All about me….
Mother, Blogger, Creator and Lover of Children’s Parties
TAMSIN RYAN
(Based in London)
I have always loved making things; from knitting and crochet, to painting, paper crafts, clothes and even baking. My mum was brilliant at all these things and she taught me to knit and sew from a very early age. I still have my very first piece of knitting that I probably did before I was even walking.
My mum always made my brother and I the most gorgeous fancy dress costumes and wonderful homemade birthday cakes for our birthdays. One of the things I was most looking forward to when becoming a mum was following on in this tradition, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree!
My brother and I (many years ago), in costumes lovingly made by my mum
Before my daughter (Lily) had even arrived on the scene, my very large bump and I got busy painting her a jungle mural for her nursery, with the help of my mum you can see more of my murals at Lilypad Designs. My mum also made lily some wonderful animal ceramic pots for organising all the little bits and bobs at Lily’s nappy changing station.
Lily’s bedroom
Beautiful ceramic pots made by Lily’s Zaza (Granny)
Once I had recovered from the sheer barbarity of birth and my body had finally started to resemble some sense of normality, it was time to start planning Lily’s first birthday. Sadly, her birthday fell during one of our numerous lockdowns, so I had to scale my ideas back, but I loved every minute of the preparations. I made bespoke birthday bunting, wrapped her presents in her own drawings (to save buying wrapping paper) and spent hours baking and decorating her cake – which was so huge, we had to hand it out to all our neighbours, but it looked the part (and tasted pretty good), which was the important thing!
Lily’s first birthday party
Lockdown has also disappointedly meant no fancy dress parties for Lily as yet, but as soon as we have our first invite you can be sure I will be dusting off my sewing machine and going for it in a BIG WAY. I will definitely take it as a personal failure if Lily doesn’t win every fancy dress competition she enters – fortunately she did win her first pirate fancy dress costume at the reading of ‘The Pirate Mums’ at Wimbledon Library! I’ve taken the opportunity of having some time at home, to start building Lily her own little wardrobe of fancy dress costumes, which keeps us very entertained picking a different outfit to wear each day.
When Lily’s second birthday came around, I went even more overboard and while I know she’s really too young to understand much of it, we had a great time, I really enjoyed all the prepping and we’ll have some lovely photos to look back on together in years to come. All the planning, research and making for Lily’s birthdays got me thinking and I decided to start documenting it all and sharing it here, to give other parents and carers some ideas and inspiration.
I hope that some of the ideas, practical advice and hacks here will help you to plan your kids parties, but if you can’t find what you are looking for, please do drop me a line and I’ll see how I can help.