Party animals

I've been a little party preoccupied this last week.

This little lady is nearly five and to celebrate we had a 'Pet Party' on the weekend.

My little kitten with the doggy balloons (idea courtesy of Martha)

We spent the morning setting up and getting ready for our 15 small guests to arrive, here my gang are before it all began: a small black and white birthday kitten, Mr purple-tailed rat, a pink and white frilly rabbit and a long and slinky black cat.

The door bell rang before we could get a family shot!!

Once the guests arrived and ventured through the personalised cardboard kennel Miss G's dad created, we played some musical animal statues where we galloped like horses (and unicorns), flapped like chickens, waddled like ducks, pounced like kittens, flew like parrots, bounced like bunnies and barked like dogs.

Testing the entry kennel out before the big day!

Then it was onto parachute games with soft toy dogs on top that we put into the wash cycle, and some cat and mouse.

'Washing' the puppies proved a big success

We played pin the bow on the kitty using an amazing personalised cat poster made by wonderful Wendy.

A cat, green parrot and unicorn waiting for their turn.

We also played 'Doggy Bingo' using game sheets I made up and laminated.
Believe it or not I found 18 'famous' dogs, largely from kids literature!
How many can you name??

Apart from doing the fabulous painted cat, Wendy made this amazing costume for Master O - definitely the costume of the day, it was incredible.
Even better, he loved it and wore it all day and was warm and snug, as it was a cold afternoon.

Feathers of various shades sewn very cleverly onto a hoodie to make this fabulous green parrot

Wendy shows some of the construction method on her blog if you wanted to have a go at making one for your small person.

In full flight

This little kitten is much better at having Happy Birthday sung to her than she used to be and embraced being the centre of attention with joy this time!

A pet cake of course!

She wanted a very simple cake this time around - so I decided to let the surprise lie within.
I know, I know, the old rainbow layered cake is hardly new or original, hundreds of versions having been rendered on Pinterest and on blogs the world over.

But the thing I hadn't considered is while they are 'old hat' to me - the girls hadn't really seen one.
There were exclaims of delight when watching Masterchef not long ago when the girls saw the inside of a rainbow layer cake and so my mind was made up to make one.

A rainbow of colour on the inside.

It's a very simple cake to make - there is just a little time and planning to get the layers made, and of course assembled in the correct order, which I knew Miss A would be checking!!

Not much was left as you can see!!

Her actual birthday is still to come so I will save my birthday post to her until then.

And I will give you the rundown on the party bags and the like in another post.