happy birthday layla!

 Last year the birthday girl woke up to balloons dangling in front of her bedroom door. This year, she woke to a decorated hallway - streamers and balloons and honeycomb balls from her room to ours and a birthday banner in front of her room. She was slightly stoked.

Five today! Kids are such a time warp - time flies so fast when you look back fondly on how cute and tiny they were, when you think of all those firsts and when they seemingly visibly grow 10 centimetres while you're talking to them. And then there is life with Layla... Kidding. Though she can make some days s-t-r-e-t-c-h! She is just as she came into this world - quite the whirlwind: loud, fast, slightly theatrical and completely adorable. She is still all of those things and more. She is the perfect mix of princess and tomboy. She climbs a tree like noone else, rumbles with the boys and has no fear. And she'll do it all in a tutu and plastic dress-up heels given the chance. She's clever, beautiful, funny, creative and for all her crazy, she's got quite the soft, caring side and gives some of the best cuddles in the kid business. She's not perfect, but she's perfect for us. Happy birthday sweetie! We love you x

diamond lights

 via my absolute fave blog Mokkasin - her home and everything in it inspires me

Ever since seeing this picture, above, I was obsessed with Eric Therner's Diamond Lights. A nice shapely twist on the usual oversized round exposed lightbulb, this one ups the glam factor slightly. Who  doesn't like shiny diamonds? And they don't get shinier than a light source, really, do they? So when my birthday rolled around last month, I sent off my gift wishlist to my sisters which included the bulb and was very happy to see this guy arrive at my house soon after. 

via my Instagram @belindagraham

While there are a trillion and two things to do before actually decorating any of the spaces, I keep obsessing over lights and rugs. I'm not sure why. I guess lights really do need to be considered at the reno stage anyway because they're kinda essential to a room - unless of course you enjoy smashing your shins on furniture. My shins and I do not enjoy this, so lighting is going to have to be factored in pretty swiftly. I'm actually thinking of just using lamps for a little while in the living room because smack in the centre of the ceiling is a delightful fluro light. Same in the kitchen. I've lived with fluro lights in my kitchen/dining rooms for the past year and my eyes have had enough of the hideousness. They're outta there. But I as for its replacement? Not sure yet - my lighting loves and options is a whole other post. As are the rugs.

For now, though, I don't know if I can wait until we extend and build the new kitchen before I get to use this giant diamond. Originally I thought it'd look great hung three in a row over a kitchen island. I think instead I'll hang it low next to my side of the bed above the bedside table. A gold/brass pendant cord fitting too. Maybe against a dark grey or black wall. Oooh, that's sounding good. I still can't get enough of black and gold... 

The diamond light in one of my fave homes - interior designer Emma Persson Lagerberg as it appeared in Elle Interior. I've loved her home in all its incarnations.

Want one? Need one? Fat Shack Vintage sells them here for $45 each. They're energy-saving halogen bulbs with 2000 life hours and they're pretty darn special really. Also, it's Swedish designed - does anything bad come out of Sweden? I think not, my friends. Ignore the "for pick up only" - unless things have changed in the past two weeks, they deliver!

So despite rolling my eyes every time I see an exposed light bulb on a blog/in a magazine/on a show because it's so common (oh how snobby I sound) and vowing to not follow suit, here I am, baa-ing like a sheep and following suit. But I am telling myself it's not quite the same thing because it's a DIAMOND. And I think it's worth baa-ing for. Your thoughts? Yay or nay?

new home essentials

The whole painfully long (for us!) househunt has had its advantages. It gave Steve and I WAY too much time to think about what we'd like our next place to look like and things we'd like to include. I'm forever dreaming of us in a made-up space that looks so incredible. We're all dressed in floaty summer clothes, our hair seems lighter, we're always laughing and doing lovely homely, fun things together and lounging around the beautiful garden in an endless summer. Hey, it's my imagination... Now if only I can make it a reality.

Here was our priority list for the house:

+ It needs to be close to the water - because we can't not have that lifestyle now. Tick! Across the road.

+ Size not important as long as there's room to extend to our liking - but we do need to live there in the meantime, so it can't be a one-bedroom shed (wouldn't that be cosy?!). Tick! A 3 bedder with a self-contained cabin.

+ The block needs to be sunny most of the day. Tick! 

