Shirley's party advice part 3 - in which Shirley may make a guest appearance

[stealthsquiggle]

We appear to have filled another thread

Wow! Stealth sent us the most amazing parcel today. Not only did she put in a dragon tailed bag for DD but there was a Dino-dragon for both DD and DS too!!

They adore them. DD looked so cute running round the lounge this evening with her bag on, stopping occasionally to stick out her bottom and wag her tail and the 2 Dino-dragons have had whole conversations and an adventure at the kitchen table under DD's watch

Both are now tucked up in bed with their new owners, tired after their travels and happy after having had a good, dragon-y bedtime story.

No wonder your parties are so popular Stealth, those are some amazing treats you've made for your guests. Thank you so much for ours xx

it's lovely to send dragons to such a good home.

Party business is going to have to ramp up to support your about-to-grow Lakeland habit.

I've already decided that I need the scented clay christmas trees to use as gift tags for Father Christmas' presents this year!

Being the Christmas professional that he is FC always wraps the DC's presents using personalised tree decorations as tags so that they can hang them on the tree on Christmas day and amass their own little collection of decorations for when they have houses of their own.

Right, it's spurred me into action to get DD's Rainbow Elephants party sorted.

What do I need?

Evening all. Just sticking head in to say hello. Wish I'd seen the dino-dragon antics that sounds fab. What a lovely gesture stealth!

Pascal is finished, the invites are having their final tweaks tonight, I've been butting out a zillion sun emblems to stick on my cheap bunting and tomorrow I have to do a trial run of a pascal party blower. I need to get a hairdresser to come to the party, do you think I'm better off asking at the local college?

Blathers what have you got in place so far?

College would be a great idea, I think.

I made one tail last night - quite easy, in the end. The wings look harder and the bloody pattern is still not big enough, even printed on A3 at the office so I am going to have to draw it - and not 100% sure I have enough bondaweb for 2 pairs . I need to work out how the games are going to work - I have lots of stuff and ideas, and no definite plan.

I'm the same. Although at least DD's party is a bit further off :)

The hall and the bouncy castles are booked and that's about as far as I've got so far

Shush, Blathers, I have got ages..

Can we help? We could source stuff maybe? What's left to do?

That's very sweet of you, Blathers. I think/hope most of the sourcing is done. What's left:

1 tail, 2 pairs of wings
Menu plan and making it all
CAKE!!!

plan for games. I have ideas of:

Dragon craft. I need to make one or 2 samples, and print some colouring pages.

Dragon hoopla (have inflatable dragons, and hoops. The one dragon I have blown up has a leak . That is a job for friend when he arrives - it will make a change from fixing the DC's bikes)

Dragon egg and spoon race (maybe involving tails and wings? I can't decide. If not, what do we play with the tails and wings?) - I have plastic eggs, and we have large metal serving spoons.

Pass the parcel (needs to be wrapped)

Bossy Dragon says (Simon says, with DS's bossy boots dragon hand puppet in charge)

..how many more (or less) do I need, do you think?

Oh, and pin the flames on the dragon. I have a big dragon sticker, and need to get DC to paint a background at the weekend.

I think that sounds like enough. Racing around like loons and colouring should fill plenty of time. Tails and wings for the egg and spoon race definitely.

Could the kids wrap the pass the parcel? It doesn't have to be neat, it's just going to get ripped apart anyway.

Hi hi cheebies, i've been to baby group

stealth do you need bondaweb, could this be a time when you cheat with fabric glue to cut time or does it go against your inner seamstress? All the games sound perfect but im sure you meant 'dragon egg and spoon' surely? Honestly that all sounds perfect. With the pass the parcel use newspaper til the last layer so you're not having to think about it til the end layer. Better still dont put sweets in the layers and tell them thats how it was in our day!!!

Is dh about ir working away? Could he help a bit?

What did I say, if not 'dragon egg and spoon', DW - that's what I meant, anyway. My plan is to put a bouncy egg (of which we have lots, courtesy of Easter Bunny) into each larger plastic egg, so that they have a bit of weight to them (and an awkward 'wobble' [evil cackle]

I think bondaweb is the shortcut, TBH, DW (well, you still have to sew them, but that's easy enough). If I run out, then I will have to go and get something, and if fabric glue is slightly less extortionate cheaper than more bondaweb, that's what I will get. Either is an hour's round trip, though

DH is around for some of the time, away for b'day itself (big trouble) and probably rightly cautious of my control-freak rage if he does something wrong but not cautious enough to actually listen and do it the way I want him to in the first place. He will do some stuff though - I need to remind him that he has to come up with a playlist that will meet with Madam's approval (= Radio 1 playlist minus anything with explicit lyrics). Wonderful, amazing, life-saving friend and her very very useful DH are coming, but not until the Saturday afternoon, and they do have their own almost-2yo to contend with.

Dragon hands have arrived and need to be added to the list.

Must make list and decide running order.

I haven't seen them for a few week DW

Did you get a change to talk to Sis about feeding? I totally forgot to get her to ring you

Stealth did say Dragon egg and spoon, it was me that missed it off.

Ahh yes so you did stealth apologies. I'm sat outside a gymnastics class now waiting on dd1 and missed it in my skim reading.

Didnt get to talk to dsis blathers other than 'the last time i saw you that baby was still up your jumper!" the shame that she's 6 months old and mine's cruising. Feels like i went about three weeks ago.

Tonight i must get my father in law to print the flyyn rider posters etc and pluck up the courage to ask dh's hairdresser if she can do the party before i approach the college. I'm too scared in case she thinks im crazy.

Gah. Stupid distracting wastes of time. DS wanted some silver-grey fabric for a school thing. I decided to dye some of the cavas I had. £6 on dye, and I ended up with really dark grey. I tried to bleach it back a bit, and now Ihave blotchy purple and itchy sore hands from the bleach.

I have just ordered some canvas in exactly the right colour for the same as I paid for the bloody dye in the first place.

I am inclined to do stuff for him ATM though because yesterday, without saying a word to me, he went and saw the teacher who runs the after school activity which would mean he would miss DD's birthday tea and asked if he could please possibly miss next week as otherwise his DSis would only have Mummy to have tea with on her birthday. Teacher agreed, and I ended up feeling all sniffy about what a nice big brother he is...

Aw, how cute is that! Such a lovely thing for him to do.

I can't believe your all still here.

Last year you helped me plan my daughters 4th carebear party and that time has come around again. I was searching threads for inspiration as dd1 wants a Gruffalo party and I came across the old thread where TheDoctorsWife46 planned an amazing woodland party.

I have spent the evening shamelessly stealing ideas (grass tablecloth, herbs etc) and then I found you all again! Which is very handy as I have questions like where did the toadstools come from, how did you make owl ice cream and how did you create the green balloon canopy?

I'm going to make Jane Ashers Gruffalo cake, as I have been assured on another thread that its quite straightforward. It will need to be!

Would appreciate any advice on the Gruffalo party!

Cakepops steal away no problem.
Minitoadstools were off ebay im sure, they were on little wires. I put them amongst the herbs etc. big ones i made from craft paper.
Balloon canopy, blow all your balloons up as normal then get a needle and cotton and just thread them all together on a string, put the needle through the knotted neck part obviously. Then you'll have a long ballon necklace the you only then need pin to ceiling at either end. The beauty of it is you can then pull the balloons along the thread to space them evenly.

Owl icecream i put a feather in it but i also did scrambled snake jelly with it, green jelly smushed up with those long jelly snakes in it. Baker ross has a lot of woodland themed crafts in at the moment if that helps too.

I got a big gruffalo floor puzzle and got kids to hunt the pieces and complete the puzzle and not forgetting the reading of the actual story.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004OD5Y8C/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

It was these but there are unavailable. I dont think i've kept mine as not seen them when i moved.

www.ditsydodo.co.uk/gisela-graham-christmas-3-x-toadstool-pic-bunch-ties.html

Here's some!

I'm secretly hoping dd2 asks for the gruffalo when she's older as she was born when the snow storm hit, so she'll get the gruffalo's child and i can do a "DW46 gruffalo party - the sequel" but a snowy themed one rather than woodland.

DD was born the day it started snowing too. If you don't do it, maybe I will after Ive done pinching your rainbow party idea