Ladybug birthday party

In the weekend, our little bubs turned one!  It’s amazing how quickly time flies and it won’t be long before my maternity leave is finished and I go back to work.

We decided to have a ladybug themed birthday party for her this year and it was really easy to pull off.  Spots appear to be in right now, so when I started to look for decorations and other bits and pieces, it was easy to find bright red and black spotted things which fit the theme perfectly.

As a bonus, another friend had a helium tank with a bit of helium left in it so we were able to decorate with lots of balloons.

The food was easy to plan as well – a quick look on Pinterest and I was able to find lots of ideas for what to serve.  There were the typical chips, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, dip, lollies, popcorn and chocolate, but as well as that I made some ham and cheese scrolls.  I also turned some mini Babybel cheese wheels into ladybugs by opening the wax up and drawing spots on them.

We also served some chocolate-dipped strawberries which I sprinkled with some little cachous for a bit of extra bling.  As well as that, I made some ladybugs out of chocolate covered pretzels.  For these, I mixed some red colouring into white chocolate, dipped them and then used a Queen black writing icing pen to draw some dots on.

I also made some grape and watermelon skewers to keep with the colour theme.

The most ladybug-like food was the hummus, olive and tomato canapes.  I made some basil hummus (I just made a normal hummus and added a lot of basil leaves to the food processor as well) and spread it on crackers.  I then placed half of a tomato and half of an olive on each and sprinkled the tomato with some finely chopped olives.  Easy!

         

I also served two drinks.  One was blended watermelon and mint mixed with fizzy lemonade, and the other was just sparkling grape and apple juice with diced strawberries.

I decided to make cupcakes for the party.  I made chocolate cupcakes with this recipe here – I didn’t include the M&M’s though.  It is such an easy recipe – no creaming involved, and the cake ends up really moist and chocolatey!  Instead of using fondant (which I do like playing around with but don’t like the taste of) I iced them with red buttercream icing and decorated them with chocolate drops to make the spots of the ladybug.

It was a lot of fun and I think people enjoyed themselves and the food.  So perhaps some ideas if any of you are planning a themed birthday party for a little person in your life!