+ Ideally it'll have high ceilings (tick!), original timber windows (cross. Boo - ugly 80s aluminium), floorboards (tick!) and some established trees or greenery (cross. Boo again. The back and front yards are barren. I hate it, but I guess we can just think of it as a blank canvas...

And the interior/designy elements we'd like our place to have? Let's get onto the good stuff: pretty inspirational pics...

Light floors

Not white, but light. That kinda lime/white-washed style where you can see the grain through the colour. If I could afford it, I'd install wide-plank Dinesen Douglas Fir Oak floors in snap, but I have a feeling they'll be beyond our budget. So I'm going to have to research the best way to get the lye finish on whatever timber we have. Mafi have a nice-looking wash but I don't think the actual product is available to the public to use on any old timber. Another alternative is Porter's Paints Woodwash - Kara Rosenlund has had great success with hers (bottom three images, above) and has some great tips on her site which I will be following when the time comes. I've had white floors, I've had black floors and I've had that typical yellow lacquered pine. I've always wanted that Scandinavian style with the grain of the wood gently coming through a casual (in look only - getting the look appears to be quite the process) wipe of whitewash, so now is the time to try it. I'll give it a whirl in the bedroom first - any imperfections can be hidden by the bed, right?! Might be time to invest in a new orbital - I think our old one might be close to power tool heaven...

Pretty windows & doors

At the risk of offending most of the country, I have issues with aluminium windows. You know the cheap nasty ones that replaced all those beautiful timber ones in the 70s and 80s (or maybe before. I just assume all ugly things were done in the 80s). Today's aluminium is fine, but the old stuff? Ugh. Well of course that's what we have in our new place - the old ugly stuff. To me, windows and doors are a big deal - even the plainest red-brick cube would look instantly better if it has nice panel windows. So it'll be out with the aluminium, and in with nicer timber - three hinged panel doors in the front living room and two or three sets of French doors in the extension, similar to the ones I fell in love with on Mokkasin blog, top of picture, above (I've fallen in love with everything on that blog - it's gorgeous). I have yet to find a 21-panel door like Mokkasin, but I did manage to find a 15-light door from Crown Doors which I think will be perfect. We also had our hearts set on a serving window from the kitchen to outside just as above, but I'm not sure it'll work with our current idea. But it's early days... we'll see. 

Black kitchen cabinets

Well, probably more like a charcoal, not pure black. At this stage, I plan to install another Ikea kitchen. I had no complaints about my old kitchen, and to be honest, I don't get the whole snobbery about Ikea kitchens. They rock. And in my highly investigative research into kitchen cabinetry (!), I've found the base cabinets to be the same - if not better - quality than top-end cabinets. So why pay three times more? Plus, this way, I am thinking I can afford to spend a little more on painting the cabinets a custom colour and installing a nice benchtop (I'm going to look into some samples of Caesarstone London Grey). I was thinking concrete benchtops but I've heard some horror stories and the stone just seems easier to clean. Of course I'll be pairing those lovely charcoal cabinets and super-soft grey with white subway tile and I'm thinking three diamond lights bulbs over the island. I just scored one for my birthday yesterday, so I'll have to stock up on some more plus the fittings (am going for gold at the moment) over the coming months.

Lofts, fireplaces and skylights

For as long as I can remember, Steve has been banging on about having a loft library in our house. I kind of ignored him for the first few years, but I've grown to love the idea. We are planning to extend and build one large living, dining and kitchen room onto the back of our house. We want it to have vaulted ceilings and at one end above the French doors, we'd like to have a little loft library. It won't look as beautiful and quaint as this one (above), but I think it will be a nice feature, extra space and I have always dreamt of a little library space of some sort. Two (or three!) birds, people! Also on the wishlist, skylights (which would look similar to Dana's place from House*Tweaking) to let light flood into the new room - some openable ones like these from The Attic Group would be ideal for a bit of extra air flow. I also dreamt the other night of a fireplace, so then got obsessed with them and found this dreamy fireplace: the FilioFocus available froma Oblica in Melbourne. I'm in love. Am pretty sure it's going to be the most expensive fireplace on the market, but man it's nice. And of course whatever fireplace I get, this incredibly cool fire-wood shelf needs to go with it - it's Oblica's Big O; one part practical, two parts cool.

