Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the play

We held a Gruffalo birthday party for Austin for his 4th birthday. We acted out the story ("The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson). The family played all the parts - Austin (4 that day) was the Mouse, Thomas, (7) was the Fox, the Owl and the Snake and Jonathon (old enough to know better) was the Gruffalo. Bronwyn narrated. Click here to see the video.

Some stills:

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the costumes

The Mouse - felt ears and a furry tail

Ears sewn onto an elastic headband

The Fox - an orange jumper, cat mask
painted in fox colours, and two pieces
of fur to make a bushy tail

The Owl - wings inspired by Prudent Baby
and round glasses

The Gruffalo - more fur than you ever want to see, cut into pieces and sewn onto a t-shirt.
Purple spikes, horns and tusks made of felt. Orange sunglasses from eBay

 

Baby Gruffalos - felt horns and fur ears

sewn onto elastic headbands for all guests

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the games

Well, there was really only one game (apart from "Mouse Mouse Gruffalo", a version of "Duck Duck Goose"), and that was "Stick the Wart on the Gruffalo's Nose"!  I printed a picture of the Gruffalo's head onto two A4 sheets of paper and stuck them together. Then I bought some green stickers and cut them into wart shapes (you could use dots, but I couldn't find any poisonous green ones in time). I wrote the guest's names on the stickers too, so we knew who stuck what, where!

Even the Gruffalo got into the game!

To download the poster from a Google Docs site (works best if you are a gmail user) (printable on 2 x A4 pages), click here (documents called "Stickthewart").

Or, right click on these thumbnails to open in a new window and print them:

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the party favours

The possibilities offered by the story of "The Gruffalo" for take home party bags were most entertaining - mouse droppings (chocolate covered sultanas), snakes (lolly snakes) and poisonous warts (again) (yoghurt covered sultanas dyed green with food colouring). No prizes for guessing which ones we had left over at the end....

Update May 2014 - After many requests for the lolly bag labels, I've uploaded the photos of the label sheets, below. They are designed to print on 3 x A4 sheets of paper, portrait orientation. Right click on them (if a Windows user) and select "open in new window". You can print from there.

Please contact me (click on my name in the "About me" space, top left) if you have any queries or difficulties with the downloads. And feel free to leave a comment saying "thanks". It makes me feel nice.

Austin's Gruffalo birthday party - the food

Readers familiar with "The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson will recall that there are a number of references to food in the book, making catering for a Gruffalo party pretty easy....

There's roasted fox
(potato wedges)

and there's scrambled snake
(made into sausage rolls)

there's owl icecream
(idea from My Cake School
via Craft Gossip)

There are also lots of other ideas in the book for turning into food - the Gruffalo's purple prickles (blue corn chips) and poisonous warts (green grapes). The birthday cake showed the story's hero, the mouse, sitting on a log in the deep, dark, wood....

A cake for Michelle

For Michelle's 40th birthday. Thank you to Fiona Ell for the royal icing and to Helen Hall for the cookie cutters used to cut the royal icing.

A charming snake (or a snake charmer?)

I had to make a snake costume for Thomas (for reasons which will soon become apparent), and was stuck as to how to do it. I had a "snakeskin" print shirt from a St Vincent de Paul charity shop, but most snake costumes end up looking like a kid in a tube of fabric.

Instead I started a word association, and came up with a snake charmer. Essentially I turned the snakeskin shirt into a long tunic or kameez, which comes down to the knees, with a nehru collar for good measure, and used the offcuts to make a turban - decorated with a jewel and feathers.

Why a snake? Watch this blog!