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This is Part 4 of ‘The Twins Parties – 2 Parties in 1 Day’ series, view Part 1,  Part 2 & Part 3.

Now that the Rainbow Birthday Party is over its time to swap over a few of the decorations, set the table for the next group of kids to arrive and have a little quiet time.   I made sure that I purchased most of the decoration to suit both parties so it wouldn’t be a big transition.  

Again, I would like to give a big thank you to my friend Carissa from Putting on a Party, for taking the wonderful photo’s below.  She has also created a Lego Party Planner which will help save taking the thinking out of most of the party planning.  The planner will give you all the decorating and food ideas you need.  Including an overview/checklist of tasks that need to be completed, printable invitation, recipes with matching shopping list, project ideas, guest list, along with printables such as thankyou labels, cupcake toppers, cupcake wrappers, birthday bunting, food labels and more.   You can find more details here.

The food table

We had 2 platters of diced fruit (pineapple, watermelon and oranges), jelly cups, choc lego bricks, cake pops, cupcakes, coloured popcorn, chips and cookies (using my fav cookie dough recipe, topped with m&m’s).  The bright coloured platters holding the food were from Crazy Clarks.

Chocolate Lego Bricks:  I covered the tops of mini milkyway bars with icing and topped with 6 m&m’s.  I then melted white chocolate.  At this point of melting the chocolate my microwave stopped working   I then melted chocolate on the stove top and added some powdered food colouring to make it green.  Then dipped the bricks into the chocolate.  

Looking back if I was to do it again I would divide icing (icing sugar +water) into four bowls.  Colour icing in each bowl (eg. yellow, blue, green and red).   Dip (or spread) the milkway  into the icing.  Add 6 m&m’s to the top of the chocolate, preferably same colour as the icing.   

Used birthday boys Lego items from his bedroom for decorating the table.  

 I borrowed a McDonald’s water carrier (they are free for a day) we filled with cordial and ice, and I had a smaller water carrier filled with iced water 

The Cake

 The Lego Cake.  Mr 9 asked for Lego bricks as his cake, I thought this would be easy enough.  But then I decided that 1 wasn’t enough and made 3.  Now nothing ever goes to plan.  I made 2 square butter cakes thinking it would be plenty.  But the cakes didn’t rise high enough.  So I quickly ducked down to the shop and purchased 2 packets of uniced sponge cake.  I used 2 sponges together for the yellow cake, 1 sponge for the green and another sponge cut to a square for the blue cake.  (Please note here you should cut the top of the cakes to make sure they are completely flat, I didn’t).  I then used a cookie cutter and cut 16 circles from my original cakes.  The first cake I added the cake circles ontop then iced the cake.  It was very hard to get in the middle and make it smooth, eventually I removed the circles ran a knife over the top of the sponge to smooth the brick then added the  iced circles, this was so much easier.  Looked great in the end.  My friend Carissa made the little lego bricks that are decorating around the cake, these are made of icing using a special Lego mould purchased from a cake speciality shop.

The Decorations

I got this printable birthday bunting banner from Putting on a Party, perfect for both parties.

 Stringing the balloons the night before was the BEST idea, details on stringing balloons here.  It saved so much time and made the trasition from rainbow to lego theme really easy.  We put some balloons along the pool fence and on the coloured roof.  These balloons are from spotlight and were the perfect colours for our theme.  

The Games

 We made  ’pin the head on the lego man’, purchased some yellow cardboard, then put hubby to work drawing the body.  The cut out some lego heads.  The boys played pass the parcel and lots of musical statues.

Use this image below to help you draw your own lego man.

Lego Man head to use for the game.

After half hour the boys were so eager to get in the pool.  30 minutes before the party was to end we cut the cake and played a few more games.  

I purchased a few packs of neon paper bags from eBay and printed the label that came in the Putting on a Party Lego Party pack.  See what I put in goodies bags here.

I hope you enjoy a tour through our Lego Birthday Party!!

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© 2010 The Organised Housewife | All rights reserved - This post {The Twins Parties} 2 parties in 1 day – Part 4: The Lego Birthday Party is provided for the convenience of The Organised Housewife readers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited.

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This is Part 3 of ‘The Twins Parties – 2 Parties in 1 Day’ series, view Part 1 and Part 2

We started the first of our parties with The Rainbow Party.  I didn’t want to hold the party inside so we set everything up on the patio. I moved all the tables off the patio and set up a trellis table as it is narrower and easier for the kids to reach across it.  I covered the table and the window behind with a plastic tablecloth.

