Hold onto your fishing hats, this is a mammoth post!

Who knew I would fall in love with fishing?!

When Sammy asked if he could have a fishing party, having never ever been fishing, about 9 months ago (Yes, he is as excited about birthday's as I am!) I thought, crumbs, I've never really seen any fishing themed party accessories but luckily for me, the very talented Stacy from Style My Party saw my tweet for ideas and came to the rescue!

I can't thank Style My Party enough for all their help providing so many of the party bits, decorations and details you will see in the photos. And if your little one would love a fishing theme, then you can head over here and purchase a lot of the things you see at our party.

I loved setting out the buffet table! I scoured our house and garage, borrowed a couple of crates and hunted in our local charity shops were I found a reel and lanterns for a couple of pounds. I found squeaky fish dog toys which the Westies will be getting for their birthday this month and came up with alternative uses for a few bits from the fishing section in The Range.

I love having games stations at parties. When you have over 30 children it's hard to make them all sit down for traditional games like pass the parcel and I find it keeps the adults occupied too, going from game to game, enjoying seeing their children having fun. I am a mean party host and don't have lots of chairs for the adults to sit on. I find you end up on your phone, waiting for the time to pass, instead of chatting with the other parents and joining in the fun.

Party Games

Flying Fish • I found weirdly realistic fish which fishermen use as bait for a flying fish game. The children all stood on mats and had to lob their shoal of fish into 3 different buckets! 

Tattoo Station • Always a hit with a party heavy on boys, I found fish transfer tattoos on eBay and larger ones that fit your hands to make your thumb it's mouth!

Splat the Fish • I used some disgusting slimy hands on a length of rubbery slime in the pound shop to splat the fish confetti from Style My Party. The rest went on the tables but it was perfect and not too heavy!

River Run • Rich made a marble river run out of a pool noodle which we cut lengthways and propped them in my Mother's Day magnolia tree using cheap plastic rod rests!

Get hit in the face with a wet fish • This was the star of the show! Rich was such a good sport and let the kids pelt him with soaking sponges and a couple of soft toy fish. Ollie was drenched within 5 minutes and loved it, hence the pants photos towards the end!

Balloon Fish • I think balloon modelling is a fab idea as they are fascinated watching the creations come to life! They all loved their rods and fishes from Balloonitude!

Hook a Fish • I used the boys paddling pool and a couple of fishing rod sets from the pound shop to create their own pond complete with lily pads from my sister's actual pond!

I always think at 5 it's incredibly hard to be out. So at our parties no one goes out in musical bumps and statues! I bought a bag of whistle lollies and the last one from each round got a whistle during musical bumps and then a "puffer fish" punch balloon to take home and blow up for the best statue during each round.

We had a few rounds of the Superman song and our resident party DJ, who we have hired for all our parties Billy Chappell Discos, was on hand with lights and music. He is at secondary school locally and has built up a fab business charging £15 an hour for a full disco service!

Fish Print Guest Book • I found a great printable range from Spaceships and Laserbeams and everyone placed an ink thumbprint as a little memento for Sammy to have on his bedroom wall.

Bouncy Castle • Always a hit and I hired the most basic one, no slide, no ball pit and they loved it. Plus it said Under the Sea!

I love having a Photo Booth set up at a party and Sammy's boat shelves were a perfect prop!

The party food went down a storm. I was thrilled when a couple of the Dads complimented me on the detail! The main food for the children was a "tackle lunch box" by Style My Party (How cute are the buckles?!) of fish and chips from our local chip shop who heavily discounted the normal price of a child's portion on the basis that it was such a big order. We got extra chips for the grown ups and used cones and palm leaf plates by Style My Party! They gave me a few of the boxes they normally use for me to use as cake stands and masses of chip forks!

Ideas for Fishing Party Food

I did lots of research on Pinterest and came up with a few new ideas for the buffet table.

Fish Flakes • I used dried fruit flakes and some edible glitter flakes in little pots which looked just like real fish food!

Fish Food • Rainbow drops were perfect or you could call them Rainbow Trout poo?!

Bait • Crushed Oreo type biscuits made perfect dirt for some jelly worms to sit on!

