BUMPER BIRTHDAY PLANNER

CHOOSE A THEME

WITH so many kids, plus my partner Joe, there are a lot of birthdays to celebrate in our family.

I do like to make a big thing of birthdays for the boys and always have a theme, based on what they’re into at the time. They’ve had Ninja Turtle birthdays, Star Wars, Lego... and I’ll carry that theme — or its colours — through their presents, cake, snacks and party bags, if I’m doing them.

It just makes it that bit more special, but you don’t need to spend a lot, and it doesn’t need to be perfect. For example, for our youngest Rex’s first birthday, I did a green-and-white jungle theme as he had some jungle teddies already.

I hung a monkey teddy from his high chair and put a stuffed lion next to his cake. Then I tied green, white and gold balloons together for an arch and used white, green and brown wrapping paper for his presents. I made a cake, too, but it was terrible — it had two tiers and looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I covered it up with a few fake leaves.

One thing I’m not very good at is celebration cakes. I can make a cheesecake, I can make a sponge, but when it comes to decorating them, I’m not brilliant!

BETTER BALLOONS

I USE fully biodegradable balloons these days. They don’t have that oily, plasticky finish like the balloons you usually see, but the kids don’t care!

IT’S A WRAP

OF COURSE, birthdays usually mean presents, and presents mean wrapping. The problem is, a lot of wrapping paper can’t always be recycled easily and being covered in sticky tape doesn’t help.

Although there are environmentally friendly tapes out there, they don’t stick as well. I’ve tried them all! So I’ve started trying to wrap without sticky tape and using recycled craft paper.

When you have kids, it’s very difficult to make sure they don’t rip the wrapping so you can use it again — but the beauty of craft paper, tied up with string, is that you can put the paper straight into the recycling, if necessary, and you don’t have to pick off the tape. It comes in all sorts of colours, and it’s really easy to fold.

Just use craft paper to wrap as you would normally, then instead of sticky tape, tie it up with string, like a traditional parcel. It’s not like a slippery, metallic wrapping that springs open again — once you fold craft paper into place, it will stay that way.

The string, too, you can reuse: I try to save any string I have already used to wrap presents because I already know that it fits a certain size of box or packaging.