What else? Oh new roof (swapping the tiles for Colorbond - possibly Shale Grey, Surfmist or Windspray depending on what council regs), weatherboard cladding (going with Linea) painted dark charcoal (Porter's Paints Palm Beach Black would be perfect - not sure if I can use on this kind of cladding though?!), backyard deck, new bathroom, trees and landscaping, high skirting boards, fresh white paint (am thinking just the untinted white. I like my whites to be bright!) and maybe an attic storage space with pull-down ladder. We had one in my house growing up and man it was handy. And that's just the reno stuff. Then there is decorating and that is a whole other series of posts. I can't wait!

So, I guess my love of white, black and grey hasn't disappeared...

So for Mother's Day I got a .... HOUSE!

On Saturday, it was a year to the day (day before Mother's Day!) that we moved back to the coast from Sydney. The day before, we exchanged contracts on our new house. The house? The very first house we considered buying when we decided to move back. In a nice tidy roundabout, we spent a year searching for a home and ended up buying the first one we (kind of) looked at. Sounds like a nice waste of year, really, doesn't it? Not quite...

Our new (oldish) kitchen. It will eventually be replaced, but until then, I'll probably look to paint the cabinets a dark colour and maybe do something with the benchtop... The house has three bedrooms, one bath with a loo in the laundry (ugh), a weird little corridor room that leads out to the back patio (through that glass door, above), awful fluro lights, bad aluminium windows, highish ceilings, a water view and a large cabin with living room, bedroom, kitchenette, bathroom and laundry. So whatever we do to the main house, we'll have a "spare" utility in the backyard. Yay!

When we decided we wanted to move back, we were pretty determined to buy a waterfront property. They were so darn affordable compared to Sydney prices. In the area we were living in North Sydney, we might have got a not-so-great two-bedroom unit. For around the same price, we could have got a not-so-great two-bedroom waterfront shack. I know what I'd have preferred... So I moved into realestate.com.au (not even kidding - I should have shares in that site. I could account for a large percentage of daily hits all by myself) and searched. There wasn't much - just one house that we'd seen on the market a while back, but it seemed to have disappeared. Then I found our house - a three bedroom fibro shack a street back from the water. It had a bit of a view from the living room and access to the waterways a couple of houses along. It was way under our budget and we decided that our lifestyle would be no different if we lived there than if we lived in a waterfront property - except we'd have a much smaller mortgage and less stress of the "what ifs". A few weeks later we headed up to look at some other properties and it had disappeared from the market. We ended up renting and when the time came to start looking properly again, I called the agent to find out what happened to the house - I never found any sale data and she said the owners decided to wait and sell in a better market (which, mind you, is NOW. Houses are being snapped up around here within days of being on the market). She said they were still keen to sell but wanted a particular price. Having not seen it - and with tenants in the house making a quick inspection out of the question - we decided we couldn't agree to a price beforehand and so just let it be. A few months later, it was back on the market. In the meantime we were in talks with a former neighbour about buying their house, but when he said he was going to wait a while longer, we went to the inspection. Afterwards, Steve made an offer a little under the "offers over" price and a week worth of major stress later, we're just awaiting settlement in a few weeks. So our plans to stretch ourselves and mortgage to the hilt were replaced with a much better plan - tiny mortgage, great reno, awesome lifestyle, hopefully mortgage-free in a single-digit years and another happy home. 

It has been 10 years since we bought a house and while this is the third time we've been through it, I pretty much had no idea what I was doing again. A big bundle of nerves comparing, applying and waiting for final finance approval, negotiating contract stuff and dealing with various real estate agents about a million other different things... I have managed to lose about 5 kilos this past week. I also had 42 phone conversations in one day - I counted! How is something that happens every single day so friggin' stressful and painful? That said, I can happily recommend Bankwest - we ended up going with them after doing a lot of comparing and from the very first phone call, the guy I randomly got paired up with was brilliant. He organised everything so quickly and effectively - we were unconditionally approved in three days (would have been two but I had to resend something) and managed to set up our mortgage beyond the first "deal". 

And now just when I should be breathing again, we have more stresses. The house we're renting sold (in two days!) and we were given our 30 day notice on Wednesday. Today, the tenants in our house were given their notice. That is a week later. If they can't find something in the next few weeks and move out, letting us settle early and move in before the new owners of the house we're renting settle and move into their house, then we'll be homeless for a few weeks. YAY! How's that for confusing?! Anyway, I'm going to give myself a few more days before I go back to panicking about that kind of thing. 

