{#ShareAdvent - "Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store"}

Today's #ShareAdvent prompt comes from The Grinch...

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Hear, Hear!!

I love this time of year because (the majority of) people are enjoying themselves, smiling, laughing and spending lots of time with family, friends and other special persons ;-)

We had a festive afternoon tea party at the weekend, which I'm going to share in a separate blog post as I've managed to check off another item off my 35 at 35 list! Yay!!

But it got me thinking of other ideas for having festive parties...

It's National Christmas Jumper Day tomorrow, so why not throw an 'Ugly Sweater' party! This could be purely for the grown ups, but would equally work well for a family party I think! If you were going all out, you could even invite Social and Cocktail over and I'm sure they could easily whip up some festive cocktails that would suit the occasion! I'm putting this on my to-do-list for next year!

Or perhaps a stylish hot chocolate party? I'm a big fan of hot chocolate!! {image source}

Looks amazing!!!! Proper hot chocolate!

Serve hot chocolate in little glass milk bottles dressed up to look like snowmen... tres cute and perfect for a family soiree! 

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My last suggestion is a Christmas movie night, with popcorn in clear plastic cups, again to look like snowmen! Ideal for a family night in...

CreativeKidSnacks.com {image source}

{Host Your Own Cocktail Party}

When I was asked if I would host a cocktail party in my own house with Social and Cocktail, I didn't need to think twice! I love a good cocktail and I love to host parties...

Basically, Social and Cocktail will provide the cocktail bartender, a mobile bar, cocktail ingredients, glassware, ice etc and will make amazing cocktails in your home for you and your guests.

This is the bar!!!

After agreeing on a date, I was then tasked with selecting 5 cocktails from their menu, which they've helpfully categorised into Dessert, Vodka, Rum, Classics and Non-Alcoholic.

I picked:

• Raspberry Mojito - Raspberry liqueur, white rum, lime juice, soda water, mint, sugar & raspberries
• Passionfruit Daiquiri - Rum, Passoa, Lime juice & sugar syrup
• Cosmopolitan - citrus vodka, Triple Sec, cranberry juice, lemon and sugar syrup
• Toblerone Martini
• Caipirinha - originated in Brazil where they are regarded as the national cocktail and contains Cachaca, sugar & lime

On the night, Evan & Damien arrived with Marc the photographer about an hour before the guests were due to set up the bar.

It was a bit like Transformers... and this is what the box became:

I had decided to use a scoring system for each cocktail for a bit of fun... so we each rated the cocktails in four different categories, Appearance, Smell, Initial Taste and Overall Impression, giving them a score out of 5.

I had a few moustaches dotted about the place.... we're supporting Movember!

Evan doing his thing behind the bar!

The Toblerone Martini... really creamy and was so nice! (spot the tache on my son's baby photo in the background!!)

Enjoying my passion fruit dacquiri

Katie had a shot and made her own cocktail...

Half way through we took a break as I had made a big pot of chilli which was warm in the slow cooker and I served with nachos, guacamole, sour cream and salsa. Just as well we all ate, as the evening wore in it proceeded to get messy! By the end of the night quite a few of us were playing Dance Central on the XBox!! Great fun.

So for the scoring...

Katie's comments were the funniest, the Toblerone Martini appealed to her oestrogen and for overall impression for the raspberry mojito, "marry me" was in her notes!!!

Here are the cocktails in order of preference with their total score *drum roll please*

1. Passionfruit Daiquiri - 84%
2. Raspberry Mojito - 81% 
3. Caipirinha - 77%
4. Cosmopolitan - 77%
5. Toblerone Martini - 65%

The Toblerone Martini score surprises me as I really enjoyed it, but I guess it's not to everyone's taste.

Our only real suggestion would be that the order the drinks are served could have been given a bit more thought as we started with the creamy dessert cocktail, whereas it might have been nicer to put this in the middle of the other more alcoholic ones to mix things up a bit. 

But all in all we were thoroughly impressed.

The cocktails were all lovely - as you can see from the scores above - and everyone was uber impressed with the service.

I would definitely consider hiring a bar in the future. For £25 per person for 5 cocktails, you can't really go wrong. It's less that what you'd pay if you were in a bar in town and yet you don't even need to leave your house! Fantastic given the freezing weather and the wait that you can sometimes have in a cold taxi queue! Evan even cleared up after himself and at the end, the glasses, bar etc was all packed up and away it went. Very professional and I'm seriously really impressed. Great value for money I reckon.

The Social and Cocktail bartenders are all professionally trained and they focus on three key aims - service, mixology and entertainment. Evan was brilliant and we were all really impressed! He delivered on all three :-)

We were suffering the next day... so a cooked breakfast was in order!!

We enjoyed a cocktail party at home free of charge in exchange for this review. Opinions, as always, are my own and are honest.

{Daughter's 2nd Birthday - a Painting Party}

For my daughter's first birthday party, I hosted an afternoon tea party for family & friends. This year I decided on a smaller affair - a little party for her cousins (six children under 5 years of age!). One of her favourite things to do is paint, so what better than a painting party!

