On the Saturday after Gabriel’s birthday, 6th July, we threw a Space Themed Birthday as promised, for our astronomy-obsessed little boy. It was a lot of work but totally worth it!

I’d planned everything weeks in advance on Pinterest (what a perfect party-planning tool that is) but somehow I was still up into the wee hours the night before, mostly blowing up and hanging giant planets around the living room in the correct formation for our very particular Solar-system expert:

The paper chains were made the day before, from huge strips of coloured card, cut and stapled. We had personalised pages for the colouring station which I found at Twistynoodle.com:

The solar-system cake was spotted on Pinterest by Gabs himself and re-created by the wonderful people at Dunn’s Bakery in Crouch End:

I’d bought space-themed party plates and table covers etc. on ebay and stocked up on prosecco and beer for the parents and the usual party foods for the kids. But the best feature of the day for me was the amazing Natalie from West End Bubbles. For what I consider a very reasonable price for such a thing, she rocked up early with all her equipment, speakers, sparkles, props, bubbles and facepaints, tucked herself neatly into a corner of my flat and for the next two hours proceeded to create a great party atmosphere and keep 10 preschoolers and a toddler totally absorbed and happy! Not at all deterred by the fact that it was one of the muggiest, hottest days of the year and my flat was like an oven, she smiled, leaped, danced, sang and generally did all the work for me while I sat back with a glass of prosecco and enjoyed watching my birthday boy enjoy his party.

I don’t know how she did it because I felt tired just watching her, but the woman is a hero! I found Natalie by accident on a facebook mums group. Someone recommended her when I needed a last minute facepainter for Lucian’s birthday. She was already booked but managed to move things around to fit us in which I so appreciated and after seeing her in full party-entertainer mode I cannot recommend her highly enough. (Disclaimer: She didn’t tell me to say that and I’m not getting any money or deals for saying so! I’m not that good a blogger yet 😉 She really is just that good!) I do, however blame her for my prosecco-head the next day as I didn’t have enough to at the party…

To round off, we had the cake with those flame-shooting sparkler candles which looked like rocket-boosters (or a comet!)

By which time, we were all pretty much pooped: