Madison's 4th

I think I'm starting to get the hang of kids parties.

The first time I was really stressed, trying to get everything perfect.

We invited so many people, it was really a bit out of control.

This time, I waited till the last week to organise food and drink, and didn't even plan the decorations. The only "planning" I did was to get the chairs guy to deliver kids furniture for the event.

This time, we invited close friends with kids I knew would be keen to actually go swimming; last time none of the kids even went into the pool.

So I think it went great!

The kids started arriving just after 10 (as advised), the rainy weather stayed away so we had glorious sun the entire time.

The only thing I didn't realize was that it was seriously LABOURIOUS to grill 400 sticks of satay! I imagined in my head it would take a few minutes per batch, hence 400 didn't seem that daunting to me.

BUT.. I didn't realize the barbeque pit was NOT designed to mass cook satay! It took AGES to cook all of it, by which people had already left! ( so early! )

Still... the kids had fun in the pool ( which was the main thing anyway ), then they did finish most of the pre-cooked stuff: noodles ( that I cooked!), fishballs ( fresh from Whampoa market, boiled chipolatas and chicken pie (prepared by 'auntie Melba') and chicken parmesean cooked by Warni.

And the piece de resistance was undoubtedly THE CAKE ( if I may so brag!! )

Darn icing took over an hour just to do. I was sweating buckets in an airconditioned room trying to colour THEN roll out the silly fondant to a huge rectangle (iMPOSSIBLE!!)

And the cake itself! I baked 4 failed batches of mango cake before I called it quits and made a vanilla butter sponge! I wasted at least 8 eggs, 500g flour, 2 huge mangoes and close to 500 g of butter!

Lucky thing the theme was Nemo/Under the sea/fish/shark so I just hid the imperfections with seaweed/fish/coral!

We had just the right number of guests this time round, so I actually had time to sit down and chat with most of them. I'm always touched when people take out precious weekend time to come and attend the party, because I know how rare time off is.

Thank you to all my dear friends who came on Saturday... I'm so grateful you are part of my life!

1 down! 1 more to go!