I would like to give a big thank you to my friend Carissa from Putting on a Party, not only did she help with the cake and shared her wonderful planner with me she also took the stunning photo’s throughout the party.  It’s hard to play party  host and take photo’s at the same time, A REALLY BIG TIP is to ask a friend or another parent to take some photo’s for you  so you are there with your child blowing out the candles and not always behind the camera missing the moment.

I mentioned Carissa shared her planner – Putting on a Party is a new up and coming blog, with inspiration and tips on how to throw parties with clever ideas thrown into the mix.  Carissa is putting together a range of different themed planner packs.  

These planners will give you all the decorating and food ideas you need if you want to have a particular theme.  Including an overview/checklist of tasks that need to be completed, recipes with matching shopping list, project ideas, guest list, along with printables such as thankyou labels, cupcake toppers, cupcake wrappers, birthday bunting, food labels and more.   You can find more details here.

The food table

There was a platter for diced fruit (pineapple, watermelon and oranges), cookies (using my fav cookie dough recipe and rolled the balls in 100&1000′s) and little biscuit tea cups, there’s my birthday girl

The jelly cups were a hit, find details on how to make layered jelly cups here

We also had cupcakes and cakepops

I borrowed a McDonald’s water carrier (they are free for a day) we filled with cordial and ice, and I had a smaller water carrier filled with iced water 

The Cake

Carissa made the most beautiful rainbow cake.  Just to have somebody make the 2nd cake for me was a wonderful help, never did I imagine receiving a cake like this. Love my friends x

The Decorations

The tissue paper pom poms from Ah-tissue were so beautiful.  I filled a vase with coloured popcorn to hold the Pom Pom sticks

I got this printable birthday bunting banner from Putting on a Party, perfect for both parties

 The Games

 We made a ‘pin the cloud on the rainbow’, played pass the parcel, had a treasure hunt for whoever could find the most rainbows (Miss 9 drew them and placed them around the yard) and played lots of musical statues

After an hour of eating and playing games the kids all jumped in the pool, 20 minutes before home time I got them out of the pool to cut cake, while the kids were eating Miss 9 opened her presents.  Thankfully most parents arrived on time to pick up the kids so we could do the party switch over

I purchased a few packs of neon paper bags from eBay, printed the label that came in the Putting on a Party Rainbow Party pack

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That’s our Rainbow Party over….. next is the Lego party

© 2010 The Organised Housewife | All rights reserved - This post {The Twins Parties} 2 parties in 1 day – Part 3: The Rainbow Birthday Party is provided for the convenience of The Organised Housewife readers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited.

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This is Part 2 of ‘The Twins Parties – 2 Parties in 1 Day’ series, view Part 1 here

Now that I have made the big decision to throw 2 parties in 1 day for the twins we had to come up with themes.  Miss 9 wanted a Rainbow party, she loves colour and pretty things and Mr 9 wanted a Lego Star Wars Party (he is lego mad).  

I asked them what type of cakes they wanted, Miss 9 was happy with anything that had a rainbow across it and Mr 9 wanted a lego brick.  So cake was sorted, but after this discussion I got thinking I really needed these party themes to compliment each other, the rainbow colours and grey’s (Lego star wars is blacks, grey and white) didn’t work together.  Thankfully this was easily fixed as Mr 9 didn’t mind having colour thrown into the mix and change to having a plain Lego party.  <Insert swipe of forehead here!> Perfect, both party themes worked really well together.  I needed to create this party so it wasn’t too much effort to change from the Rainbow to the Lego theme.  

I have listed below my pre party day prep tips

Theme:

Rainbow Party  &  Lego Party

Time:

With much consideration we had the 1st party (rainbow) from 10am-12pm.  Giving us one hour between to rest, have lunch and change a few decorations over.  Then the next party started at 1pm-3pm.  This was perfect because as of 3pm I was tired and needed an hour to tidy then relax.  

