Dinosaurs on a cake.

A broken arm is not good enough reason to postpone a party (especially when cakes have been baked and the house is tidy!) so with Isaac at the fracture clinic I welcomed the first guests and then the party got into full swing once the boy returned. In the last few weeks we've had requests for many different themes including Angry Birds and Thunderbirds but some dinosaur paper plates were enough to convince him that a dinosaur party was perfect. 

The cake was a Mary Berry slab cake with lots of grated chocolate on top of the icing - bad idea it went EVERYWHERE - and then it had a couple of new Schleich dinosaurs on the top to add to the dino collection. 

We have got into the habit of asking people to bring a contribution to the food instead of gifts - I'm not sure the kids approve but it takes some of the hassle out of the planning and reduces the general party chaos of lots of stuff everywhere.

I still have a few basics and some treats on the table and today's included a big dish of fruit (that ended up with dinosaurs in it by the end of the party), chocolate brownies (Nigella's recipe), salad, olives, cheese, bread and crisps, and big jugs with water with lots of fruit chopped up in it. I had planned to do lots of dipped marshmallows but frankly they were such a faff I didn't do more than a couple of dozen. They looked pretty though and went down well - the tip if you're going to try it is apparently to freeze your marshmallows.

I bought a couple of tubs of small dinosaurs from ELC and some glow in the dark ones for the kids to take a handful home instead of party bags. A tired boy got quite possessive of them by the end though and was rationing them to one per person... He now has quite a collection of dinosaurs!