Paw Patrol Party...Sort-ed!
Our daughter asked if she could have a Paw Patrol and rainbow themed 5th birthday party. Thanks to Covid lockdown and isolation, this was the first ‘real’ party that we could have for her, so I really wanted to make the most of it, but it was my goal to not go overboard and to work within a modest budget. So I planned as creatively as possible and we tried to do everything ourselves. And boy did we have fun!
I first mentioned this party in this edition of my Curiously Sort-ed newsletter. I'd love to have you on my mailing list - you can sign up HERE!
Venue
We held our party at Thabile
Nursery School,
which was worth every cent – jungle gyms on tap, all the necessary facilities,
assistance setting and tidying up and, best of all, no mess at home afterwards!
Theme
Because
branded merchandise can be incredibly pricey, I found royalty-free Paw Patrol images
and created stickers that I had printed on adhesive paper by the amazing team
at Orange Print House.
These labels were cut up and used for small bottles of water (which were quite
a novelty for the kids), ziplock bags of popcorn, brown paper bags for the
snacks and takeaways, and the clay-playdoh prizes in each layer of the
pass-the-parcel game. And I even had some left over to give to the kiddies as
part of their thanks-for-coming gift. While we were setting up, I set my Dad
and daughter to work drawing chalk paw prints up the path from the entrance. It
looked totally paw-some (sorry, couldn’t resist)!
Food
Our daughter has severe allergies to dairy, eggs, fish and nuts and she battles with too much exposure to grass, sugar and (somewhat ironically) dogs. Most of our friends are incredibly mindful of her dietary needs and go out of their way to make sure that there is something available for her to eat, but nonetheless, parties can be a tricky time for us, and I usually just take a snack pack for her in case. But she generally feels left out to some degree, no matter how hard we try. Which is why I was determined that at her party, she would be free to eat whatever she wanted. And I decided to set up the kiddies table as a rainbow buffet of snacks. Where possible, I used plastic coloured snack bowls from home that were the same colour as the food going in them, as well as a sheet of A3 coloured paper, to enhance the rainbow effect. The bags of popcorn with pup tag labels were scattered across the table with their respective colours. And we got a big bag of Manhattan milk bottle sweets (ironically something that our daughter can have) and split them across the colours too.
Her chocolate cupcakes were iced with vegan buttercream icing and topped with colourful paw prints that my hubbub and I had fun cutting out of vegan fondant. (Vegan goods are generally safe for our daughter, because they automatically don’t contain dairy, eggs or fish, so we just have to watch out for nuts!).
For the parents/adults table, my Moms helped me by baking bran muffins and chocolate cake (not allergy friendly). We also had some mini sausage rolls, dog-bone cookies and salad and fruit pieces.
You can find the recipes for the plain cookies, oat cookies and chocolate cupcakes (all vegan) here (or scroll to the bottom).
Red (Marshall): strawberries and baby tomatoes
Orange (Zuma): carrot sticks, orange milk bottle sweets and dog bone cookies iced with orange squiggles
Yellow (Rubble): Flings, yellow milk bottles and vanilla Oreo cookies being picked up by 'Rubble’s' digger
Green (Rocky): cucumber sticks, snap peas, green milk bottles and green Fizz Pops
Blue (Chase): blue Manhattan marshmallows and star oat cookies iced in blue
Purple (Everest): grapes, purple milk bottles, purple Beacon marshmallows and snowflake cookies iced with purple
Pink (Skye): pink Manhattan marshmallows and pink milk bottles
Chocolate cupcakes with fondant icing
Balloons & Party Packs
Another brainwave I had was to double-up on décor and party-packs. So we put bath beans (those sponge animals or cars etc. that pop out when the capsule they are stuffed into dissolves in the bath) into colourful balloons with a note and attached them to balloon sticks. We then cable-tied them to the veranda poles and they added a beautiful pop of colour and sense of party to the space. As friends came to say goodbye, we gave them each a balloon (colour of their choice), as well as an activity colouring-in print-out I had created. And voila – we didn’t have oodles of balloons to deal with at the end of the day! And hopefully our friends enjoyed their unusual gift!
Overall,
I invested a fair amount of time and energy into this Paw Patrol party project.
But I can honestly say it was worth it. I included my daughter and hubbub at
every stage, from the sticking of the labels onto everything, to the squeezing
of bath beans into the balloons (amid much giggling), to the taste-testing of
the cookies!
And
on the day – once everything was set up, I just soaked it all up and enjoyed
the day with our birthday girl! My amazing folks and in-laws were also all
hands on deck as always, and our little 5-year old was incredibly blessed and felt
enormously loved by the presence of so many of our friends and family!
My go-to dairy-, egg- and nut-free recipes
Plain Cookies
- 240g plant butter (I used the Flora brick)
- 140g castor sugar
- 360g cake flour
- Beat the butter and castor sugar together until light.
- Stir in the sieved cake flour and up to 60mL of water and mix to form a firm dough.
- Knead lightly, then roll into 2 balls, wrap in cling wrap and chill in the fridge for 2 hours.
- Sprinkle some flour on the work surface, roll the balls out, cut shapes and repeat until the dough is finished.
- Place the slices onto baking trays that have been lined with baking paper and bake in a preheated oven at 180oC for 10-12 minutes until pale golden.
- Cool for 5 minutes on the tray, they cool completely on cooling racks
- Try not to eat them all at once!
Oat Cookies
- 170g dairy-free margarine (e.g. Blossom Lite or Olé)
- ½ cup castor sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 250mL flour
- 30mL baking powder
- 250mL rolled oats
- Mix margarine and castor sugar together with vanilla essence. Sift in the flour & baking powder. Add oats and mix all together thoroughly.
- Roll out dough and cut rounds, or roll walnut-sized pieces into balls and squash on a lined baking tray.
- Bake at 180oC for 15 min
Chocolate Cupcakes
- 500mL rice/soya/oat milk
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 300g castor sugar
- 160mL sunflower oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 300g plain flour (can be gluten-free)
- 100g cocoa powder
- 1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- Preheat oven to 180oC and place paper cupcake holders in muffin trays (depending on how full you make each, this recipe will give 24-30 cupcakes)
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the rice/soya/oat milk and lemon juice and then set aside for 5 minutes so that the lemon can sour the milk.
- Pour castor sugar, sunflower oil and vanilla extract in with the soured milk and gently whisk together.
- In a separate large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and add the salt.
- Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture a bit at a time, mixing everything together as you go, until you have a smooth batter.
- Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared cupcake holders.
- Bake for 15 minutes or until fragrant and firm and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Leave to cool in the muffin trays for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rank to finish cooling down.
- Ice as desired or simply sift some icing sugar over.
Adapted from Pippa Kendrick's "free-from food for family & friends" (HarperCollinsPublishers 2014)