The One Party: Cake & Favours

Figured the account of Naomi's birthday would not be complete without some pictures of the cake!

How cute (and pink) is that huh!

This was actually a cake I had very little to do with. I ordered this cake through Amanda, who generously made Naomi a gift of it. She suggested the pink, and I asked for the stars to fit in with the theme, sent across some images of cakes which I liked, and requested a number "1" and a figure of a little girl. And this was the result! Looking at the little girl, I realised that Amanda must have sent the baker the picture of Naomi in her Elly red bunnies cheongsam as a model.

It was certainly a wonderful focal point for the festivities.

For the record, it was also yummy!

The last thing I want to document are the party favours. I must admit, party favours are one of my favourite things. I go to extraordinary lengths to get something appropriate to give away. Something that I like and would love to receive myself and consistent with the theme. My husband completely does not understand my obsession with this but he's given up trying to talk me out of it.

For this party, I decided to just give one good item instead of a party bag of smaller items. I came across "How to Catch a Star" by Oliver Jeffers and thought I'd found the PERFECT gift. Except that I just could not find enough copies. I called all the bookstores, asked them to check with suppliers, but in the end, I could only find about 6 copies of the book. I looked up online bookshops and considered whether it was worth it to order and pay international shipping for the books, but concluded regretfully that it was not. Then I came across "Draw me a Star" by Eric Carle and decided that that would also work for older kids.

In the end, I handed out copies of either "Draw me a Star", "How to Catch a Star" or the "How to Catch a Star Drawing and Colouring Book" to each family of little ones.

And to tie everything back to the theme, I made little bookmarks which served as thank you cards, based on the same design as the birthday invitations. These were printed on photo paper, which incidentally is my favourite thing to print on for parties because it's stiff and glossy. I know DD thought the bookmarks were a waste of time, but things like these make me happy.

That's it for Naomi's birthday! As usual it was stressful getting everything done, but oh-so-worth-it in the end. Now I'm thinking of my next big project...