There was so much food at the party! These were brie and leek tarts, served fresh out of the oven. They tasted fantastic!

The puff pastry was airy (well, puffy!) yet crisp, and the leek had a delicious caramelised flavour. The brie cheese was of course, creamy and delicious.

The pizza pinwheels were delicious too, hot and fresh out of the oven. I wanted seconds, but they were all gone by the time I looked for more.

Some savoury mini muffins and quiche-like things…

I made up a platter of meatballs, vegetables and dip to take along to the party (I made up a meatball platter for a quiz night we attended recently – this party was with different people). Once again, I arranged blanched green beans with carrot sticks, grape tomatoes and pickles on a bed of mixed greens with aioli for dipping. This time, instead of pork meatballs from Woolworths, I got the lamb meatballs. They smelled even better than the pork as they were frying in the pan. Here’s the platter before I wrapped it up for transportation.

Mini chocolate crackles, which Jac was told were extra chocolatey and rich because they’d been made with butter, not copha (vegetable shortening), as the original chocolate crackle recipe calls for.

Dishes of M&Ms, Clinkers and liquorice. My younger sister Juji amused us all by telling us how much she hated Clinkers with green filling before biting into a Clinker to find it was green inside. She then bit into another one and it was also green! She bit into a third one – GREEN! XD Jay and I cracked up at the look of disgust on her face. You can always count on those closest to you to tease you relentlessly!

These butterfly cakes were filled with sticky lemon curd – they were delicious!

And jam-filled butterfly cakes!

Marshmallows – we really should’ve asked my brother to grill some of these on the barbecue!

There were pikelets with sultanas in them, which I rather liked…

My brother was busy all this time, cooking the barbecue lunch.

The highlight of the barbecue was a big batch of homemade burger patties made by my brother and sister-in-law. This is my favourite photo of the day- I just love how the burger looks sitting on the hot plate with the wisp of smoke at the side.

I enjoyed watching (and smelling) the burgers cooking.

The sausages looked great….

…but burgers were definitely calling out to me. (It’s so great to always be surrounded by talking food! :-P)

This was Jac’s favourite out of the salads – a crunchy noodle salad, with red and white cabbage, and a fragrant sesame oil dressing.

This simple salad consisted of English spinach leaves and cherry tomatoes with crumbled feta.

There was a collection of buns for those who wanted to make a hamburger or hot dog with their barbecued meats, or just wanted to have bread to eat with lunch.

The potato salad had ham in it and a sour cream dressing, which was very nice.

Some of us sat outside in the sunshine to eat our lunch. Here’s my plate, balanced on my lap.

Ruby got lots of birthday gifts from family and friends, but on the day of the party this was probably her favourite present of all, a big helium-filled teddy bear balloon. She played with it non-stop, smiling and giggling, and saying “Teddy!” all the time.

The birthday cake, made by my sister-in-law (Ruby’s mum), was in the shape of a teddy bear, with piercing blue eyes and a very festive bow tie.

I call this “Portrait of a little girl at her 2nd birthday party”. :D