Woodland party

We had to rethink the idea of a party at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens. The weather forecast was gruesome. Littlest was saddened - she adores scampering there but her second favourite place is the wood behind our house. After a hasty rethink on the morning of the party we hatched a new plan, made ever so slightly more stressy by a double baking fail. With an hour and a half to go and some forgotten baking powder I was gnashing my teeth. Deep breath....

I texted everyone, hung the strings of vintage fabric flags that Nicky had made for me in the trees bordering a clearing, nipped back to the house, gathered the dried cuttings I'd taken from the willow wigwam last autumn, picked a pile of daisies from the verge in front of our house, packed picnic rugs, Pom bears and moshi monster cupcakes and off we went to the woods.

It was good. We made daisy chains. We built fairy houses from the willow twigs and decorated them with buttercups and our daisy garlands. We played pass the parcel.

Then there were cries of alarm as one or two raindrops fell. The sky looked threateningly grey. We sheltered under the trees and had a small (quiet) disco - there was no one around to disturb, except perhaps a few yellowhammers and the odd squirrel. This was our favourite track, despite the cloud.

I'd decided to eschew the usual plastic party bag fodder and dug out the watercolours and Cella machine to make some personalised magnets. I'd attended one of Gina's embroidered book-making workshops last week and the origami she had taught us came in handy to make some tiny notebooks.

I'm hoping she enjoyed turning five.