Wolf party!

Louka is very keen on wolves and has been for a couple of years now. So she wanted a wolf-themed 9th birthday party. Unfortunately there just isn't the party stuff out there that you can get for a fairy party or pirate party. But we managed.

I painted a picture of a wolf. I thought we were doing pin the tail on the wolf, but Louka wanted to do something different - pin the accessory on the wolf. So each child drew an accessory on a piece of paper and chose where it was meant to go. We got two bracelets, a gingerbread girl pet to sit on the wolf's back, and a bow for the gingerbread girl.

Graham and I made a moon piñata. Even though Louka knows that wolves don't howl at the moon but rather to communicate. I made a cardboard moon cutout and Graham covered it with papier maché. Then I cut out fringe from crêpe paper and covered it. It was really strong! The girls bashing at it finally got it to fall down from the rope and we shook the lollies out of the hole in the top.

We had a treasure hunt with no wolf theme at all, but nobody seemed to mind. The clues varied in type, from "take 6 paces West" etc, to invisible ink, to a letter code, to a map with X marking the spot.

The cake was my usual chocolate cake with white butter frosting, white sparkling powder, silver candles and a plastic wolf. It looked good, though the mother of two of the guests is a pastrychef and they reckoned I should have got her to make it. Still, everyone seemed to enjoy it.

The party was scheduled to be 2 hours long but the guests stayed an hour after their mums came to collect them. I think it was about right.