St Patrick's Day & Easter Party Sets

Hello everyone.
Happy St Patrick's Day to you all! It's a bit late but here are some of the products from our new St Patrick's Day Party set called My Lucky Charm.

 These popcorn boxes are great for lots of things. You could dye some popcorn with green food colouring and serve it in these.

 How about these adorable bottle wraps? They would look great around your favourite bottle of stout.

These cute Leprechaun Poop envelopes are available as a free download too. Fill them with coloured candy coated sweets or chocolate chips for a sweet treat.

Check out the whole set here.

We also have a new Easter Party range which is just so stinking cute! All these products will go down a treat if you're having an Easter party or even just a little get together.

A cute cake box so your guests can take away a piece of cake without it getting squashed. Or you could use it as gift box and fill with treats.

Who doesn't love crackers? These are especially good if someone you know doesn't like loud noises as you don't need to add a snap to them and they're still great fun.

The mini poop envelopes are always a hit with the little ones. Fill with chocolate chips for a delicious treat.

Give a card and matching gift box filled with someones favourite chocolates.

The gabled gift boxes make great party bags and kids can enjoy the themed wordsearch on the back too.

A larger gift box for a more generous gift! The download also includes little notelets with envelopes which are lovely for sending thank you notes.

For a non chocolatey treat, you could make these little pencil boxes. They hold half sized pencils.

These birdhouse style gift boxes in 2 sizes make great gifts filled with goodies and they can be kept after too - because they're too cute to throw away!

Check out the full range here.

I hope you have a great weekend and enjoy yourself if you're having any parties or celebrations.
Take care
Suz :-)

Boredom Buster Mission File

Well, I've been away for such a long time again due to illness and the trails of being mum to an autistic child who has just finished primary school!! It's summer holidays now and as usual the kids wander round looking like lost little puppies being bored (either that or they're glued to either their phone or ipad!!).
So I came up with a new idea to give them stuff to do. This mission file is aimed at older kids. I would recommend 9 and up but it depends on your kids really.

There are 20 missions included in the file and they vary in style and length of time it should keep them busy for. For some of the missions they may need some adult help but again, this will depend on the age and ability of your children.

I have to say that this might not be for everyone! I made them up for my kids and Theo (12 and autistic) moaned about it for about 2 hours and then put it in the bin!! I guess you can't please everyone! I offered a reward at the bottom for them once they had completed the mission. My first reward was a movie night at home with their favourite snacks.
Anyway, I hope this mission file might be of some use to you and your kids. And it doesn't have to just be for the summer holidays, they can do them at weekends and during other holidays!
You can download here.

That's all for now and I hope it won't be too long before I'm back again with more exciting ideas!

Take Care
Suz and the Padawans

Summer Time Fun Freebie!

Hello there!
I'm feeling very summery today as the sun is actually shining!! Reason to celebrate here in Scotland!
So to help in the celebrations of the glorious sunshine and to keep you all going while I'm busy being run ragged by the Party Padawans I have made you all a little set of free printables.

I'll try to get some photos of them in action this week (fingers crossed the sun sticks around) as I don't have any small bottles of juice in at the moment! I'd put one on a bottle of Bacardi Breezer but I can't drink just now so there's not much point!! Oh well, hopefully I'll be off painkillers soon! :-)
Feel free to share any photos of your picnics, parties and lunches using them!

Take care
Suz and the Party Padawans xx

Keep the kids busy this summer with an "I'm Bored Jar"

I have been getting a little addicted to Pinterest lately! Anyone else have this problem?!
Anyway, one of my latest things I've been using it for is to find things for the kids to do over the summer. I think anyone with kids has heard "Mum, I'm bored" way too many times and if you work from home I'm sure it's worse as you're always there with them.
So after more than a week of researching ideas I have come up with my own set of ideas to put in our "I'm Bored Jar" and you can download a PDF I put together too.

My Bored Jar is geared to older kids as my youngest are 11 and 12 and it's also the kind of things I think my kids will like and I would like to try out with them. There are a couple of blank pages for you to add your own ideas and page of links to specific activities, posts with lists of activities and my Pinterest board with lots of pins to inspire you.
I haven't included too many chores in my jar as I think this would put my kids off (and they have chores they are expected to do anyway). I'm also going to draw up some rules with them for using the jar - for example: if they don't like the 1st activity they pick they can choose 1 more but then they have to do one of the two or find something else to do. If they can't do what they pick straight away because the weather isn't suitable or we don't have the things they need for it then that one gets put aside for another day when we can do it and they a free pick. You can decide on rules if you want to or just use the jar as something to inspired the kids to find things to do.
I'd love to hear your ideas for great boredom buster activities for kids so feel free to share any thoughts and suggestions in the comments.
Over the holidays I will post about the things the kids and I have done with little tutorials for some of the activities.
Take care
Suz and the Party Padawans
xx

Pizza Boats!

We had a very busy day yesterday at LHPC HQ!!
After the lovely banana dolphins at lunchtime we went to the school's Daffodil Tea and Theo had lots of fun operating a digger and getting his face painted!
I decided to make mini baguette pizzas for tea as it was just the two of us but had a brainwave as the rolls I got reminded me of little boats!! So, after I had quickly drawn a template and cut out these little sails, we spent an hour decorating them.

Theo wanted to make a classic skull and crossbones sail first, and then he wanted to do the British Flag. I went for flowers and butterflies for my first sail and then thought I'd honour my Viking heritage with a Viking long ship sail!! I used a sticker on this one too!

