Silver and Green 40th Birthday

Well, after nine months planning our party has come....and gone. It all happened so quickly but fortunately I did manage to have a brilliant time!

When I do projects and parties for myself I tend to make it up as I go along.  I like to let ideas flow and not be tied to an idea too much. Until last week I wasn't even sure if I would make a cake.  I knew I wanted a dessert table but realised with a few days to spare that it would look much better with a focal point.  However I didn't want a big tiered cake so I went for three separate ones.  I made a baby one to tie in with the invitatons.  I intended to decorate the middle cake like my butterfly cake but with graduated colour, however I recently bought some lace moulds and decided to give them a go. I kept the graduated colour though which I love.

 I knew I wanted to paint the final cake somehow, but I also included lace to compliment the middle cake.  Real flowers on top also nodded to the decorating scheme... (ok, I was running out of time.)

They were all coconut and lime, soaked with rum. (Mmmm)

Here is the dessert buffet, as well as the three main cakes I made cakepops, lemon poppyseed biscuits, chocolate espresso biscuits, macaroons, elderflower and gooseberry mini cupcakes with painted discs and mini Key Lime pies.

I went for 'green' flavours if you know what I mean!  I found the edible stars on the macaroons in my local cake craft shop, how cute are they?

The rest of the decorations were a mix of different plants and pots and a huge amount of moss  Unless you have the budget of Amy Atlas sometimes it's good to embrace difference.  So I collected  various containers in keeping with the colours I had picked.  I used old tin cans, white and cream pots, glass jars and I covered empty cocoa tins with silver serviettes.
I was very pleased with my stash and had it all boxed up to take to the venue. I thought to myself that instead of two boxes of decorations to share around ten tables I needed a box for each.  But once we had added candles, olives ,dips, a platter of cheese and bags of cookies for guests to take away it was perfect.  A local baker friend made bread, sausage rolls and cheese straws which went down a storm.

I had quite a few invitations left so the kidlets helped me make them into bunting, because you can't have a party without bunting!  We strung them across the hall with the help of some tall friends.

As the invitation suggested it was a sedate affair, with lots of chats and my Mum singing some jazz for us.
It was a lovely chilled evening to catch up with many pals who we haven't seen in years.

 I think I'll start planning our 50th now!
xxx