A Bunny Party for Madeleine

Last week my baby girl turned TWO! 

It is so hard to believe that it has been two years since she was born, and every day I am more and more amazed by her and by how much my heart keeps growing with love for this special little girl. 

Special events are the times that are the hardest for us to be living in London. 

We can't help but feel just a little bit sad that Maddie doesn't have Grandparents and cousins at her parties, or a big backyard to run around in, but we try to make the most of our situation and make sure we celebrate as best as we can.  

And usually this means cake, lots of cake!

I wanted to start a theme for the themes of her parties (yes, a theme for themes) and so decided that each year her birthday parties will be themed to her favourite book at the time. I like this idea because it can truly reflect what she's interested in at that stage of her life.

This year, it was all about bunnies! Her absolute favourite book a month ago was the Richard Scarry "Bunnies" book. It had to come everywhere with us and was read about ten times each evening. It is a sweet little book and I was only too happy to have her party inspired by the book. 

Instead of giving two year olds a party bag of more sugar, I thought it would be sweet to gift Maddie's little friends a copy each of Bunnies, so that they too could enjoy, well, bunnies! 

I need to write a few recipe posts, but I thought I'd share some photos from her little party from Sunday in the mean time!

It took me some time to think about what activities would be appropriate at a 2year old's party, because they are a little too young for actual games, but definitely need entertaining more than a 1 year old. 

I made/gathered some dress up items for the kiddies to play with, and had a drawing/sticker station set up too, which the girls enjoyed (whilst the boys re-decorated the floor with lego!). 

I incorporated various pages from the book into the food too...

The "bunny tails" were a GF almond, sugar and egg white cookie, similar to a simple amaretti.

The "cabbages" were mini white chocolate mud cakes, made with GF flour.

And the "bow ties" were fairy bread, which, if you grew up in AustraZealand, you'll know it was just a party staple! Plain white bread, a little butter, and then dipped in sprinkles! What's not to love!! And I will say, all the kids LOVED them!!

There isn't much to be said for these rice crispy treats, other than, how have I never made these before?

The little giveaway gifts for the adults, was fudge, flavoured to taste like carrot cake!

Which is not to be confused with the most popular treat of the day, carrot cake shots! Double the amount of cream cheese icing is always going to be a winner, I should have known to make more!

The bunny cake (which the 2 year old boys preferred to think of as resembling a car) was a vanilla butter cake, coated in lashings of butter cream and topped with coconut. 

My absolute favourite memory of the afternoon is how Madeleine responded to everyone singing her "Happy Birthday". We'd been talking about her party for days and days and wasn't really sure she completely understood what we'd been going on about. Until everyone started singing to her. The smile that spread across her face was just priceless. She was SO happy. I hope someone videoed the moment, but I feel like it will be forever etched in my memory anyway, it was just beautiful.

We realised we forgot to get a photo of the three of us together, so got the tripod out, but Maddie wasn't terribly interested in posing for us at this point, she had far too many new toys to play with! 

But we kind of like the photo anyway! Acting like such a two year old...

Psst!! If you are looking for a little more meg-made, I'd LOVE for you to follow along!