Saturday was Niblet’s 3 and a half party. I know, I know…. most kids don’t have a half birthday party, but he never gets a party on his birthday (Christmas Day), so we decided to make a half birthday tradition.

When Niblet was a tiny thing I bought a Gruffalo party pack from a cheap book shop with the intention of using it for one of Niblet’s parties. I decided this year would be that party. Fortunately, I decided this a while ago as I had lots of ideas for things to make!!!

The party pack has some good ideas in it, but many of the activities are really individual activities, like colouring, which aren’t really suitable for a party, so I’m glad I got it cheap. Most of the templates can actually be found for free from the Gruffalo website (which is great). The website has lots of other Gruffalo party ideas and activities that I turned into a little booklet for the party bags. I printed out a load of owls to string across the conservatory (coloured in by grandma) from the party pack templates.

In previous posts I have mentioned painting trees – this was to turn our conservatory into the deep, dark wood. This also involved painting and finding green papers/material to create leaves. By midnight on Friday night I had run out of leaves, energy and patience!!!

Grandma and Niblet made a Gruffalo cake (instructions on the Gruffalo website – although we had chocolate beetroot cake again, not the regular sponge.)

It was a really good few hours with 4 of Niblet’s friends, 2 of their little sisters and all their parents, plus Niblet’s grandma.

We made Gruffalo masks, played pass the parcel with Gruffalo themed forfeits & jelly snakes, played stick the wart on the Gruffalo’s nose (like pin-the-tail on the donkey, available in the party pack), played musical bumps to the Gruffalo song and ate lovely food in the deep, dark wood. There was also a bit of running around in the garden and exploring down the back of the shed!

I have also previously posted a peek of something I was making to go in the party bags.

I came up with the idea of making felt finger puppets. I was going to do the mouse (fairly simple) but then decided I would try to design a Gruffalo puppet instead. It was great fun, but quite fiddly and a little tedious (although I did get grandma to do some of the embroidery – least interesting bit for me!!)

Here are photos at various stages of creation

A fun afternoon had by all…now onto planning next years party!! (Only half joking – I’ve already got most of the stuff for next years party, plus I’ve got to start thinking about making decorations for my big 40!!)

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