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Saturday 20 October 2012

Willy Wonka Party ~ Evan turns One!

Wow...how did it happen? How did my little boy get to be age one already? I just don't know where the year has gone? The last twelve months have flown past in a whirlwind of laughter, sleepless nights, adventures and chickenpox...


So to celebrate our little cutie turning one we had a bit of a party!





When Heather turned one we had a big garden party in the theme of a Mad Hatters Tea Party. It was the most beautiful day and the sun shone all day long (a rarity in Scotland) thank goodness because there's no way we would all have fitted in the house. I really must post the pics from that one too!

We decided, long before Evan was born, that if we were lucky enough to have another baby, we would have a Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory party as we thought it would be cool. However we struggled for a while to come up with fun things to do for the theme - we have looked through EVERY Wonka themed party on the internet - I am not kidding! (Alice in Wonderland theme was way easier to get things for - you could buy loads of bits and bobs online) So, after a lot of thought and research and coming up with nothing we just let our imaginations go wild and we came up with a couple of cool things.

Ian decided to make all the downstairs rooms themed, to have wonka ticket invitations (naturally) and factory gates at the front of the house. We decided to make a cool Violet too. I thought it would be cool to make our hall look like the inside of a factory and to make EVERYTHING on the food table edible! I am known for having crazy ideas but I am never quite sure how to make them a reality - this is where my FANTASTIC other half steps in and works his magic!!!

After many, many weeks of buying supplies and many, many evenings of printing, building and constructing - Ian had made ALL of the props. (I would love to say I helped but that would be a big fat lie - I was just bogged down doing work.)


Evan's birthday is September so we would have to have the party in the house - there's no way of knowing if it would be sunny, hailstorms, snowing or blowing a gale! We ordered a bouncy castle (with a rain cover) for the garden to keep all the kids busy.

We went to a lot of effort for this party and had invited about 60 people (no idea where they were all going to fit...) and had all the food ordered and ready to collect on the morning of the party. We were really excited and everyone said they were coming...but then...2 days before the party...CHICKENPOX!!!!!!!!!

We couldn't believe it. I could have cried. Poor Heather was covered in spots. The wee soul was ok and, fortunately, had quite a mild case of chickenpox. We had to inform everyone we had invited - sadly 24 people cancelled...we were absolutely gutted! As it was the day before the party, we couldn't change the food order. We had a bouncy castle and candy floss machine coming and now loads of kids weren't coming. So that everything didn't go to waste, we sent out some emergency invites and luckily our wonderful friends stepped up.

So, here is what we came up with...


Cake making with my baking partner (and amazing friend) Tracy, the night before.


 Tracy and I making a rainbow Birthday Cake - you can see the science equipment on the cupboards in this picture. We also had safety warning signs up too (see behind the cooker). Excuse the Santa pinny and I'm still in my work clothes!
 

The themed rooms:

The Inventing Room


I borrowed a bunch of lab equipment and safety glasses from school so that we could make the room look like there were experiments on the go. We ordered mini lab coats and dry ice too. The beakers were filled with coloured water and had dry ice in them so they were bubbling over and 'smoking'...it looked absolutely awesome (sadly we forgot to photograph them but hopefully one of our friends did). We also ordered special spoons so that you could put the dry ice in drinks for the same effect - too cool!





The only experiment picture I have - it was the night before and we were just checking it worked.

Ian printed out images of science equipment and pinned them to the cupboards. He also made a large tube and printed out Augustus Gloop and made it look like he was stuck! We also hired a candyfloss machine too.

We had little lab cots and goggles for the wee ones.


Before everyone arrived we took some pics of everything but discovered after about 30 minutes that the memory card wasn't in the camera - argh! We don't have many pics of the kitchen as a result, hopefully friends do though.






















 
 
Ian and Tracy were experts at it...Les, not so much!
 
 
The TV Room

The TV room was paid homage to Mike Teevee. Ian made a cardboard cut out of a TV and we bought some wonka dressing up stuff; oompa loompa wig, wonka purple hat and crazy glasses. We tried to get pictures of everyone (especially the kids) in the dressing up stuff  whilst holding the TV. They are brilliant!





Cam and Heather







Jenny and Grampa








Auntie Leanne and Uncle Paul







Uncle Gordon and Auntie Lessel





























 A great Family portrait!




...and the special Birthday Boy
Some other pictures:

The Sweetie Shop!

The living room was a sweetie shop.











The Hall

We made the Hall into a factory. The tubes appeared to be travelling through the walls and ceiling and looked as though they were all filled with sweets (I have a very, very clever husband).




 



 
Can you guess who this is meant to be?






 The factory rules...Health and Safety is very important!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Chocolate Room

 

A lot of green icing was required and a huge amount of chocolate icing too. The little trees were really tricky to make!!! 


Ian spent a few evenings out in the garage sculpting the foundation for the landscape out of polystyrene. It was then transferred to the dining room table (2m x 1m). We then spent 5 hours covering it in a huge amount of icing and chocolate and then awe added all the finishing touches.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here are some pictures of it coming together 

The table starts to take shape - it took around 5 hours to ice and assemble. It took a HUGE AMOUNT of icing. We worked out that the calorie content of the entire table was in the region of
100,000 cals!!!


The chocolate icing had the most calories - it was around 35,000 alone!
 
 


We painted melted chocolate  to create the waterfall - Ian put half maltesars in it to create bubbles - it looked cool!



Toadstools were too cute...Tunnocks Tea Cake covered in icing and on a marshmallow.



By far, the hardest thing to do was create these trees!!! It took quite a few evenings to get them to work. Icing wrapped around wire.
 
The cake was the top part in this photo. Little cupcakes to look like grass (first time using a grass nozzle - worked well). Ian and Trace created lots of lolly-shapes out of sweets.



















A couple of other pictures from the day

Uncle Paul's first turn on a bouncy castle!!

 
 
Grampa and Colin
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


The A Team 
 
The Grans

 
 
 
 
 
 
my wee team plus our fabby friends waving bye to Granny and Grampa...not everyone was given such a formal farewell!!
 
 
 
 




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