On the weekend I threw a birthday party for my 7 year old son, Sean. We had 8 boys running around our yard for 3 hours – and would you believe, it was so relaxing for my husband and I.

While I understand the wisdom and sanity in going out for a bowling party, or a play centre party, or a movie party, or a water park party… I really do love a simple, home party, where kids can just be kids, running around in a backyard.

It’s seriously some romantic childhood notion of mine.

My mother used to organise these marvellous children’s parties for us in our backyard, and I remember them with so much fondness. So yes, part of it is recreating my childhood, and the other part is passing the happiness and memories over to my kids.

We borrowed a bouncy castle (with a slide) from my friend. And we turned it into a water slide, with a paddle pool at the end. We added a bit of soap and oh my god, they boys played and played and played non-stop for 2 hours.

I also made about 100 water balloons and planned a few balloon games. (My fingers were rubbed raw and blistered up after tying up all the balloons!)

But in the end, I scrapped the games and let the boys have their own fun with the balloons – and they played a no-rules water balloon fight instead. You should have seen the look of *sheer joy of being a boy* all over their faces, priceless!

As for a birthday theme, Sean is obsessed with Plants vs Zombies (the computer game)… and for some reason unbeknownst to me, his friends call him The Brain. Or The Brainiac. So he requested for me to make a BRAIN CAKE. Out of ice cream.

After years of ducky cakes, soccer ball cakes, train cakes, Spiderman and Ben 10 cakes, I think I had reached the pinnacle of my cake making repertoire.

I actually wanted to give it a more “blood and guts” feel to it. Maybe making the dome out of strawberry ice cream, swirled with strawberry jam and chopped up strawberries and jelly bits… to add some grossness! It would have looked awesome!!

Or maybe gone with mint and chocolate chip ice cream, to make it look a bit alien and weird?

But Sean said his favourite ice cream flavour was vanilla, and so it had to be vanilla.

I bought a tub of ice cream, pressed it all into a mixing bowl (that was covered with cling wrap), froze it overnight, then popped it out.

I coated it with melted chocolate, and piped more chocolate wiggly lines for effect.

I personally thought it was a bit too simple, but he loved it, and was quite proud of me :)

His words, with a smile: It looks perfect mum!

The wiggly bits were great as ice cream cone toppers too.

Needless to say, the Brain Cake was completely devoured.

The last thing we did, was also a request by Sean.

He wanted to let his friends make their own party bags.

So I set up a little Party Bag Making Station, lining up little bags of toys, chocolates, balloons, pens… with signs that said “1 toy, 3 chocolates, 1 pen, 3 balloons… etc” and I pretty much left it up to the kids to follow the instructions.

They were great. They all filled up their bag honestly and orderly.

Like I said earlier, my husband and I pretty much sat back and chit chatted the whole time. It was such a great day!