Zoe’s 5th birthday party
If you’re a long-time reader of this blog you’ll remember my niece Zoe’s purple pony party for her 3rd birthday, and last year’s still quite purple 4th birthday party. Well, young Zoe’s growing up fast but still adores purple and ponies. We celebrated her 5th birthday recently.






My brother, Zoe’s dad had made kites for everyone. All the kids had to do was customise them by adding streamers for tails. He got the kite design from My Best Kite.



After happy dances in the backyard with their new kites, it was time to head off to the local park to fly them.
The wind came in short bursts, so kite flying required patience, persistence, a little luck and quite a bit of running.




It was thrilling whenever a kite caught a gust of wind, and with fluttering tails, took flight, twisting and tugging in the breeze as we cheered and encouraged the excited young kite flyer to turn the winder and release more string.



After this, back to the party for round two of food: lunch. My mum’s fried noodles, with salad and bread.





Birthday cake time! The cake was a frog pond, with jelly in the middle, decorated with colourful stretchy frogs and parasols. “Who wants cake and jelly?” “Meeeeeeee!” came the eager reply.

Angela gave me the details about the cake. The basic lemon cake recipe was from her mum. The Australian Women’s Weekly swimming pool cake was the inspiration, but Zoe requested it to be in pink and purple. Angela iced the cake with a simple butter icing (butter and icing sugar), coloured with homemade blueberry juice to give a very light purple tinge. The sprinkles around the rim of the pool are Hopper Natural Sprinkles – naturally coloured rainbow sprinkles, which includes purple. She made the jelly with agar agar, Nudie apple juice and more homemade blueberry juice for colour. Ange has written about her use of homemade natural food colourings before on her blog. The frogs and parasols came from a $2 shop. Lastly, Angela piped white chocolate in the shape of fish onto baking paper, let them set in the fridge and then placed them along the outside of the ‘pool’. The chunky jelly made it easy to serve – each slice of cake with a piece of jelly. Or two.

There were lots of fun surprises in Zoe’s birthday gifts – new clothes, books, a furry tiger back pack (another Millie!), a special cupcake just for the birthday girl, and…

…A PONY! As soon as it was unwrapped, Zoe sat on the pony, and kids squealed with delight as it swished its tail and neighed!
“It’s talking, it’s talking!” Caleb exclaimed.
“What do you think it’s saying?” someone asked.
Ruby was confident she had the answer: “‘GET OFF ME!’”

And what did Zoe name her pony?
Nibbles!
