Silly Old Snake, doesn’t he know?

My little man, my sweet sweet boy looooooooves The Gruffalo. His favourite book, the story he insists on every.single.night is The Gruffalo. My Mama bought my babes the movie a while back and that really solidified the relationship – between my boy & The Gruffalo that is (the one between him & his Nonna was already pretty tight!)

So, when Miss T and I were asking him in the couple of months leading up to his 2nd birthday what kind of party he’d like, he came up with a combination of Blue (he also loves blue) and The Gruffalo. I didn’t actually end up incorporating any blue because let’s face it, the only thing blue in the forest is the sky!

I had such a blast putting this party together.

We had approximately 20 kids & 35 adults in attendance. Completely crazy I know – I still don’t know how it got that large. A perfect Summers afternoon meant my vision of everyone gathering in our back yard lounging on blankets was realised.

I painted the backdrop for the table on the Friday night before the party. I’m no artist but I was so thrilled with the end result and feel like the backdrop, along with some wooden rounds I’d gathered from our local Christmas tree farm (as we bought our tree) & some Christmas tree trimmings,  really set the scene for the food table.  And then I put together a menu based on all the food references in the book which made the whole planning phase really fun.

We didn’t play games because I kind of think before three, or even four, it’s hard for little ones to really understand the concept of games, but we had a little treasure hunt for bags of Scrambled Snakes (jelly snakes) and I gathered the kids together for story time where I read “The Gruffalo” aloud to them all. That was a great way of calming them all down a little before we hit the food table.

We served:
– Owl Ice cream (Cupcakes)
– Gruffalo Crumble (individual Apple Crumbles topped with whipped cream)
– Scrambled Snake (Popcorn with jelly snakes)
– Roasted Fox (sausage rolls)
– Purple Prickle Jelly (little blackcurrant flavoured jelly shots)
– Little Mouse Droppings (chocolate covered peanuts & raisins)
– Mouse Dropping Bites (baby sized raisin scones with jam & cream)
– Poisonous Warts – Wasabi Peas
– Little Nuts
– Logpile Rolls (Asparagus Rolls)
– Purple Prickle Juice (a concoction made up of fruit juices, lemonade & Ribena)

The cake was the most fun to make – I thoroughly enjoyed my first experience of fondant modelling and creating the wee characters to sit atop the cake. I knew I wanted the cake itself to be very plain so I covered it with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  The cake was Neapolitan – layers of Chocolate, Strawberry & Vanilla cake sandwiched together with the Buttercream.  Yum!

All in all, a great day and a fun way to celebrate turning 2.