River Rocks • I found candy chocolate rocks on line and put them in tiny specimen craft pots. Tins of sardines made lovely stands too!

Reeds • An easy way to make reeds is with a chocolate log and skewer! 

Rods • Sticks of rock made great rods or use liquorice sticks which I used for long worms.

There were a few other fishy treats, Swedish Fish sweets, white chocolate fish and chips and jelly freaky fish.

Drinks • I mixed lemonade & a little blue colouring to make "Sea Water" and Dandelion and Burdock made perfect "Pond Water".

The hall had one big space and one small space, where I set the food tables out longways. The fabulous bunting from Style My Party and some helium balloons tied randomly along the chairs filled the room! Green tarpaulins from the pound shop made perfect table cloths and they were all excited by the "Boat Brew" label by Style My Party and party water! The lunch boxes were so cute too.

The cake was by an incredibly talented local baker DusiCake, who is opening a boutique in Burnham on Sea above the Crafty Teacup Cafe where you can sample her cake tails (Cakes not cocktails!)! 

It was a pleasure to spoil our precious boy and give everyone an afternoon of family fun. We know our family have to travel hours, book B&B's and we really appreciate all their help. Master clearer uppers! Sammy even had a little blog friend!

Mum wore a brilliantly on theme "Big fish, little fish, cardboard box" t-shirt! We missed my sister, brother in law and the American family contingent dreadfully! Blasted work and the Atlantic ocean! I have to thank my brother and sister in law for bringing a suitcase full of fish goodies over from America last month including a 5ft long bass that managed to get stuck on the ceiling for a while!

I'd been hoarding things for months so all the guests went home laden with goodies!

Party Favours and Party Bags

Tackle Treat Boxes • I saw printable tags from Spaceships and Laserbeams and had to make up these sweet treats! I bought the cheapest containers I could find and filled them with almost all non branded sweets! Scour your pound shop!

Burlap bags • There's something about hessian that feels like a fishing theme?! Style My Party provided the bags and tags and I filled them with some fishy favours from eBay!

We had an amazing day, all the late nights making bits and pieces were totally worth it!

Now what are we going to do next year?!

You can find the full Style My Party Gone Fishing range here. Thank you so much Stacy for making Sammy's fishing dreams come true!

I cannot believe Sammy turns 5 next week, 5! And I cannot believe I never blogged his awesome Circus party from last year. I wrote a quick sneak peek post and then the 500 odd photos I took seem to get buried in the archives! And that was with the lovely Emily snapping away for me too!

With the party preparations for his 5th Fishing Party well underway I just had to share his Circus antics with you before everything turns fabulously fishy!

We have a local farm park near us Court Farm Country Park and they kindly let me hire out the large barn and indoor barked play area. Lucky because it turned out to be a scorching day, the park was busy with farm go-ers, but we had the space all to ourselves!

I love the little things. The things you worry will go unnoticed but take the longest time and effort. But no, everyone was taking their own photos, embraced the photo booth set up on the stage area with the amazing vintage Carousel horse and sign from Traditional Fair and all the mini games were so well used the floor around the hook a duck was soaked! I found goldfish bath squirters on eBay and made up freezer bags of water just like at a fair ground as prizes and the DIY tattoo station went down a storm. I used a cardboard market stall stand from Ikea as a kissing booth where you had to guess the number of Hershey chocolate kisses were in the jar and found a great set of downloadable printables on Etsy from Simone Made It with a rainbow coloured Circus theme.

I love having a few unorganised games set up for party guests to play as they please. I always find, unless you have a very small number of guests, pass the parcel can be terribly long and drawn out, plus my boys always want to win so they end up bored and frustrated! At Sammy's age it's also hard to be out and have to watch whilst 28 other people join you on the sidelines for musical bumps or statues so instead, I give out little sweets and keep everyone joining in until the end.

The party food table was decoration in itself! The big top hanging canopy from Ikea hung above some striped fabric made a perfect backdrop and all the little Ikea circus soft toys made wonderful props and party favours for the babies invited at the end! I wrote a post last year about How to Style the Perfect Party Table so you can read some hints and tips if you are planning a party too.

