Princess Party Number One

OK so the night before I was up late. With not being able to come home in the day and so very very much to do, I had to be up late - there was no choice in the matter. Liam of course was ill, juts my luck. So he went to bed early but promised to get up early and finish tidying if I wanted him to.
So I got him up when I went to bed - at 6:30 am in the morning. You know, you can tell you're up late when the kids cartoons start! I got about 3 hours in bed; slept for 2 and a half of that because the children got noisy. When I got up the downstairs was clean and tidy - I had left a list for Liam and apologised for making more mess before I went up, but I was just too tied to do party preps and tidy. I think he felt more sorry for me than annoyed.

So not more party preps start. I needed to eat first and foremost, then get showered, I woke up covered in sweat somehow. Liam took Scarlett to ballet, then was off to his allotment appointment, much to my dismay - even though I had been expecting it! I was in the shower while he was gone and panicked like crazy when the door bell rang and I had to get out soaking wet - had i put 12 and on 2pm on the invitations!??!?!
It turned out that it was a knock down ginger scrote, probably encouraged by the castle poster I had put on our front door (lovingly drawn and coloured in by me - took ages!). So I went and got dressed and set about getting the kiddies dressed, I was shaking and feeling sick all the while. It must be because Liam was out - I always get a bit nervy, but never normally that bad.

Liam was not back too much later and set about doing food - moaning about being ill all the while. I tried to get the balloons inflated now, some with air, most with helium - very pretty! I had asked Laura to bring a foil balloon as I just needed Liam home ASAP rather than waiting for a minor decoration.
I covered the two tables with a pink table cloth and put a purple crepe runner down the middle. The balloons were pink and purple to match - I left most floating about the ceiling with their ribbons trailing apart from those that I tied to Scarlett's chair with a tiara and big silver ribbons to make it look special. We had cute little pink napkins with a cupcake design and plastic wine glasses, all frosted with sugar at the top (always wanted to do that!). Scarlett helped me to lay the table (I told Frazer to go on the computer to keep him busy!) and it looked like a beautiful little banquet when we were done.
Liam sorted out the pink drinks fountain that lights up - it looked beautiful! We had hi-juice for that and pink lemonade for at the table.

Now our guests began to arrive - giving Frazer and I only just enough time to put out silver arrows and balloons directing people to our door, as so often they get lost and then I'm left with a panic on the phone trying to better the instructions that I had previously written. Aya first, whose mother was not staying, then Anusha (mum stayed), Daisy, Honor, Tiffany (all staying without parents) and Eva - her mum stayed. I was surprised at how few mums came compared to last year! I have a suspicion it could have been a conspiracy with the girls at school to ask their mums to go, because a few mums told me that their daughters were adamant to be left, lol!

We started off on our princess hats, with me being most annoyed at the lack of glue - where had it gone? We managed with stickers, sellotape and the glue we had though. We then ate - I think people were too hungry to go straight in to games first. The little girls were desperate to use the drinks fountain but I had told them only after they were done eating! Eva's mum had some wine with me, and I frosted our glasses as a treat too. I'm so glad I named some of the food! Ariel's seaweed salad went down better than I thought it would, and I'm sure apple slices are never as popular as when they are picked by Snow White!
We played stick the kiss on the frog prince (lots of fun), hunt for the poison apple (most popular!) and musical statues (except with a twist - Maleficent from sleeping beauty as freezing people when the music stopped - we played it again and they had to pretend to sleep), we did our pass the parcel and drawing and 'Queen Says' - I added on a dancing competition as I had plenty of prizes to give out. We did loads in the end because I had apparently written that the party was 2-5pm and not 2-4! I'm so glad we were at home and had no issue with it being an hour longer - I was already worried that 2 hours wasn't seeming to be enough.
They all trouped lovely in to the kitchen and sat again for the cake and singing, the cake did look lovely in the end; a pink castle with purple towers, door and windows;
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2203625306&size=m and when we turned off the lights for the candles to be lit, everyone noticed that the drinks fountain was lit up! There was a collective 'Ooooohhhh!' in the room at this point, lol! Scarlett had to stand on her chair to blow out her candles as they were so high up! I hope she made a good wish.

I must say that when the mums arrived for picking up, it really didn't seem like 3 hours at all. We had used up plenty of time making the hats for starters, and the girls kept dashing off upstairs for an unknown reason - maybe they wanted to play in Scarlett's room, or maybe it was the fairy lights on the stairs.
The guests were simply lovely, all of them well behaved and charming. Scarlett really did pick a good bunch! Where normally with a school group you end up with one really cocky child, we simply had a girl that was noticeably more confident, but still not really outspoken or anything, yet despite some being shy in bigger parties, they all played well yesterday. Frazer and Rowan were on their best behaviour, and even Tonks was good - I had to shut her in to the utility room to stop her going loopy, but not a peep was heard from her - I think she slept! Roz was about as I can't let her out at the moment. She has one of those protective hoods on after over washing her belly until it got sore and lost fur.
Scarlett was lovely, she was a good little hostess and very happy to have all her friends over. Laura came about halfway through the party and had on the best medieval dress - outshone mine, which was also borrowed from her! I was glad to have Laura, although I didn't ask as much from her as she often does at parties (I was coping fine, plus she had just come from work with parties!) but she helped out a bit still, and the children were delighted to see her. I did have to pester Liam a bit - he had promised to keep taking photos - I wanted a picture of everything! But he insisted that he either needed the loo, had to sit down for a bit, felt ill or simply couldn't. i kept grabbing the camera when he wasn't about, but it was awkward to get the shots I wanted as I was entertaining. We have plenty though, and Liam dutifully got plenty of the beautiful kitchen before it was wrecked!
I also suggested that the girls all sit down together under our 'princess canopy' (lilac decorative mosquito net) for a photo together in their pretty hats, and then they all posed one at a time for an individual poster under it, which I am going to try to print to give to them with their thank you note.
We didn't get a photo of our door though, which is a shame as I had done a great picture of Sleeping Beauty's castle and stuck it up with the words 'Happily Ever After' around it. The slightly annoying thing is that the castle encouraged the local brats to wage a campaign of Knock Down Ginger on us, which isn't convenient when you have better things to do! The very annoying thing is that this morning I found out that the picture has been stolen. I'm quite gutted about this as I was planning to use yesterdays decs for today's mini party with our family friends. Plus I was going to let Scarlett keep the poster - it was too good to throw away. But ah well. There was an imperfection that bugged me - maybe this can prompt me to make a new picture and make it better. It's just a shame that I threw away the sketch design and don't have a photo to go by. I hope it's not wrong to wish painful ingrown toenails on the little scrotes that nicked it.

Back to yesterday - I was shattered! We got the children up to bed and then I passed out downstairs, only woke up to go to bed and I had to rely on Liam to do anything that needed to be done with the dog etc.

A good day in all, and now I need to get off and arrange stuff for today! At least it's only Sally and Maria with their children coming over, so I don't need to go OTT. Libby is expecting a tea party though so I had better deliver!