Lena's Sixth Birthday Party

We had a party a week early because of Easter - we are going to an Easter party out of town on the day of her birthday. There were six party guests, plus three babies. Amy, Lena, Karin, Momoka, Maia and Shou. The cake (see below) is a Pinata Cake. Food included snacks and crudites with a cream cheese dip, a fruit platter, rice bubble cakes, Lena's favorite snack 'curls', jelly boats, choux cremes and jubes.

















A Pinata cake, as the name suggests, is designed to be cracked open with a hammer, like a pinata! A cake with treasure on top (top) is concealed under a decorated chocolate shell (above). The Birthday Girl gets to smash open the cake! (below) . My chocolate shell cracked, so she really only had to knock the pieces over, but she was still happy.






















Then we could finally put some candles on it! I had too much chocolate for the size of the shell, so it settled on the bottom of the bowl, making the chocolate very thick there, as you can see on the slabs of chocolate to the right of the candles. The proper cake is in the new Australian Women's Weekly cook-book (Maria has it, she did the pirate from it for Michael's birthday once when I was in NZ) .

Inside were eggs, Hershey's kisses and Marbles (Japan's Pebbles/Smarties/M&Ms), and Japanese money chocolate.

Party guest Momoka shows off her nasal party whistle-blowing skills! Later she did it with both nostrils.







Karin's birthday fell the day after the party, so I whipped her up a quick cake using the piece I'd cut out of Lena's cake. She got up and went and slapped both her parents. Odd way to react! I guess she was embarrassed, maybe she asked them not to tell, but we knew anyway, we've known her birthday since she was born...















Maia playing "Pin the Crown on the Princess". I drew the Princess, Amy and Lena coloured and decorated her. They soon got too good at it - feeling their way from the edge, feeling for where the crayon ended. But the first few go's were fun, with the crown ending up all over the place.















Pass the Parcel. Amy won, but the prize was a packet of mixed chocolates, so she shared. I also put a packet of jubes into each layer. We also played Musical Cushions - the first round got a prize, but then they played it over and over and over - no prize needed, that's just one fun game!

The babies. Yuuki, the baby born the same day as Erica is on the left, Erica is sitting on his Daddy's knee. And Marina, a month younger than the other two.


Marina's big brother Shou, a little shy of all the big girls!