I can’t believe I’m writing this but our Little Big One reached the grand old age of THREE last week. How is that right? Three seems so grown-up. It’s pretty exciting watching her grow though and blossom into such a wonderful little human – bright with a fabulous imagination and plenty to say, full of energy and blooming hilarious.

Well, how to celebrate this exciting milestone? When I asked her what kind of party she’d like she was quick to answer: “I’d like a Three Little Pigs themed party Mummy!” Well, in our house, Three Little Pigs is not only a top 5 go-to storybook but it’s also one of our favourite games. It also happens to be a great theme for a party! Result. (By the way, our fave version of the book is this one written by Mara Alperin – a modern retelling of the story, with some great descriptive text and a happy ending!)

Cue a quick scroll through Pinterest followed by muchos fun planning some piggy themed decorations and party food. My inner Kirstie Allsop had a field day making piggy faces and sketching Big Bad Wolf silhouettes to hang around the garden, and the Little Big One and her friends even joined in to help create some snout masks for the party games (I can’t say all of them were used but they enjoyed themselves and it whiled away an afternoon… ;-)).

The food was even more fun. As anybody who has been to one of our garden parties before knows, we love to put on a centrepiece of pulled pork. This seemed particularly fitting (if a little macabre) for this gathering! With our theme in mind, I labelled the dish “Pulled Pork Straw” (those familiar with the story will know that straw was one of three house building materials used by the pigs… stick with me here). Along with the straw, we added some “Stick Snacks” into the mix – carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and those incredibly moreish potato stick crisps; and some “Brick Cakes” (a tray bake Cherry Bakewell cut into brick shape portions).

The piece de resistance was the birthday cake – you may guess that I was particularly proud of this one – featuring Three Little Pigs, a Big Bad Wolf and straw, sticks and bricks! After three years of attempting, in most cases, rather ambitious cake icing projects, I feel like I really nailed it this year. I must let you into a little secret here. I’m not the best baker (I blame the oven) so I like to cheat a little with birthday cakes. To reduce the stress levels and give me time to focus on the decoration, I use the cheats way and buy a Betty Crocker pre-mix (*other pre-mixes are available). That way I can spend all the time I’d spend baking, making it look pretty!

We also had a bit of fun with the drinks too, creating a watermelon pig, complete with a tap so that the little ones could help themselves to a glass of delicious fresh watermelon juice.

The Little Big One had a fabulous day and so did we! The grown-ups got to enjoy a few glasses of prosecco in the sunshine while the children played together, enjoyed a couple of party games and ate cake. With school on the horizon next year, I fear that our simple garden party days may be numbered. Once all those invitations to parties at soft play centres come flooding in and words like “magicians” and “face-paints” and “Disney princesses” get bandied about, the Three Little Pigs just may not cut it anymore. Well, we’ve been able to enjoy three years of adult-friendly entertaining so I think we’ve done pretty well. Better brace ourselves for plenty of mayhem next year!!