The party is over!!!

Well the party is over! I am never, ever doing finger food ever again :)

It wasn't without it's dramas though. The way Saturday went, I was wondering if the party was even going to go ahead - everything seemed to go wrong. On Saturday morning I pulled the chicken wings out of the fridge to marinate. I bought them on Thursday afternoon at the deli at Woolies - they went straight into a cool bag with a couple of freezer bricks, it took me about 30 minutes to get home and they went straight in the fridge - I pulled them out Saturday morning and they were off. The smell almost knocked me over - I was not impressed! So a quick trip down to Bilo to buy some more.

The cake I made last week & froze was too dry, so I made another one on Saturday. When I pulled it out of the tin, it split :( So it went from a slab cake to a magic hat cake :) A few other minor things went went wrong as well, like the battery in the lawn-mower being dead when Pete went to use it...

We had to go out to dinner on Saturday night - Pete had his squash presentation and since he'd won his grade, I figured we'd better go! Mum & Dad looked after Billy - and he freaked them out by coming down with a temperature which wasn't coming down with Panadol. We got home about 10:30 as they were starting to panic - I gave him some Nurofen as well to try and get it down. He was wide awake again by that point, and clingy, so I was trying to ice the cake & attend to him at the same time! At midnight I gave up on decorating the cake, and just left it iced. His temp was starting to come down, but was still high, so I got the sleeping bag & doona and curled up on his floor for the night to keep an eye on him. (Not as much of a sacrifice as it sounds - the alternative was sleeping next to a beer-y, snoring husband lol). So needless to say I didn't get a lot of sleep that night - his temp was down to a reasonable level by about 2:30am but I was wide awake at that point with everything I had to do racing through my mind.

Anyway he seemed ok the next morning, a bit whingy but his temp was ok, so we didn't have to cancel.

On to the party... Hot finger food is a LOT of work - not just beforehand, but on the day. We had 3 ovens going (we have a double oven and Mum brought a little portable one down), and spent probably an hour reheating it & cooking the pizza.

The pizza & quiches probably went over the best. I forgot to put sauce out for the meatballs so they were a bit dry, as were the pies, but they were all still nice. The sausage rolls & chicken weren't rejected either. We had heaps left over though - I really over-catered (and we didn't even heat some of it up!), so we'll be eating leftovers all week!! Luckily some of it was still frozen so we can save it for another day.

I'd hired a magician through LETS - she did a good show, the kids loved her, especially the grand finale with a real rabbit which they then got to pat & cuddle! Unfortunately she couldn't make it til 2pm, so it made it a long afternoon for some of the littlies and some had to leave early.

I had some wonderful help from family & friends with putting out the food, and cleaning up - it was so nice to come in to the kitchen and find piles of clean dishes!! Thank you everyone!

A selection of photos..

Party in full swing..

The infamous finger food..

Billy's cake - decorated by himself..

Blowing out the candles..

A very rare shot of me :)

Billy with magician JoJo..

I don't like to put photos of other people's kids on my blog (for privacy reasons), so have only put a few photos up here. I'll be putting more online later - if anyone wants to see more, email me at kezp99 @ hotmail.com, let me know who you are, and I'll share the link.

Overall it was a good day though I think. Billy enjoyed it, so that was the main thing after all!

Now to do it all over again in 3 weeks for Pete's 40th! I'm not sure what we're doing for food - but I know it won't be finger food lol!!