Food:

• Ask for help, my lovely friend Carissa offered to make Miss 9′s cake and she insisted on making cake pops (photos tomorrow to show you) as I had no idea what they were.  Ooh yum. 
• Make a few basic foods/snacks that will be suitable for both parties
• Have all food ready the day before, details of our food choice in coming posts
• I used the 100+ cookies recipe, I split it in half and decorated the cookies differently for each party.  For the Rainbow party I rolled dough in 100′s & 1000′s, for the Lego party I added smarties
• Premake what I could:

Decorations:

• We draped different colours of fabric from the roof to be similar to a circus tent
• I chose a neutral colour that I could use suitable for both parties.  White was my colour choice for tableclothes and backdrop for the food table
• I didn’t use themed plates and accessories, as cute as they are.  Instead I purchased colourful plates in green, red and blue, and colourful serviettes
• I used a printable birthday banner, more details in tomorrow’s post
• One major decoration piece for each party:

Tips:

• Ask for help, I thought I could do it all but am very thankful to have a friend and my mum help the day before
• Label all cups with kids names so they don’t get mixed up
• Fill the sink and wash as you are baking, this saves so much time at the end when you are out of energy
• Olivia from Star Concepts gave a great suggestion of making the cake a week or so before and freezing it, then defrost and ice when you are ready. LOVE THE TIP!! 
• Games gifts wrapped
• Games thought of and ready
• Music playlist created by the birthday boy/girl
• Loot bags can be made well in advance
• Kmart are selling packs of cute stationery (5 sets per pack) with pencil, small notebook, pen and eraser.  I added one each of these and some glow sticks to the loot bags, no sugar included as I don’t like the kids coming home with so many lollies.

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What is your best pre party pre tip?

© 2010 The Organised Housewife | All rights reserved - This post {The Twins Parties} 2 Parties in 1 day – Part 2: The prep is provided for the convenience of The Organised Housewife readers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited.

A few weeks ago my twins (boy/girl) turned 9 and I we celebrated with throwing a birthday party for each of them on the one day.

When the kids were young we always had family over to celebrate their birthdays. However, we didn’t have a party with all their friends every year, as their birthdays are all within a fortnight, I don’t have the energy or money to throw 3 parties.  We started a few years ago alternating party years, eg. twins party this year and Miss 7 will have her party next year.

For all previous years the twins have celebrated their birthday by having a combined party.  This was acceptable, when they were young we usually just invited friends and family, while in kindy and early years at school they had the same friends so it made perfect sense.  But this year it was my choice to have a party for each of them, the twins didn’t ask for it, but were so thrilled at the suggestion. I could see that they now have different friendship groups and most importantly I really wanted them to have their own moment, their own birthday song just for them not shared.  As twins they do share so much, friends, teachers, first walked on the same day, loosing teeth on the same day, they have been exactly the same height and weight all these years.  So this was something very special for each of them.

I knew that planning 2 parties on one day was going to be hard task, but all the time and energy put into it was well and truly worth it.

Below I’ll take you through all the twins birthday years and in tomorrow’s post I’ll share how I began to prep for the parties.

Twins 1st Birthday

Nice outside BBQ with our closet family and friends

 Twins 2nd Birthday

We combined the twins 2nd birthday with our new bubs welcoming day party.  Ooh those faces are adorable.

We put up some tarps to extend the shade and celebrated with some drinks and sausages on the BBQ

 Twins 3rd Birthday

I had so much fun making these cakes, I found my inspiration from  The Australia Womens Weekly – Kids Party Cakes cookbook

This was meant to be a nice night out by the pool but it rained so we ended up inside celebrating with family and friends.

 Twins 4th Birthday

We had a quiet year at home for this birthday as the youngest had a party for her 2nd birthday

Twins 5th Birthday

This year I choose to make cupcakes (muffins) as the birthday cake as there were 2 other kids celebrating their birthdays as well on the same day, so we had a plate of muffins with candles for all the birthday kids.

We hired a jumping castle which the kids has a blast on.  

Twins 6th Birthday

Sadly these photos were accidentally deleted from the camera.  However, this year we went out to dinner with family, for dessert we had the twins birthday cakes.

Twins 7th Birthday

This was such a fun party.  My parents own acreage so we hosted the party at their house, we set up a water slide (using some plastic, tarps, hay and a lot of soap).   Birthday boy really wanted to do tractor rides, so we loaded the trailer with hay and my Dad drove them around the property, the kids loved this.  And we couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a pony ride too.  We had nearly 40 kids in attendance, so to have it on acreage was PERFECT!

I purchased the cake images from a local speciality cake store and added them to a slab of cake I made, and piped around the image edges.  

Twins 8th Birthday

We went to brunch with family to celebrate their birthday

Twins 9th Birthday 

And this brings us to their 9th Birthday parties!!

© 2010 The Organised Housewife | All rights reserved - This post {The Twins Parties} 2 parties in 1 day – Part 1: My reasoning for 2 parties is provided for the convenience of The Organised Housewife readers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited.