Akshara wanted a Candy Theme for her 8th birthday party. This time though, with Advika around, it was difficult to do all the elaborate planning which we usually do. So, it was a last minute rush to get all the ideas and decorations ready for the party. The presence of my BIL & his wife, Rajaram’s mom helped a lot to get things done on time. Rajaram of course contributed by staying away

The ideas were split into decorative items, menu items (that which can be consumed), return gifts and wearables.

We made candy necklaces. This was made using a satin ribbon and tying up candies on them to resemble a necklace. I wasn’t sure whether the boys would fancy wearing a necklace, so i made a bow-tie for them. Gems has a 10 rupee long packet. A black satin ribbon was used to tie by pinching it at the center to resemble a bow-tie.

We created an arch with couple of cardboard boxes and some chart paper. The candies were made by rolling coloured cellophane paper on thin bottles. The lollipops were made by sticking coloured paper strips on circular pieces of cardboard and rolling up newspapers to make the stick.

I made a simple chocolate bouquet by sticking various long chocolates onto a circular thermocol piece placed in a vase. We also made candy skirts for barbie dolls. The candies were chosen based on the colour of the dress.

I wanted to make many things for the kids to munch on. We stuck coloured jujubes on a stick and then put them up on a thermocol decoration to resemble jujube kebabs. I had also bought cooking chocolate bars and then using a smiley mould, made smiley chocolate lollypops.

We made vanilla muffins and put a candy on top of each of them. Using gingerbread man cutters, i made cookies. Going with the colourful theme, we put a small amount of assorted gems in a small cup and topped it off with strawberry cotton candy.

For the return gifts, we included a small glass jar filled with various types of candies and a satin ribbon for a bow. The first idea i got when planning for this party was to make a train. We made one by stacking a kit-kat and a five star for the body, hershey’s kisses for the steam spout, glucovita bolts to make the circular section of the engine, coffee bite for the back and stuck together with a cellotape to bring in the brown colour. For the wheels, we originally had thought gold coin chocolates, but we couldn’t get enough of them. Then, jim jam biscuits were used for the wheels.

What’s a birthday party without games? We had many small games, the prizes for which were, of course, chocolates and candies.

“Monogram” – A design with one or more letters, mostly the initials of a name, used as an identifying mark.

It was Advika’s first birthday party and I wanted to come up with customised return gifts for the kids.I thought of making monogram picture frames with kid friendly designs with the first letter of each kid’s name. The easier way would have been to get them done online through some print shop, but then i wanted to completely customise it to my interest and hence decided to do them myself. I started off with the basic raw materials like card stock, flashy stickers, buttons etc. It was fun creating my own designs , letting my imagination run wild with all the scrap material that I had at home. The result was quite satisfactory and I got them box framed.

Monogrammed initials are not something new but have been around for centuries. History suggests that a ruler in a particular period used to stamp the coins with his initials for authentication purposes. It has also been widely used by artisans, craftsmen to put their initials on their piece of work.
So, what are you waiting for? Get yourself monogrammed and make your identity seen for ages

‘Bib Necklace’? What’s that, exclaimed Rajaram!

I then had to explain to him that it’s nothing but a necklace which is huge like a bib and usually worn with a low neck evening gown. There is more to a bib necklace than it just being an accessory. Bib necklaces have been prevalent right from the period of Cleopatra to Victoria to Alexandra to Elizabeth ..and finally have found their way to my princesses:) It’s also interesting to note that the intricate design and the vibrant colours of the beaded bib necklaces worn by the Maasai tribe in Kenya not only add to their beauty but also make a statement about the person wearing it. I never thought that a colour in our accessory would mean so much, like red for bravery, white for peace, blue for the energy & sky, orange for hospitality, green for health and black representing people and their struggles.

