Cat Birthday Party

• Posted on 26th July 2012
• in Cakes and bakes, Children's Crafts, Sewing
• by catherine

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It was my big girl’s 4th birthday a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was about time I blogged it! In the run up to the big day I became somewhat obsessed with all the amazing children’s party ideas there are floating around in cyberspace. I especially loved the ideas in Amy’s Circus Party (While wearing Heels) and Emma’s Cowboy Party (Lulu Loves).

My big girl decided she wanted a cat party, so I then began trawling Pinterest for cat ideas and I (somewhat rashly) let her choose the cake she wanted from the gorgeous selection of cat cakes on there. She decided on this one and I did my best to recreate it!

As it turned out, we ended up having the party in two parts; a family do on Sunday and her Pre-School friends one day in the week after Pre-school had finished. (You can tell it was my first proper kids’ party – I’ll know better next time!) It ended up being a bit of a marathon event and I needed a darn sight more than a cup of tea by the end.

When the kids arrived, they were given cat ears, which I made by sewing together triangles of pretty pink fabric with smaller felt triangles for the inner ear. I then sewed these onto pink headbands I found cheaply on eBay. They had their faces painted to look like cats. Ahh… soo sweet!

The next thing the kids did was to decorate party boxes to look like cats. I thought I was super clever by sticking double sided tape in every location the children would need to stick things, but hadn’t banked on them not being able to peel off the backing paper, or peeling the whole lot off and taking half of the box with it; but with a certain amount of mad running around by my wonderful adult helpers, we got there in the end.

I thought it would be fun for the kids to start with an empty box and gradually collect bits to put in it as we played each game. The first game we played was hunt the mouse. I made about a million (it felt like…) white and milk chocolate mice using a silicone mould I found on ebay. We hid them in the girls bedrooms upstairs to spread the action around and make it more of a ‘hunt’. It also meant we could have them hidden beforehand without fear of them being discovered too early.On the Sunday I blacked out the windows and gave the children Mickey and Minnie Mouse torches I bought cheaply on ebay to find their mice.

We then played a twist on the old ‘Doughnuts on a string’ game and had the children eat a fish from a line without using their hands. I baked a batch of biscuits cut into fish with a cookie cutter and made ‘eye’ holes in them with a large straw. we strung these up on string for the children to eat.

Naturally, we also played ‘Pin the tail on the Cat’, Pass the mouse (where the children get a prize if they are holding the mouse when the music stops) and pass the parcel. I found some bird warblers on ebay that we used to play with when I was a child and the children had fun dipping them into a bowl of water to fill them up and making them warble.

With the Pre-school friends we decorated cupackes, theoretically as cats, although some ended up a little more abstract than others! I cut strawberry laces into short lengths for whiskers, then gave the kids jelly beans, chocolate drops and jelly diamonds for noses, eyes and ears.

As we had the party in two parts, I made a small second cake for the Pre-school friends, and my big girl requested a Hello Kitty cake:

I made chocolate cat lollies with a Wilton chocolate mould (again, from eBay) and mouse and fish biscuits with cookie cutters. I also found party blowers with a cat theme on eBay, but (fortunately) forgot to give these to the children! They made plenty of noise without them…

 

Lastly, I made these little thank you cards using PicMonkey which I LOVE. Play with it if you’ve never tried it! Now all I have to do is persuade my big girl to write her name 26 times…

 

Tags: Cakes, cat party, Childrens craft, party, sewing