Sometimes Turning 12 is easy......

Well - we are the other side of the birthday party and it was smiles all round. They all came, they all ate, they all had fun and they all pronounced the party as "so cool" and "really awesome".

I did my best Uber-mummy effort and am completely exhausted by it - but it was worth it to see the beaming face!
It's been raining cats and dogs in Sydney over the past week so I decided to set up inside - wise decision it was an absolute stinker of a day - must have been high 30s - so I was loving the new air-conditioning let me tell you. Turned out to be a wise decision as at about 4pm it actually hailed. My friend Erica (who was having a party at the same time )reported on it here - amazing!


This was how the room looked. We bought jumbo sized playing cards and stuck them all around the walls. Bought colourful posies of flowers from the $2 shop - they are pretty $2 shoppish in real life but massed altogether they looked very Wonderlandish - and they photograph like a million bucks!!!

The rose garlands were a score - picked them up at a shop called "dusk" which sells girly candles etc. They were only $5 a pop - the original price tag was $39 each.Love a bargain! Will save them for Valentine's Day - maybe wrap my naked self in them like the birth of Venus and see if the husband notices???


Anyway - back to the party.
Here's another shot down the table - do you love the pink and green plates? Found them in Target - $3.99 each - thought they were very funky!!! Did I mention that I was Uber-Mummy? I decided in a fit of mental instability to make Neenish Tarts. From scratch. They turned out beautifully but took about 4 hours to make. I will never begrudge paying for them in a cake shop ever again. They looked (and tasted) spectacular though - here's a shot of them mixed with the chocolate dipped strawberries we did (and for those of you who don't live in Australia - yes they are huge, lush and we get them all year round - we are a fruit lucky country!)

When the girls arrived I got them to decorate the cupcakes (I hadn't got them done due to the marathon Neenish Tart making) - it's a great thing to do at a party. Here's some cupcake love.

It was also a great excuse to buy a cupcake tree!