Birthday Party!

At the weekend it was someone specials first ever birthday party!  Naturally that meant the bunting and balloons had to come out!

It wouldn't be a proper birthday party without balloons on the gatepost!

I love these marbled balloons from the pound shop!  They don't look very promising in the bag but once you blow them up they look lovely.

More bunting, you really can never have too much in my opinion!

Cheerful top hats.

Pretty butterfly buns.

Some personalised bunting.

This bunting was recycled from my surprise baby shower. 

Even the hall didn't escape buntingification!

A very happy birthday boy!

Unfortunately my massive hair is obscuring the birthday boy in this action cake shot!

This is the inside of the cake, it was rather more massive than I had intended.  The bottom layer is banana, the middle layer is banana and peanut butter and the top layer is banana and nutella.  It was lovely even if I say so myself!

Everyone was so generous, now I just have to find somewhere to put all this!

Handmade Mother's Day

This year, inspired by Junkaholique's amazing handmade Christmas presents, I am trying to make as many presents handmade as possible. I'm not doing too badly, with a few birthdays under my belt so far I have made a variety of things including some moisturiser and bath salts, but I've always had a bit of 'proper' present like a voucher or something as well.  For Mother's Day I decided that I would just give homemade things so I made a selection of bits and pieces for my mum and my mother in law.  I went with two different soaps, some bath milk and some chocolates....

For the soap I made two different scents - Rose & Vanilla and Jasmine & Rose Geranium.  I had dried my Valentine's Day Roses in the oven and added them to the soap but they lost their lovely deep red colour.  I bought translucent shea butter melt and pour soap so it should be nice and moisturising but I think I might try the opaque version the next time as I think it might look nicer! I wrapped each of the soaps in some greaseproof paper and then made a little card sleeve to go over the top.

For the Rose milk soak I used this recipe from Hello Natural, you were supposed to add red food colouring to make it a light pink colour but I could only find gel food colouring and it just didn't cut the mustard!  I think it still looks pretty nice though.  I got the little glass jars from the poundshop!

For the chocolates I used my new favourite truffle recipe!  They are the same ones I made for my valentines day chocolate box and they were equally as delicious this time round.

A close up of the soap packaging.  I was rather proud of this!

All in all I was pretty happy how it all turned out, I packaged it in a gift bag with some tissue paper and I think it looked lovely.  There were no complaints from the mothers anyway! 

I am now quite addicted to making homemade soap and bath things.  It is incredibly fun and satisfying, I strongly recommend having a look at all the lovely recipes and ideas over at hello natural.