We then used kebab skewers as masts (I cut about 2 inches of the top so they wouldn't be too long). Theo got his Lego figures out to sail our ships for us!!
Below is a template you can use if you would like to have a go at making sails yourself. Try them on different food - hotdogs, sausages, cakes!

I hope you have lots of fun making food interesting and do please share any photos of your creations!

Take care

Suz (and Theo)

Minion Treat Spoons (and free download!)

Any one who knows me will tell you how much I love the minions from Despicable Me! So much so, I am planning to have a Minions and Unicorns party for my own birthday early next year!! Can't wait to get started on that!!
So you will understand that I was thrilled when I saw these adorable candy spoons from Living Locurto.
Pop on over for a tutorial on how to make them.
Hugs
Suz x

Tutorial - Mini Cupcake Stand

Good Morning to you all. Well. it's been awhile since I posted as I've been busy with a craft fair and getting organised for Theo's birthday party (it's his birthday today - can't believe my baby is 10!!). I had to have some enforced time off after getting a steroid injection in my knee last week too! But I'm back now and have a lovely tutorial to make a mini cupcake stand using one of my printables. These are a really cute way to display some cupcakes or perhaps you could just make one and have the special birthday girl/boy's cupcake on it.

Firstly, download your free cupcake stand printable here, and print out onto card.

Cut out around the outline of the stand. Leave the white ovals in the middle. Score along the lines. Score down through the white ovals too as you will need to fold these bits.

Turn over and apply glue to all areas except the tabs at the top. Now you need to concertina fold the stand together to form a cross shape. The white ovals should be together.

You can now cut out the white ovals.

Fold down the tabs at the top and apply glue to each. Place scalloped circle on the top.

And there you go, a lovely mini cake stand. I hope you have fun with it.
Hugs
Suz x

Alice In Wonderland Free Printable!

We hello to you all. I hope you are all safe and well.
Today I have a free download for you and a short tutorial on how to make these cute triangular pouches (I'm not sure if they have a proper name!).

So you can get your download by clicking on the picture below and saving it to your computer or click here to get a PDF (remember you'll need Adobe Reader to view PDF files).

And now, how to make them. They are a little tricky at first but once you've done one you'll quickly get the hang of it.
So, to create an aged vintage look, I first coloured my paper with teabags! I'm sure you've all tried this before even if it was when you were at school. But for those who haven't, simply use a wet teabag to "paint" your paper and stain it. Allow to dry and then press under some heavy books to flatten out. You could also try ironing it! It needs to be flat to go through your printer but I do suggest you try a sheet first as printers can be temperamental sometimes ;-) You can also print onto cream coloured paper or simply keep the nice crisp white look - they all look nice.
Print the design on to A4 paper and then cut out. Next, use some double sided sticky tape and apply to the back leaving a 1cm gap on the opposite side to the tab. This will make sense once to start to stick together!

 Before gluing the tab, roll the paper into a cylinder (this will make it easier to glue together).
Apply glue to the tab down the edge (a glue stick is best here). and then stick both ends together to form a cylinder.

If you look carefully, you'll see some small marker lines at the top and bottom of the pouch. Pinch the cylinder together at the bottom using these marker lines as a guide as shown below. Remove the backing from the tape and seal together.

Half fill the pouch with sweets and then repeat the step above with the top edge of the pouch. You should have something like this below. You may wish to trim along the top and bottom edges to neaten up. 

I do hope you enjoy this free download and have fun making them. Like I say they are a bit tricky and I'm sure how well I've explained the process but hopefully the pictures will help! To open, I just tear along the top.

Take care
Hugs, Suz x

Pirate Tea as easy as 1, 2, 3!!

Avast me Hearties! Come join me in an adventure on the highs seas!
I do love a pirate theme so we had lots of fun last night when the kids had a couple of friends round for tea. I have some tips for the most easy party ever and even a recipe to share with you today!

At the beginning of the week, I decided to add a pirate them to tea for the kids, so I sat down and thought of  what food I could do and some piratey names! I didn't want party type food so decided on baked potatoes with beans (Treasure chests filled with rubies!), carrot sticks (peg legs!), sweetcorn (pirate teeth!) and chicken dippers (Golden nuggets!). I also included potato waffles (pirate rafts) and spaghetti hoops (pirate hoop ear-rings) as my son doesn't like baked potatoes! So , really easy and nothing I wouldn't normally make but livened up with cool names!

 I used the circle tags from my kit to make little picks for the treasure chests.

 Food trays are great for serving and labelling food so the golden nuggets, peg legs, rafts and treasure chests  were served up in these.

 The gold teeth and pirate ear-rings were served in some plastic serving bowls and I used some menu cards to label these.

 My trusty mini milk bottles were brought out and labelled with each child's name (no more wondering who's cup is whose) and of course a pirate straw flag was added to each! I also re-labelled some water bottles with Salty Brine labels. A popcorn treat box was filled with some large chocolate jazzies and sweetie necklaces as treasure for after the main food.

As an activity to keep the kids busy, they made and decorated their own cupcakes. These were then popped into cupcake wrappers and a cupcake topper was added.

Everything was served up on the table with a treasure chest and jewels (this was from a treasure hunt game my son has which we played before eating). The kids really enjoyed it and it was pretty easy to prepare and clean up afterwards.

The Golden Nuggets were home made and you can get a free recipe sheet here.

So, I hope this has helped to give you some inspiration for any pirate themed party you have and also show you that entertaining can be easy! And don't forget that once you have your printable package you can use them over and over again!
Take care
Suz x