And I'm going to spend those few days daydreaming about how we'll transform our fibro worst-house-in-the-best-street into something fab. It'll never be the best house in the best street when the houses across the road are million-dollar properties. But that's fine - it's just got to be the best we can make it for us. To quote Dana from House*Tweaking - "it's not the house of our dreams, but it's the house in which we'll pursue our dreams." I loved that line the first time I read it and can relate so much. And heck, if we pursue our dreams to the letter, then it might just end up being the house of our dreams as well!

I'm looking forward to getting into it - apparently I like living in rubble! But it's going to be fun - I'll share some more pics and ideas later and you will be SICK of hearing about renovations, I'm sure, but I plan to document it all right here. You have been warned :)

x

bad things happen in 3s...

Oh yes they do. Good things do too, but let's start with the bad.

Last day of school term: the day started well with a Wet and Wild day at Zak's school where they kids got wet on a watery obstacle course and were showered by the local fire brigade and end with not-so-great house news.

Bad thing 1: Last day of the school term (not officially a bad thing, though some days I might claim that!) we received notice that the owners of the house we're renting are putting it on the market in two weeks. We were given the first opportunity to buy it, but politely turned them down (not really what we're after despite all the floorplans of potential extensions and room rearrangements I made just for fun). So that means that if it sells straight away - and given the ridiculously quick sales around here lately, I'd say it will - we'll have around six to seven weeks before we need to be outta here. And with barely any rentals around to actually rent and still no house to buy, I was a little panicked by this news. To be honest, though, I was much more panicked about keeping the house constantly neat and tidy for regular inspections! After getting over the original "oh crap", I figured I'd have a good week or so to thoroughly clean, cull and get it ready like the very nice tenants that we are. But then...

Not since 24 first came out (and I only liked the first series) have I fallen hard for a TV show. Totally obsessed with Game of Thrones - it made (my first) sick day bearable! 

Bad thing 2: I got sick. I never get sick - well, of course I get the odd cold and sniffle and cough - but this was lay-on-the-couch-and-do-nothing kinda sick. Which was fine for that first Monday when my mother-in-law had the kids for the day. I actually kind of enjoyed having that sick day. But then I got worse and I was sleeping as much as the kids would allow it during the day and at night and was all weak and gross and couldn't do anything or go anywhere...  My poor kids have had THE most boring holiday ever. Bless them - they've been so great considering we haven't done a darn thing. Our trip to Canberra to stay with my parents was cancelled, we missed out on my nephew's first birthday, we couldn't have our playdate at the park with our friends and my plans to do fun, adventurous things these holidays went poof pretty quickly. Probably around the same time teeny tiny ninjas had a sword fight in my throat and made it so very, very sore. And then just before I lost my voice, I lost something else...

Out with the old... how the blog used to look.

Bad thing 3: Bye bye blog. Yep, during Wordpress' major bot attack, my blog was majorly affected (or it was noticed that it'd been hackked) and it went bye byes. Everything was compromised - the back-ups I had were also dodgy so while on my deathbed (!) and panicking about everything else I had to do and how many other people and websites my brother-in-law hosted that were no doubt stabbing Belinda Graham-shaped voodoo dolls, I just made the call to can Wordpress and start over on Blogger. I like Blogger much more than Wordpress - not really sure why I bothered to swap in the first place. I kind of understand Blogger and don't feel like a moron when I play around with the behind-the-scenes like I did on Wordpress. But because the backups couldn't be imported (and were too bloody big to convert and import anyway), I will be manually transferring the words and images over here from cached pages. Oh yes, it's going to a L.O.N.G and painful process. And because all those thousands of pins on Pinterest that have been pinned and repinned are going to go NOWHERE, I thought I'd better start with a few of the popular posts so at least they can be found on the homepage. Even that has been incredibly painful. So I think I'm going to edit the original blog way down to just the best stuff and things I want to keep a record of - so probably mostly tutorials, pics of my home, kids parties etc. I'll likely leave off a few of those posts that I kind of just threw together to get something up, but it's still going to take forever to do, so bear with me please! If there is a tutorial/info/post/pics you desperately want to see ASAP, let me know in the comments and I'll prioritise!

And just when I assumed the bad 3 things were going to start all over again - the week had that ominous feel about it -miraculously, a few good things came instead.

