Invitations: To get the numbers up, it’s useful invite people to your party. I used Paperless Post for electronic invitations. It is simple to use, has lovely designs to choose from and makes it easy to track RSVPs. We also chose to keep the party little this year, which was a good idea, so we just invited a child’s handful of very close friends. There somehow still ended up being twelve two-year-olds. That is a lot of toddlers. We must make more friends without two-year-olds

May Blossom's Birthday Cake May Blossom turned one and it was a marvellous day. There were blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and bacon, coffee and champagne (not for the one-year-old, obviously. Only light beer until the age of three. No exceptions.) There were presents galore, including a four-foot-high stuffed tiger and cub, a gift that was ‘for May Blossom and against her parents’, according to her uncles. There was a trip to the park and licking the beaters while I made

In the lead-up to May Blossom’s birthday, the cake preparations continue. Today’s post is an homage to some of the great cakes of my childhood. The first, and in my opinion the greatest, is my first birthday cake. It was made by my mother in the shape of my brown burmese cat, Quickly. It is not, as H assumed before I resized the image so he could see the cat’s face, a cake in the shape of Western Australia. It was served, as all the cakes were, on a massive brown plastic tray

In the lead-up to May Blossom’s birthday, there has been a lot of cake talk. First of all, her Uncle Superchief (my older brother) offered to make it. He suggested it should be in the shape of a rocketship (he is also leading a campaign to restore the suffix -ship to rockets. When and why did they lose that?) with a cat looking out each window (or porthole? Do rocketships have portholes?) I liked the idea, but since May Blossom is my daughter I think I should be the one who b