Cat's 30th Birthday

My sweet friend Cat is turning 30 this week (welcome to a great club Cat!!) and yesterday we had a celebration and lovely lunch together at their place. The weather, the company, Greg's home-made spicy Moroccan sausages and the Cous Cous were all fabulous. Greg asked me to make a cake for the day a few weeks back, and I said 'YES' of course!

Hmmm. What to do? It was a toss up. I wanted to try something that I hadn't done before. Something she would enjoy. I considered Bakerella's 14 layer cake (oh my gosh, I will be making that one day), or her cake pops (how amazing!) but realistically, with a 6 month old baby I probably wasn't going to be able to spend the time on those ones. So I finally decided on cupcakes, being so inspired as I often am by Brooke's ideas on Inchmark Journal (you should subscribe, it's lovely). So in the end cupcakes it was. Here is Cat's 30th birthday cake:

Given that the BBQ had a general Moroccan theme, I thought it might also be nice to make some goodie boxes in bright Moroccany colours for the guests. Again, shameless stealing of ideas from Brooke, but my first time at these, and they turned out pretty well, I thought.


The goodie boxes were made from matchboxes, bought at my local supermarket. I found some mini licorice allsorts in the same colours (also one of Cat's lolly loves) and filled the boxes that had been lined with orange paper. I aired them for a while to get rid of the weird matchbox smell, and decorated them with paper. It was just like wrapping 40 tiny presents, which if you love wrapping is lots of fun. I put them in a vase from my collection for display at the party.

Yes, they took me a long time.

Yes, I had fun.

Yes, she liked it all. Especially her own birthday girl sized box of them.

I now have 2000 matches to dispose of or use somehow, but the boys tell me they will gladly set them alight all at once for me (hmmm...). They will get a use in one way or another!