I sourced cup cake toppers on eBay, skewered Flumps onto cake pop sticks, made up little pots of honeycomb, popcorn and candy as well as providing Circus theme lunch boxes with the main children's food inside. I always see curly sandwiches left over so instead here is my guide to the Perfect Party Tea!

The cake was magnificent and from the same talented baker DusiCake who made Ollie's Doctor cake and Sammy's Wonderpets cake the year before. 

I never understand why we all traditionally hide the cake away, that we've either spent lots of money on or lots of time and effort making, only to reveal it for a matter of minutes then scurry it away again to get chopped up into party bags, where it invariable gets squished before it gets eaten! I say display it proudly! Sammy loved seeing his cake and admiring it before the big chorus of Happy Birthday. In fact I believe he appreciates a beautiful cake far more this way!

Plus the barn wagon made an incredible cake stand!

Our family and old friends live quite a distance away, so our birthday parties are more like family fun days as it's a chance for the grown ups and the children to catch up and have a good time. I was lucky last year to work with Party Delights who supplied all the coloured decorations, the streamers, lanterns and hanging decorations as well as featuring the bouncy castle company AW Inflatables and Court Farm which helped reduce the hiring costs. 

Ps. top tip - piñatas are great fun but impossible for little ones to break! Choose one with pull strings instead!

A local child entrepreneur Billy offers a brilliant disco service for £10 an hour and we book him for all our parties! There was a moment when I just stood and was overwhelmed watching all the grown ups and children dancing together!

The finale was a tractor ride for as many party guests as we could fit on the farmers tractor trailer! An amazing end to an amazing party!

This year is all about fishing! 2 weeks to go so I am in full party prep mode with the help of Style My Party who have created a whole new range of "Gone Fishing" party ware which you can find here.

We love parties in this house - Ollie is requesting a pink party for his 3rd Birthday this Summer, reckon I can recycle the Flamingo decorations?!!

I can't resist beautiful baking products. A pretty spoon here and there and a new range of supermarket edible sprinkles.

So when Creative Tops kindly sent me some of the new Katie Alice bakeware range it was the perfect excuse to try out a twist on my Granny's favourite recipe.

Every year on our birthdays she would make her famous biscuit cake, not with digestives as all the recipes seem to suggest, but with Rich Teas. I wanted to try out my own version and as the males in this house all prefer white chocolate, so I set about thinking what else I had in the cupboards that would compliment the creamy rich flavour.

A packet of pistachios and chopped apricots later, I had a recipe!

Ingredients:

• 300g Rich Tea biscuits
• 350g white chocolate
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup
• 100g butter
• 100g pistachio nuts
• 100g chopped apricots
• Sprinkles of your choice

Instead of adding a selection of chopped nuts, I used crunchy sprinkles instead!

Line 2 round shallow dishes with parchment paper. Leave enough to cover over the top hanging over the sides, once you've filled them with the biscuit mix.

Take a large bowl and using the end of a rolling pin, bash them into approximately 1cm pieces. This is a biscuit cake not a crumb cake, so you don't want to polarise them in a food processor.

I couldn't stop looking at the sweet cottage flower print on the ceramic rolling pin. Traditional without being twee. 

Set aside in the two lined dishes. I do this to make sure I know I have enough mix for both cakes!

Using a heat proof bowl, like this delicate patterned cream bowl from Katie Alice, melt your butter, golden syrup and chocolate over a pan of simmering water. Melt them slowly, stirring the mix together.

When melted, add your bashed biscuits, nuts, apricots and sprinkles.

Spoon into your lined dishes and press with the back of a wide wooden spoon into all the edges. Pat down with the spoon so you have a level mix. 

Cover over with the excess parchment paper and set in the fridge for 2 hours.

When set and hard lift the cakes out of their paper cases. I cut a block of strawberry ice cream into slices and made a sandwich out of the biscuit bases!

Easy to make as a family and even easier to eat :)

Everything in the range is just so pretty. From the pale pink silicone ended wooden spoons to the pastel measuring set, it all makes for a cuter kitchen! Perfect gifts for a lover of baking.

Now what to make next....

Thank you to Creative Tops

Lining up with #TastyTuesdays and #recipeoftheweek