Children's Parties

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 82, 17 January 1941, Page 46

Children's Parties

Dear Aunt Daisy, I was so interested in your article in The Listener about Children’s Party cakes and dishes, that I feel impelled to write and tell you about a little garden party I gave for my two wee ones, of three and five respectively. We had sixteen children here, all little ones; and their mothers and aunts, about twenty grown-ups altogether. It was great fun, and all went off so happily. I had been preparing for it for quite a while in my spare time, making paper hats, plain bands of bright crepe paper with a contrasting flower for the girls, and dunce shaped hats with long streamers fromm the top for the boys. Also beforehand, I had made a lot of little biscuits cut like chickens and iced yellow, with orange feet and beaks, and chocolate eyes. These were a huge success. The birthday cake was a big plain sponge with strawberry flavoured mock cream icing, a pale green in colour, and with orange and lemon sweet slices standing up at the sides. On top was a group of white cotton wool chickens with orange paper beaks and legs, each eating a little group of "hundreds and thousands." "Robin " was written on the

top in silver ferns. Father made a table top which he put on benzine cases, and the children sat on stumps round itall quite low and just right for tinies. My table cloth consisted of all the scraps of crepe paper I didn’t use for hats, green, yellow, orange and kingfisher blue. At each place we put a "coupe" plate on which was a little green jelly, and standing in the middle of that half a banana with a face on it, a tiny ice cream cone for a hat, and with a ruffle of whipped red jelly. Each had a little glass of orange drink, and plates of bread and butter and " hundreds and thousands," also a few gay and pretty sweets round the table. It was really a pretty scene held in a nice country garden, with the sixteen little ones in very bright hats. My two sat together at the end and enjoyed everything. My two nice Maori girls then gave everybody swings. I fed the Mamas in the living room, and just gave them chocolate and _ orange sponges, cinnamon sponge, shortbread, cheese scones, and also my favourite savoury-cream puff cases filled with sweet corn, and flavoured with mint (my own recipe!). We were lucky in having a lovely day which helped to make the success." Aunt Daisy Fan" (Hawke's Bay).