New look: clean and simple

Good thing 1: I gave the blog a makeover. Seeing as I was starting over, I took the opportunity to give the blog a fresher look. It had been the same for four long years and while I liked the design at the beginning, in the end I couldn't stand looking at it like that anymore. But of course wordpress and I didn't get along and I just couldn't make it work, so gave up trying, figuring I'd eventually get someone to do it for me. That never happened. Instead I played around with some fonts and photoshop and came up with this. I'm going to miss Photoshop when the trial expires (I can't justify that price. Maybe I'll get Elements again one day). I'm no graphic designer, but I'm happy enough with it for now. Also, let me tell you how smarty pants I felt being able to put the social media icons in a row like that all by myself. I may have high-fived myself. All I wanted was a clean, minimal design. I don't need tricky widgets and weird layouts on my blog. I couldn't care less about the bells and whistles that you can have with Wordpress. I just wanted something simple and (hopefully) nice looking. So this is what I came up with. Oh I have things to add - my blog links aren't there yet, I still have some other things to add like contact deets etc, but I'll get there eventually. One thing that has also disappeared is all my email subscribers. So if you had subscribed by email, you're going to have to do it again if you want to continue receiving alerts (you can enter your address at bottom of the sidebar). Otherwise you can click on the RSS button under my smiling head to add it to your reader.

Good thing 2: I received a lot of lovely words, advice, help and so-sweet support after whinging about it all on social media. Thank you for being so lovely - made me feel all warm and fuzzy to have such lovely readers. And nice to know I actually still have readers - I may have had a day or two where I thought "why bother continuing? No one will car!e". You know those silly down times you get... So thank you so much! I also physically feel better - I finally went to the doctors on Tuesday and have been shoving antibiotics down my still-sore throat. I felt a bit human today - whoo hoo!

Good thing 3: We may - may - have some news on a house soon. Steve hates it when I say cross fingers and toes and eyes, so instead I'd ask you to all send some positive thoughts our way. I'll share more when I can regardless of the outcome...

Thank you all again - hopefully the blog will run smoothly from here on! x

crafty decorating: painted cork-tile pinboard

My poor desk has been sitting there covered in papers and bills (ugh) for way too long. It needed something to make it look a little bit more inspirational than it did so I would actually want to sit there and work. And now, I think it does! I wasn’t going to do a moodboard and I’m still not sure if I’ll bother with the typical magazine tear-sheet moodboard – because I hate ripping up my magazines! And I have no time and patience to do the photo thing I wanted to do – maybe somewhere else another time. So for now, it was a graphic pinboard of some kind for a few pictures, cards, photos and other bits and bobs I feel like hanging/dangling/pinning on it. I was thinking of stencilling something, but then I realised I keep doodling this diamond-ish pattern so I decided to translate it in giant-scale on some cork tiles.

Oh look! More handmade touches – I made this cushion out of two napkins, the twine hanger was made with dowel and thin wire, the lamp is an Ikea Tertial spraypainted blue, the garland is another one I made from scrap papers and a half-inch circle punch. Rainbow and sticker art by Layla, dinosaurs by Zak. He is such an awesome drawer.

What I love about this simple pattern and duplicate tiles is that i can change it up – the same tiles can be rearranged to be a chevron pattern or diagonal stripe. I also left space on either side to add to the tiles if I want to later on. They’re simply stuck up with 3M Command Picture Hanging Strips* which are easily removable from the walls (thank goodness as I’m renting!) but also meant that if I DO rearrange, it’s as simple as pulling the tiles off, and pressing them back in as they’ll just click into place. Awesome. If you’re keen to DIY, I of course took some pics of the process. Why not make the project process even more drawn-out?! Ha! Here’s how.

You’ll need:

Cork tiles – mine are from Bunnings, $13-odd for packet of 6. They’re floor tiles so quite thick and hardy. 

Painter’s tape

White paint

3M Command Picture Hanging Strips – I used 4 small velcro-style strips per cork tile

A paintbrush 

Also helpful: a ruler and pencil

Step 1: The easiest way to do this corner angle is to measure the same distance from the corner on both sides, mark and then line up the tape to the markings. I couldn’t find a ruler – of course – so used the 3M tape itself to measure everything. As multi-functional as it is genius. Tape off your corner and then cover the whole triangle with tape if you want to (or if your 3-year-old daughter is going to be painting it and you want to ensure the paint only goes in the right areas).

