bring good luck and fortune in ten days time though

Um - freeze it (or was it frozen before)? [helpful]

The only thing I could gather that you are supposed to have is a whole fish - so we had salmon, baked with a random assortment of ginger, chilli, coriander and lime because I ran out of time couldn't find a suitable recipe.

I cba with a whole fish (unless you count prawns as fish? ) but we are having noodles (to represent a long life), spring rolls (to represent gold bars and prosperity) and lots of red and gold food (again for prosperity) If we have any room left, I even have some oranges (well, clementines but same difference right?) to hand out as 'Orange' sounds like the Chinese word for 'Wealth'. Tangerine would have been good (sounds like 'luck') but I forgot them.

I should also be doing rice and lychees but we're going to be stuffed as it is and I am supposed to be dieting!

I'm taking DD into the city centre for Song and Rhyme time at the library this morning so I might pop into the shops and see if I can find any decorations while I'm there.

DW - in my experience, little boys are a lot easier than little girls - especially at nappy changing time!

Well I've utterly failed at this one!

I'm going to do the food anyway and will try harder again next year. Going to put it in the diary with plenty of warning.

I can't even find my proper decorated chinese bowls!!

I couldn't find decorations either, Blathers (other than kite!) - apart from on ebay, and I left it too late to get those. I ended up with a red tablecloth and napkins from Waitrose - and realised halfway through that we have cute chopstick stands and stuff that we hadn't got out.

Blathers. Honestly you have cheered me up so much. You're rapidly running out of momentum and its making me chuckle. I truly have visions of you getting a takeaway on saturday saying to the family, 'it was chinese new year on monday you know?'.

Dd came home from playschool with seven lucky choc coins in a little red bag she'd made. She told me she'd had swish rolls at snack time but they were 'yucky pucky' (?!!) i said swiss rolls? They arent yucky dd! Nursery worker informed me she'd eaten spring rolls and indeed found them yucky!!

Blathers i just cant imagine a boy. I think when you have a child your mind replicates the experiences that you've already had doesnt it. And all the talks of football, knights, car type parties??!! Cant imagine it. And they skid on their knees at discos!!!!!

Your DD's nursery are "doing" chinese new year very thoroughly - My DC bounced into school on Monday saying "Happy New Year" and got blank looks

Boys are so much more straightforward than girls . That said, I think we got lucky with DS's year, as the boys in DD's year are a flipping nightmare a bit boisterous at parties (and allegedly at school).

Glad it's making someone smile!

We did it today. I printed off a "Happy New Year" sign and a couple of big red dragons and the children coloured dragon masks which we hung above the table. I managed to get red place mats earlier too which at least distinguished it from a normal dinner. We had spring rolls and tempura prawns to start, followed by vegetable rice, shiitake noodles and golden 'festive' chicken, then griddled bananas with ice cream, butterscotch sauce and sesame seeds and then had a fortune cookie.

After finishing all that, DS asked "What's next"

It's a good job I'd eaten nothing but fruit all day as that lot used up my entire WW points allowance for today!

DH has missed the lot as he's doing Disiater Recovery today and isn't home yet. DD has eaten approximately half a spring roll little madam She scoffs ice cream in restaurants but for some reason won't eat it at home

DW, we found out what each of our babies was going to be at the 20 week scan so I guess I had another 20 weeks to prepare myself :)

You did more child-input than I managed, Blathers!

DrsW we didn't didn't find out gender on either of ours - but I can't actually remember having a girls name ready for DS, and we certainly didn't have a boys name ready for DD...

DH refused to even discuss names until we'd had the 20 week scan as he said it saved 50% of the arguing :)

We really struggled with DS. DD's name came to me a few days after the scan and nothing else seemed right after that. I definitely knew before the scan with both of them though. Not sure how.

Wow blathers that all sounds fantastic!!! Even more so that it was just for the kids!! Thats made me really hungry. Sounds brilliant. You and stealth have done so well.

I really feel like this one is a girl. I def 'knew' with dd and i feel similar this time but dd is so so desperate for a sister i think she throws me off. Oh well not long to wait now.

I think I did OK with the food. Just got to get the decorating improved for next year.

DH ended up having his reheated when he got home.

It'll be interesting to see if you've guessed right about the baby. How long until we you find out now?

6th feb blathers. So less than 2 weeks now. Dont worry i'll use dh's iphone to tell you all then I'm picturing the hospital stay spa break.

Yes, the sooner we know, the sooner we can start coming up with ideas for the Christening

stealth the cake recipe just arrived, thank you so much! It doesn't look too difficult so I'm quite excited about making it (although wtf is sugarpaste? )

sugarpaste = roll out icing. aka Regalice. Like this.

(glad it made it, BTW - sorry, it had been around the country a few times in my handbag along with the cheques I was supposed to post before I got around to getting stamps )

great, thanks

no worries, I still have a couple of christmas cards in my handbag that I need to post

I found a birthday card in my bag the other day. The persons birthday was New Years Eve!! Oops

Booking DS's party today then I can order the invites and aprons. I'm thinking I might paint each of the boys names on them. Torn between letting them decorate the rest as an activity while the pizza cooks and thinking it's too messy and long winded for what might only take 10 minutes.