Bring out the bunting, it's party time!..........

How do you keep seven 7 year olds quiet for 40 minutes? Give them chocolate bars to decorate!

Yesterday we had Jack's birthday party. His birthday falls in the middle of summer so we always hold his party when school starts again. Jack decided after visiting the Roald Dahl museum in summer (worth a visit by the way) that he would like to do chocolate decorating at his party this year. It worked a treat! We let them decorate a small bar and then eat it as a "trial", and then they did the real thing. I know the results aren't quite up to the standards of "Chocolat" but it was a great success, I'd highly recommend it, anything which keeps five 7 year old boys under control is worth trying!

We had a "pin the nose on the Gnipper" game and then played pass the parcel WITHOUT the treat in each layer - I was playing dangerously! I'd written a funny message on each layer and it was probably the best pass the parcel I've witnessed yet. The children all got into the spirit and were so excited at each wrapper coming off they totally forgot about the treats.

The cake theme this year was pirate ship. As usual in my totally disorganised way I'd left it until the last minute ie. Sunday night to even start thinking about it. 2 hours and rather a lot of wine later it was still in the oven looking a bit frazzled to say the least. An early rise on Monday, a mess like this...............(I've never been a tidy cook!)

and a few pounds of butter icing later we had this.......................

Not bad for an amateur, ok, ok so it's not very ship like, more like a box with sails but it did the job. I topped it all off by setting fire to one of the sails on the way up the stairs and entered the kitchen blowing frantically, singing "Happy Birthday" and grinning in a slightly manic way all at the same time! The party guests weren't too sure if it was supposed to be on fire so looked on with a mixture of terror and excitement! We then had the mad rush to get as many malteser cannonballs and Cadburys' fingers planks as possible which left the ship looking rather wrecked!

I knew the whole event had gone down well when Jack, who is a master of understatement said before he went to bed tonight "Ta for the cake and party, it was really good". Makes it all worthwhile, until next time!..............