Step 2: Use your ruler – or in my case – your 3M tape! – to measure the distance you want the stripes to be. Steve said you could use maths as well but PFFT. I’m not even going to go there (not even close to my strongest subject). Tape it up and around the edges and repeat – mine ended up being (coincidentally, but very helpfully) the same size as two strips of masking tape. Repeat with all tiles the same way. The maths way is something about dividing up the lengths of each side…

Step 3: Arrange your tiles in the pattern you desire to ensure the stripes line up well enough.- with this simple pattern you can do this diamond, diagonal stripes or chevron. Don’t you love options?! If you couldn’t be bothered to keep redoing the pattern to get it right later on, mark the tiles on the back (top-left, top-right etc).

Step 4: Have your slave child paint the remaining cork. Then go over it yourself to redistribute the paint that all ended up on the one cork tile in huge glumps. Paint the tile in smooth strokes in the one direction. Leave to dry.

Step 5: My favourite part about painting with tape – peeling it back to see super-straight neat non-bleeding lines. Yay!

Step 6: Stick two 3M Command picture strips together – they click together a little like velcro.

Step 7: Peel off the backing tape off one of the sides, stick into place on the tile. I used one in each corner for super-strength and also to ensure the tile was evenly set off the wall – it sinks a tiny bit in the middle when you press in a tack, but is not going anywhere! Stick into place on the wall and repeat with all tiles until you have your pattern. These strips are great for any kind of wall hanging you want to change up – photos in frames can easily be swapped by simply taking the frame off – leaving the strip on the wall still – and then pressing back into place. Same might go if I rearrange my pinboard (although if the tiles turn to the sides they might not fit in perfectly, but they should still stay put.)

Step 8: Stick, pin, tape, hang, decorate!

 And one more to see it in the rest of the room… There is an Expedit to the right of the kids table. I really should take a picture of the whole space, but it’s always so messy… Even too messy to show you how messy it is, if you know what I mean. Normally I’m happy to do that, but at the moment, sheesh – the place is appalling. I had to turn down an impromptu playdate today because the place looked like a bunch of teenagers had been allowed to live in it parent-free for a week. That bad.

Anyway, there is my new pinboard. I just need some things to pin on it now! It’s a bit sparse, but it was mainly to show the pattern. I kind of don’t want to cover it up too much… I like diamonds. Real ones too! x

* I was sent a packet of 3M hooks to use in some way and enter into a Blog Aloud competition. I think if you read my blog regularly you’ll know how I feel about them (I love and use them for EVERYTHING) so I decided against a review and incorporated the competition requirements – image, link and mention – into this project instead. My project has been shortlisted as one of the top 8 and it’s now down to votes. If you have a spare minute and enjoyed this project, please pop by to Facebook and “like” my project here (I am assuming a like is a vote?!?!) to vote. I would very much like to win the prize. Thanks!

{Images by Belinda Graham for The Happy Home}

immy's 2nd birthday confetti party

My tiny baby girl turned two on Friday. She woke up to streamers dangling from her door which she proceeded to run through, play peek-a-boo in and twirl around in all morning. She tore open her pressies and enjoyed an indoor tea party with some of her toys. And right on cue, no messing around or easing into it, she stepped full on into the terrible twos and threw tantrums and hissyfits and whinged and cried for most of the day. Bless her.

On Sunday, we threw her a birthday party. Immy has a great love for confetti – she has on no less than 8 occasions either discovered my (not-so-well-hidden) confetti boxes or stolen them from me while I’ve been using it and tipped it all over the ground. Then picked up the confetti and thrown it, spread it, eaten it, put it in all cracks and crevices of the house. So she loves it, which made a party theme easy to choose! Here’s what we did.

Invitations

Invites were quite the last-minute affair (as usual). For those who had RSVPed, I whipped up a hand-made note: drew around a bowl onto a piece of paper, wrote a fancy pants Imogen in the centre with a gold pen and the details in black. Little gold dots around the edge of the circle jazzed it up a tiny bit, then I cut it out, rolled it up and popped it into a balloon with some confetti (the tissue paper stuff, not the ones in this picture – you want the light stuff so it floats prettily to the ground!). To get the Imogen the same every time, I traced over the first one on baking paper, then centred it each time onto the cut-out circle, retraced the baking paper again with a pencil so it indented into the white paper, then traced it again with the gold pen for the final result. It worked quite well. For the cousins who lived far away, we mailed the balloon with a note “blow me up and pop me!” and included a warning to the blower-upperer that it contained confetti! Just in case the kids freaked out about balloons being popped, we included a bonus balloon each. I’m nice like that. For those nearby, we blew up the balloon ourselves and hand-delivered it and got to watch them being showered in confetti. So cute.

