Nicola’s first birthday

So, my little Nicola turned one on Sunday – and as you probably guessed there was a proper feast to celebrate the big occasion. I wish I could have invited everyone we know, but limited budget and space were the deciding factors for us.

You see, my baby was born in the middle of what must surely be a baby boom and I made a list of ALL the kids we know which were born in the same year as Nicola, and their older brothers and sisters, or where I happened to be very close to their parents even if they didn’t fit into those categories…and I got to 44 kids. Let it be known that I am at times a sucker for punishment but not even I would do that to myself. So we had a family event…which brought it down to 17 kids, of which 13 said they could make it and due to illness and whatever 10 eventually came. Much more manageable, not so? 😉 Now 10 kids does not really sound all that daunting…unless you keep in mind that 10 kids come with roughly 30 grown-ups. Now you have a house full of people no matter how big your house is! (try work that maths back to see how many people it would be if there were 44 kids, I dare you!)

And so, we set forth on preparations for Nicola’s first birthday party.

I chose the theme of hearts, because I love her to bits and it seemed like it would be an easy theme to stick to. I made a lollipop bouquet with heart shaped suckers, there were heart shaped watermelon pieces, heart shaped mini-pizzas, the heart shaped birthday cake (that was not only edible – but delicious – evidence below!), heart shaped cookies in the party packs (made by my mom) and Nicola even had a T-shirt with a shiny heart on for the day. It was hard work putting all of this together! But I am quite pleased with how it all looked in the end. I martha-stewarded myself into utter exhaustion, and I think I might also have sprained my ankle. I think next year I’ll take my girl on holiday instead…we can only do this maybe every second year or so. 😉

The grown-ups were set up for a bring&braai while the kids were doing their thing – and I think for the most part everyone had a really good time, even though the weather was insane! I have never had to worry about weather for my own birthday before, because it’s in winter…you can be fairly certain that it will be cold, miserable & crappy weather and you’ll have to do whatever you want to do inside. On Nicola’s big day we started out with sunshine, I started setting up outside, then the rain came, we pickled everything inside and moved furniture around to make space for the kids’ table, as soon as the table was set up the sun was back out, luckily we decided to leave everything where it was…the guests arrived and as they started the braai it started raining again, then the sun came out, next thing it was haling, sun again, rain again, sun again, hale again, sun again.

There was a lot of scuttling in and out as the weather permitted, but even so I think everyone enjoyed themselves and most importantly, Nicola had a blast – and that’s really all I wanted for her special day. 😀

So thank you for everyone who made that possible, especially my parents.