Turning Five is Beary Fun

Some years we celebrate full on at home, but some years we all think it is best to outsource. This year we did a little of both.

A few weeks ago I took Immy to Build a Bear where she saw all the things she wanted RIGHT NOW. I suggested that it would be great to have a party there with her friends and ten seconds later we were booked in.

I whipped up the invitations on Canva which is still my favourite tool to design things on.

Immy is not a fan of big groups of people so she invited her four favourite friends from Kindergarten and we were set. Once they arrived for the morning they went ahead and picked their favourite bear. Immy knew she wanted the dog and was first to grab hers from the shelf.

It was lovely, when as part of the party her little guests held a red heart, rubbed it on their noses, closed their eyes and made a birthday wish for Imogen. All those hearts then went straight into doggy along with a wish that Imogen had to make herself.

I asked her later what she wished for and managed not to cry when she told me she wished for two things. The first was for Poppy Ray to come back from Heaven and the second was that he bring Monty the black dog with him too.

After all our bears were filled (including Popps filling hers with a song of One Direction) and because you can't eat in the Build a Bear stores, I lined the girls up in single file and marched them to the lovely Koko Black Chocolate shop. They were so excited to march through a shopping centre and were giggling about it being a birthday party excursion.

We arrived in time for our baby hot chocolates and chocolate teddy bear pops. The grown ups ordered their choice of hot bevvie and then out came the fabulous chocolate on chocolate on chocolate cake.

Koko Black has never heard Happy Birthday sung so loudly and with such excitement.

We finished up our chocolate overload and headed home to prepare for the party to carry on with more family members.

The rules are that the birthday person gets to choose the menu for the night. Immy chose lasagna, macaroni cheese and salad - but the salad has to be in individual sections and not mixed together and there was to be NO LEAFY GREEN THINGS.

I may have added just a teeny bit of lettuce and she quickly told me off.

After our pasta loading out came the cake.

This was one of my most favourite and most easy ever cakes to make. I told Immy that her cake would be a surprise because I just couldn't make any of the cakes she requested.

I made a cake that looked very simple and plain on the outside.

But all those smarties were enough to get her excited. I think we forget that kids really don't care about the cake as long as they get the most smarties and the biggest piece.

I did have a couple of extra surprises though.

I made it a little rainbow cake.

I asked the kids to keep a close eye on the rainbow colours as I cut the first piece. 

Check out our faces! 

The kids were so excited when the rainbow cake also spilled out a centre of more smarties.

I called it the Surprise Rainbow Pinata Cake. 

We sang more happy birthday songs, clapped, made wishes, ate more cake and crashed into bed at 10pm. 

Turning five was a pretty good day for us all.