I got lots of inspiration from Pinterest and put together a few ideas.

{The decorations}
Coloured streamers
Lots and lots of brightly coloured balloons

{To eat}
A selection of rolls
Cocktail sausages, crisps & nibbles
Strawberries & grapes
Jelly & cream
Iced biscuits
Paint palette cupcakes

{The cake}
A plain madeira sponge which the kiddies 'painted' with food colouring

{The games}
Painting a canvas using paper plate stencils
Pass the parcel - each kiddie received a packet of pencils and a box of paints for the winner
Musical statues

Here are the pics...:

Presents for the birthday girl 

Busy baking - thank you to Auntie Ali

Streamers from Party Delights (where I also bought some brightly coloured plates, cups & bowls)

Cupcake paint palettes inspired by this pin. I got the wooden palettes from eBay.

Creating their masterpieces (I managed to find cheap canvases from a local cash & carry - they were £2 each). I cut out stencils on paper plates of stars and hearts which I drew using cookie cutter shapes. I was inspired by A Little Learning for Two for this :-)

Note the dust sheets everywhere! We were hoping to be in the garden for this activity, but the weather had other plans!!

Jelly and whippy cream with sprinkles - yum!

Inspired by Sprinkle of Glitter, I recreated some milk bottles with sprinkles and heart straws. 

Sorry for the absolutely rubbish photograph, but you get the idea!

After lunch we then 'painted' the birthday cake with food colouring

The finished cake, complete with sparkler!

My daughter's finished canvas.

The party was a great success. There were enough activities to keep the kiddies entertained and they all left with a piece of cake and a canvas!

{Guest Post: Children's Party Ideas}

It is my littlest's birthday in just under two weeks time! Hard to believe but she's going to be two... yikes! Where did the time go?

Anyway, this guest post from Air Inflatables, a leading UK bouncy castle sales specialist, has come at a good time as it has five fun & affordable children's party ideas.

Children love to be creative and it’s hard when you’re on a budget to provide them with activities to ensure they have fun at the party, it’s particularly difficult to keep a group of children entertained for extended periods of time too – that’s where we come in!

Here are 5 creative yet affordable ideas to keep your children entertained at their party:

Egg Decoration

Egg decoration is an old favourite that doesn’t need to be confined to Easter! It’s simple and can be very cheap too. You need a pack of eggs - free range eggs are bigger and better quality but if your budget is tight then buy a pack of chef’s eggs from the supermarket, they’re very cheap and come in large quantities! Then you need to hard boil the eggs; pop them in a pan of cool water with a tablespoon of vinegar and half a teaspoon of salt in and gently bring them to the boil (this will help to avoid cracking) then boil them for around 2 minutes, take off the heat, cover and leave for approximately 12-15 minutes. Then remove the eggs from the pan and place in a bowl of ice water to cool down, cover in a container and when they’ve cooled pop them in the fridge ready for the party. All you need now are some paints, maybe some simple colours for hair and eyes, and then get the kids to paint the eggs, this could be themselves a superhero or a princess - the possibilities are endless!

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Make your own pizza

Another fun food favourite - why not get a few readymade pizza bases from the supermarket , these shouldn’t be much more than 1 or 2 pounds and as well as great value they also come with cooking instructions on the back of the pack. Spread the base with a basic sauce; we recommend passata for a tomato sauce but you could use barbeque or even pesto. Then cover with the toppings you desire, this could be ham, pepperoni, mushrooms or mozzarella. You can literally let the kid’s imaginations run wild with this activity and you don’t need to worry about lunch either as they have arranged it for you!

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Pot a plant

We love this idea, all you need is a bag of soil (or soil from the garden) a pack of plastic party cups and some seeds. For our example we’ve picked a French breakfast radish which look great and don’t need transferring to a garden. Get your plastic cup and fill it with soil, leave an inch space at the top to avoid overflow then place a radish seed a half inch deep. Let the children know to water the plants a little every couple of days (not to put too much in) and after around 30 days the radish should poke out from the soil and be ready to eat - easy, simple and fun!

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Bouncy castles

Bouncy castles can seem to be a more expensive item at a party but we’ve found that if you have a search of your local dealers you can pick them up from as little as £45 for a couple of hours or £50 for the day which is a huge bargain considering the amount of time the children will spend on it. We think that a couple of hours is great for working up and appetite for lunch or towards the end of the party so they are ready to relax in front of a film before their parents pick them up. 

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Pencil Stationery

Another great arts and crafts activity is to buy a big pack of pencils online, it’s really simple to get bulk packs and they aren’t too pricey either (24 pencils for £2 on eBay), then get a used plastic bottle and some PVA glue, spread the glue over the bottle and stick the pencils to it with the rubbers on the bottom and the points facing upwards (make sure they’re not sharp!) then leave the pots to dry and they can now be used as stationary holders. This is a really handy activity that gets the children a useful gift and may even get them interested in their school work!

That’s our ideas for some fun and affordable children’s party ideas; the best part of it is that you don’t even need to make party bags as they’ve made their own gifts during the day! Even though you may be faced with a lot of clearing up, we think these activities are great, but we’d also like to hear what affordable, fun and creative ideas you have too so please leave any comments below.

