Once upon a time, birthday parties were really easy to organise. An indoor soft play booked, and all I had to worry about was the cakes. For someone like me who's prone to forgetting something or getting something wrong, it was the perfect party.

When Abby hit 7, she already had 4, 5 years worth of indoor soft play parties, so we invited a few of her friends over instead. It was really unorganised and I even forgot about the whole cake and singing part! So we decided to spend the money on her favourite food - sushi instead when she was 8, and took her to a surprise CBBC tour. Although she didn't get a party, she was absolutely delighted.

This year, she did want a party, and she had a lot more friends she wanted to invite, but we didn't want to do a swimming pool or trampoline party, so we thought that we can handle a "book a hall and hire some entertainers" one (Clay's 4th birthday was a joined one and I had a fabulous mum friend who had it all sorted). I should have known better!

Don't get me wrong, the entertainment was good, the kids I think enjoyed themselves, and I like the flexibility you get when it comes to setting up a theme. But without the extra help from my family, we wouldn't have made it. Kids at this age (8-9) are either well behaved, or very energetic, and holding the party at the end of half term didn't seem to help!

I think I'll be taking a very long break, maybe until I forgot about all the hard work, before I will think about holding another Hall + Entertainment party again. While doing that, I'll just document all the good things that happened, to remind me that it was worth it.



For the kids' birthday parties, I always try to bake a birthday cake. I will also bake cupcakes for the guests, as we aren't the fondant cake type, and trying to wrap a creamed cake in tissue is not really a very good idea.

This year's theme is Science, and kids just love messy, yucky, gloopy science stuff, hence the design for the main cake.

The base of the cake is a vanilla sponge with lemon curd buttercream. To get the toxic spillage effect, I coloured liquid glucose into green. The only problem with this is that it kept dripping off the cake, just like the sea on Clay's Batbeard cake last year:


So I had to add more at the last minute, although only half of the amount you see is left when Abby blew the candles! I still prefer it over jelly or other topping as I have more time to move it around the cake and it gives a great dripping gloop effect with the least work required.

The water inside the flask is just coloured water, but I had a delicious candy floss decorated on top for the foaming effect, which has melted after it touched the water inside during transit. It still looked evil enough I guess?



For entertainment, we were very lucky and managed to book Sublime Science fairly last minute. You might have seen them on Dragon's Den. It's not the usual birthday entertainment we see, and the kids got to do some experiments (including making their own sherbet and gooey slime!) themselves as well while being wowed. They did get a bit hyper after the sherbet and some of them kept saying "Sugar!". According to Abby, they now have a "Sugar Gang" in class because of that haha...

I'll publish a full review later this week for Sublime Science entertainment, do keep an eye out for it, especially if you have a budding scientist at home too who would love a Science themed party!




After the entertainment comes food. We served pizza, hot dogs, crisps and fruit, and the kids seem fine with it. I over-estimated the time the kids needed to eat though, luckily the hall was big enough for them to run around a bit to let go of some sugar!

We packed up a bit in between and got the cake out:


can't beat coloured flames for the extra sciencey touch!



At the end of the party, each kid get to take home a cupcake, the sherbet and slime they made, a certificate from Sublime Science saying that they made perfect slime, as well as a party bag with

glow in the dark bracelet
Jelly Belly Jelly Beans thanks to Jelly Belly Jelly Beans UK
Discovery Channel's Discovery Cosmic Sand thanks to Paladone UK

Reviews for the Jelly Belly Jelly Beans and Discovery Channel Cosmic Sand will be published within these 2 weeks as well.



Overall, although hard work, it was a successful party and Abby had great fun with her cousins and friends.

One down, another one to go. Clay has asked for a Paper Mario Color Crush themed party, errr. We'll think about that!