Last Minute Halloween Bunting Tutorial

This week Miss 4 and I made some quick paper bunting for Halloween, using just materials we already had at home.

This is a really simple and expensive option for decorating the front of your house.

What you'll need:
- a few sheets of A4 orange paper (we used neon orange)
- a few sheets of A4 black paper
- string (ours happened to be black string from IKEA)
- glue
- stapler (optional)
- ruler, pen, scissors

Fold one piece of A4 paper in half, as shown.

Then fold that piece of paper again, into thirds.  To make sure it's folded evenly in thirds, you can mark a dot at 7cm and 14cm and fold to them.

Once folded into thirds, find the middle of the panel, which should be 3.5cm.  Make sure you mark the end of the panel that has the open edges, not the folded edge as this will need to be at the top of the bunting so it sits over the string.

Draw a line from the 3.5cm dot down to the corner of the panel on either side, so you end up with a triangle that looks like this.

Next, cut along the lines with scissors or a knife.  I used a knife to make sure all the pieces of paper underneath didn't move around while I was cutting.  But if you don't have one, you can use scissors.

Repeat these steps again on the other pieces of A4 paper until you have enough triangles for the length of bunting you'd like to create.

Miss 4 drew 'halloween faces' and triangles on our orange pieces, while I cut out the black ones.  We ended up with 15 triangles from 5 pieces of A4 paper, but the quantity is up to you.

The triangles can then be slipped over the string, folded bit at the top.  Once on the string you can glue the two sides of the triangle together so keep them secure.

We decided to staple the top of the triangle too, for added security, but they would probably look better without.

Space them about 3cm apart, or whatever spacing you'd like, and leave a length of at least 40cm at either end to allow for tying.

This method can be applied for any event of course just using different coloured paper.  A great option to have on hand if you find yourself in need of last minute decorations!

Neon rainbow party!

I'm sure you're curious about how we put together parties for our own kids, given we've now been catering for kids parties for 4 years now. So I thought I'd share some photos and details from my little girl's 4th birthday party with you.

Last weekend we celebrated my little girl's 4th birthday, with a 'neon rainbow' themed party. She wanted a rainbow theme for her party, and with neon / fluro being so on trend right now, we decided the rainbow should be neon!

Lots of very bright colours everywhere!

Aunty Dani made all the food, including pink iced cupcakes with neon edible glitter, and a pink gradient / ombre birthday cake. Miss 4 requested a 'rainbow' of pink for the inside of the cake, and wanted it to be banana flavoured. Dani thought it would be too intense if the whole cake was banana flavoured, so it was a traditional vanilla butter cake, with banana icing on the top, sides and in between each layer of cake. 

I made a cake topper to sit on top, with a rainbow coming out of a sparkly gold 'A'. The cake looked amazing when it was cut as you can see from the photos. It tasted fantastic too of course!

The cupcakes were vanilla butter cake as well, with vibrant pink icing which was dusted with amazing neon edible glitter that caught the light perfectly in real life, yet was hard to capture in photos.

The savoury food was all our usual favourites, petit pies, cocktail sausage rolls, mini hotdogs, veg samosas, and caramalised onion quiches.

Home made marshmallows were on the menu of course, this time they were vanilla bean marshmallow dusted in pink and purple sugar.

The kids also had a large bowl of orange quarters, and individual mini water bottles as it was a hot day.

We had 1kg of 'Happy Birthday' rainbow rock candy to fit with the theme. These were displayed in a glass jar, a glass bowl, and popped in cello bags in the take home party bags, along with fun brightly coloured sunglasses, neon giant balloons, neon slinkies and a few other little things.

The backdrop of the whole table was a garland I made the day before, using EXTREMELY neon crepe paper streamers. It was so bright it practically glows in the daylight! I had the idea for this in my head, but couldn't find any images or tutorials online about how to put it together, so I just made it up. It was really easy, so I'll try to put together a tutorial soon to share with everyone.

We had giant neon balloons as well, but unfortunately due to the heat outside, they popped when they went in the sunlight so we ended up with them all taking over our lounge room. I also found some neon pink round lanterns, so we hung them outside along the front of the shed. They looked so pretty I wanted to keep them up permanently but I think they colour would fade too fast if we did that.

It was great how easily this party theme came together, and surprisingly even with all the items I made it felt like very little effort was required on the actual day. I guess a lot of that is to do with having the food catered!

The birthday girl said she had a fun party, so looking back at all the photos I'm glad we put it together for her.

If you have any questions about where I got anything from, or how I made anything, please comment below and i'll let you know :)

An update on the potatoes

Happy potato plants transferred into the larger tub.

So, we've had success with our potatoes!  They have actually grown into plants, much to my delight.

After just a couple of weeks, little green plants sprouted up out of the potatoes in the soil.

Since then I've had to transfer them to a larger pot with much much more soil as they filled the tiny pots.  As I was transferring them I discovered they had already produced some tiny brand new potatoes.

I have no idea how to tell if the potatoes are ready to eat or not, and I'm sure we learnt this all at school, but can't remember any of it now - I blame 'baby brain'.

Now I had better do some research about when to harvest them etc... If anyone knows, let me know :)

The random tomato plant that has popped up under the fence is thriving.

A little bit of Dirt Girl in our backyard‏

Today, we planted potatoes. 


My three year old and I have been planning this for quite some time. I find the kids TV show, Dirt Girl, very inspiring. She has a fantastic veg garden and has all sorts of projects happening in her yard. And today, we wanted to bring a little of Dirt Girl into our day.

A while ago, maybe about 4 weeks back, we popped a handful of potatoes in a bag into the back of the bottom shelf in the pantry cupboard. I could only vaguely remember the process of getting potatoes to turn into potato plants, and I didn't Google a method for our project. I figured it would come to me as we did it.

So after about 4 or 5 weeks in the dark, our potatoes had all sprouted lovely little knobbly beginnings of plants. I must admit, today was the first time we'd actually looked at the potatoes since putting them in the pantry, so I was a little nervous about what I might find! Luckily they were perfect and ready to go in the soil.

We took the baby outside and popped him on a quilt in the grass to wiggle about, and we sat on the path with some pots filled with soil, the plastic toy spades, the potatoes and a knife. I had memories of cutting the potatoes near to the sprouts so the sprouts could be placed individually in the soil right side up. So I cut the potatoes, and Ava planted them in the pots with her plastic spade.

Next, I made sure they were all covered in soil and we gave them a splash of water.

I don't know for sure if we've done it right, but we'll soon find out when we see them grow (or not).

Considering a tomato plant has just popped up out of the crushed granite in our backyard, I figure these sorts of plants must be fairly hardy and easy to grow! And I'm sure it didn't require much effort when I grew potato plants as a kid.

If they grow, I'll let you know!