I came up with the idea of making bib necklaces for Akshara’s fashion themed birthday party. Well,I didn’t have organic beads, ivory or heavy metals to make them and hence i resorted to simple materials like felt and gemstones that the little girls would adore. I chose to create my own designs and the glue gun came in handy for the sticking part. As a final touch, i tagged a piece of satin ribbon on the edges of the bib necklace so that it could embrace the pretty necks.

5th Birthday Party (Theme: Princesses and Pirates)

Princess and Pirate, a beautiful and deadly combination by itself

—Pirate hats, swords and masks for the boys
The hats were made using black chart paper, feathers, glossy tapes.
The swords were rolled out of newspapers with a coating of silver paint which gave a real metal effect. Egg cartons used for the cross-guard.
—Princess crowns,magical wands for the girls
Pink handmade paper was used to make the crowns with satin ribbons and some embellishments.
The wand was a simple one made with a chopstick and a pink star.

—Princess and Pirate round badges were made to order after some customization with names of the kids.

—Pink(strawberry) and blue(citrus blue) drink for the kids.

—Sweet wands.

—Princess theme cake, Disney princesses and the Pirate faces.
The Disney princesses were made using small cake moulds (for the gown part) and the figurines (from Disney magical moment doll set) inserted into them to get the real look. Of course some frosting and icing in the appropriate colour was done to give the final glow.
Pirate faces were made using the desired icing on banana muffins.

—A mini treasure hunt for the boys.
A map was crafted by pouring some tea extract and burning the edges to give a real old, torn look.
The treasure hunt took them to a nearby book shop and from there they had to go to a friend’s place to collect a small pouch of chocolate gold coins

—Return gifts for the Pirates.
Wheat flour storage bag converted into a pirate rucksack with lot of goodies like magnetic compass,book about pirates,kaleidoscope etc
—Return gifts for the Princesses.
Pink paper bags with items like princess key chains,photo frames,jewel sets etc

—Dairy milk chocolate bar with customized wrapper

4th Birthday Party (Theme:The Teddy)

This was the year when Akshara started choosing a theme for her birthday party. She had developed a craze for teddies and that is how we ended up having a teddy themed party. We had ordered a Hawaiian bear design for the cake.

—Fun food items.

Yummy Honey bees with the concept of “Winnie and honey”

The recipe was quite simple : mix some marie biscuit powder, milk powder and milkmaid to get the body and use slit almonds for the wings. Finally top it with some designs using Hersheys chocolate syrup.

Honey loop cones – ice cream cones filled with honey loops

Teddy pancakes

—Return gifts
We had planned for some assorted customized gifts like popsicle photo puzzles , photo puzzles piled in a jar, photo frames etc. Unfortunately I missed talking a pic of them.

3rd Birthday party (Theme: Nursery Rhymes)

Akshara used to like rhymes a lot and so I came up with the idea of having a party based on it.

—Humpty Dumpty cake..If you have a closer look at the cake you will notice that Humpty Dumpty (with a broken leg) already had fallen by the time we brought him home from the cake shop (Thanks to Rajaram for this!)

—Teddy bear biscuits...featuring the rhyme “Teddy Bear Teddy Bear turn around”

—Return Gifts.
We had ordered customized story books for the smaller kids. One of the character in the story would be Akshara and the rest of the characters would be her friends themselves.
For the older kids we had ordered customized school bag tags with their photos on it.

2nd Birthday Party (Theme:Farm animals)

Akshara used to be obsessed with animals and at that age of two she used to call out and make their sounds whenever she spotted them.So we decided to have a farm animals inspired theme party.

—Farm house with farm animals cake.

—Made to order farm animal cookies.

—Home made return gift bags.
It was fun making bags out of charts and satin ribbons and having Akshara’s hand stamped on them.The contents in the bag were quite assorted mostly some stuff we had bought from Malaysia & Indonesia (best places to buy fancy things)

I also tried to do something similar to the Google Doodles with the number 35.

Akshara wrote the text inside the card, almost took as long as the rest of the card!