Watch this space to see what we did in the Glasgow Mummy house for the littlest's birthday :-)

{The Circus Is In Town!}

As you know, last weekend was my sister's (@the_grey_house) hen party. I didn't want to share up front what we had planned as I didn't want to ruin the surprise (but I had already stupidly let slip to my sister what the activity was weeks before the event anyway... oops!).

So the bridesmaids & I had planned a weekend of antics, starting with pizza & wine on the Friday night, which was a huge success. I had pre-ordered a selection of pizza and nibbles with Domino's for the 16 girls that were partaking in the weekend's activities.

£100 of Domino's

The main event was a trapeze workshop that I had booked with Glasgow's Aerial Edge. With this in mind, we themed the weekend around the circus. 

I made a few posters and circus themed bunting to decorate my living room...

...and I had ordered some balloons from a local party shop.

On the Friday night we had pizza, lots of wine and we played a few games. The first to break the ice was a drinking game called 'G'Day Bruce'. It was hilarious. With my baby brain, I really thought I would struggle, but I wasn't as bad as some of the other girls and managed to hold my own. 

If you haven't heard of it, then here are the rules:

1) Sit in a circle. The first person says 'G'day Bruce' to the player on their left, who replies 'G'day Bruce'. The first player then gestures to the third person along, saying 'Say g'day to Bruce, Bruce'.
2) The second player then turns to the third and says 'G'day Bruce'. The third player replies 'G'day Bruce', and then, as before, the second player points to the fourth saying 'Say g'day to Bruce, Bruce'.
3) This continues around the circle until someone makes a mistake, at which point they must drink and their name will change (e.g. Sheila, Kylie, Jason, Lou, Harold, Madge etc.)
4) The game gets pretty complicated as everyone's name changes and you have to remember who you're introducing!  And it pretty much goes without saying that Australian accents must be used at all times.

We then had organised a Mr & Mrs style quiz for Ali, who had to guess what her fiance had replied to each question. When she got the answer wrong, she had to down a shot of margarita (her cocktail of choice).

On the Friday night we also viewed a presentation that I had put together with photographs of Ali as she was growing up... lots of embarrassing pics! We also gave Ali a couple of gifts - her outfit for the following morning and a necklace that I had chosen from a local jewellery shop.

Silver Love Letter Necklace (my local jeweller personalised the letter with their names and wedding date)

Saturday morning we were up bright and early (although I think there were a few fuzzy heads - mainly Ali!) as the trapeze workshop started at 10am.

Ali in her ringmaster outfit

We then headed back to my house for afternoon tea and cocktails in teapots. We had another game... this time we split into teams of 3 and dressed up a member of the team as a bride using toilet roll. Here are the results:

Toilet Paper Brides!

We also presented Ali with her final gift - a photo book that her bridesmaid Linsey had designed with a load of photographs of Ali, her fiance and all their friends. We also had some tat for her to wear - the obligatory veil, sash and willy whistle!

That evening we went to eat cafe in Shawlands for dinner, more wine and then hit the local pubs and clubs for more cocktails and some dancing.

We didn't do any silly dares for the bride-to-be, but we did play one game. In keeping with the wedding poem, something old, something new, something borrowed & something blue, Ali had to kiss (peck on the cheeks!) someone old, someone new, someone borrowed & someone in blue! All very tame, especially compared to Becky's hen party! (Sorry Becky!!).

All in all the weekend was a great success and from the emails we've had from everyone that was there would suggest that everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. 

{Daughter's First Birthday Party}

I've just realised that after posting my plans for the afternoon tea party for my daughter's first birthday, I didn't post any photographs of the actual party! Silly me! So here are some of the details...

I made a number '1' applique vest for my daughter to wear:

I created a number '1' template in Word

I used this to cut a number '1' out of rose patterned fabric, which I then sewed onto a pink long-sleeved baby vest. Up close it didn't look great, but from a distance it was ok!

I had bought a very cute little ballet tutu from Sainsbury's that I teamed with the baby vest and striped tights to complete the outfit!

I also made some bunting to decorate the living room. The fabric (which I also used for the applique vest) was from Remnant Kings Curtain Warehouse.

I sewed triangles of fabric and attached them to bias binding. You can follow the tutorial I used by Homemade & Happy here. I'm going to use the bunting to decorate my daughter's bedroom, so I hadn't just made it for the party.

I made the birthday cake myself with some help from Mrs Jones, Passion in the Baking. This was part of my 35 at 35 list. I also used Ruby Delicious, who I would highly recommend, to cater for the party (I had enough to stress about!). Alison brought vintage crockery for us to use as well as bringing lots of different teas and a selection of amazing cakes, brownies, meringues... It was all lovely (I've got more photographs of the food and other details, but they're on another camera and I need to download the pics to my computer. I'll post them soon!).

Button birthday cake.

And here is the birthday girl herself:

My favourite out of the vintage tea cups (photo is a little blurry, sorry!)