Decorations

I kept it pretty simple, actually. I had a plan to have a bunch of round decor balls in my colour theme – honeycomb balls, paper lanterns, pom poms, giant round balloons, but then I just went kept it to the confetti wall spots – cut out cardboard. It didn’t take too long to do and the kids had fun helping me stick them up with Blu-Tak. Balloons were hung along the porch and these hideous little hawaii party honeycomb totems (or something) …

were transformed into this two of the totems de-totemed and doubled up with bells in-between. Whatever they are, I think they look better than they were and added a little colour and some jingles when they blew in the breeze!

We also had some balloons on those balloon sticks stabbed in the ground on the front lawn, welcoming guests – some were clear balloons filled with confetti. Clearly I forgot to photograph them (first of many things I forgot to do).

Something else I forgot to do? After buying a whole bunch of beautiful straws in pretty colours and patterns, I totally forgot to put them out and they sat the party out up on top of the cupboard in their jar.

Fun

A pinata, of course. An ice cream cone box turned number 2 covered with a bunch of tissue paper circles. I’m surprised it held up to beatings from the kids – but it did! As usual, I almost didn’t want them to smash it up!

Immy was given these boots by my sister as part of her present. She put them on and didn’t take them off again until I ran the bath. She LOVED them. So cute!

We had party hat decorating (again – going to have to think of something new next time!!) with confetti spots big and tiny, pom poms, glitter letters, paper flowers, sticky pearls and washi tapes. I couldn’t find any plain-coloured hats that weren’t hideous so I made some up out of pastel cardboard and stuck on random strips of double-sided tape.

A while back I was inspired by an art installation called The Obliteration Room. It was a room in a gallery which – along with its contents – was painted pure white. And then it was attacked by sticker-dot-wielding children who were encouraged to stick these colourful dots all over the walls, floor, ceiling, furniture – everywhere! I loved it. So taking this clever idea and shrinking it right down, I set the kids loose with coloured dot stickers on the false wall I put up in my garage.

Though some people felt the need to decorate themselves with those stickers…

And then, for the grand finale, I made some confetti poppers and hung them from the garage roof beams – the kids pulled the strings and the confetti fell over them. In my mind, this looked so pretty and colourful. In reality, they pulled at different times and some looked confused. How DARE these tiny people ruin my plans!!!! You can get proper instructions for something similar from here, but I tried and tested various ideas and found this worked best: I just made up some tubes with cut-up food-packaging boxes (cereal/ice cream cone etc). I stapled them into small tubes, about the size of half a toilet roll. At one end, I punched two holes on either side of it and looped through a piece of string, tying it in the centre. I then wrapped a piece of tissue paper around it, lining up the edge of the paper along the top, over the holes with the string. Tape to inside the tube for extra support. The other end, the tissue paper should be longer than the roll, and you can bunch it up and tie it tight with a piece of string to close the hole at that end. Now fill the tube with confetti by carefully placing it inside the top and hang. Pull the string firmly and it will tear the tissue paper off the end, creating a hole for the confetti to float out of.

Food

Ahh, food. I am HOPELESS with food. I just can’t get it together at parties… I usually try to avoid making the parties at lunch time so I can get away with just putting on rubbish party food, but this fell smack over lunch time so I grabbed a few things for all tastes…. and then forgot to put it all out. Kids got their sausage rolls and party pies and mini quiches and lollies. Everything else? Fridge, cupboard, bags! I made a confetti cake (sprinkles in a vanilla cake) and attempted a Swiss meringue buttercream which was going great guns (even if I did whip it completely by hand – no mixer or electric beaters in our house at the moment!) until I realised the cake was still too warm to ice and it was 1.30am and I had to go to bed, so I threw it in the fridge to ice in the morning. But it just didn’t work – I guess I do need a machine if I want to do that! So I threw the fall-back icing together and sprinkled on some edible confetti. Immy loved it – that’s the main thing. And it looked pretty sitting on my new Emerald & Ella cake stand – second main thing.

It’s her party and she’ll cry if she wants to.

All up, it was a lovely day. Layla is up next and has put in an order for a rainbow and flamingo party. Thanks for that, Layla…

{Images by Belinda Graham for The Happy Home}