How to throw a vegan party (for a four year old)

PART ONE: PARTY BAGS!

We've been to our fair share of parties as vegans. As adults this hasn't caused any problems. Friends know us and know what we eat but throw a child into the mix and it requires a bit of forethought. Usually this means checking in advance and taking stuff along if necessary, usually cake and chocolate. There's usually hummus and usually crisps and really as parties more often or not seem to happen from 2-4 in this neck of the woods no one is particularly hungry so as long as I have a cupcake or two squirrelled about my person there haven't been problems. This is the first time, however, I have thrown a party for my own little one

I would really like to say that I was uber cool and didn't stress over everything but that would be the biggest lie. I became obsessed. surely our parents didn't feel liege this. It must have been far less stressful back in the 80s but maybe the sausage crocodile, Mr Greedy shaped party cake, individual jellies and the cheese, pickled onion and pineapple hedgehog were probably the Frozen of their day.

It started innocently enough. There was a request for a party and who was I to say no, after all everyone at nursery had one (with magicians and bouncy castles so, yeah, no pressure). There was a brief discussion about a 'theme'. "I want a yellow and pink horse party mummy!" um, alrighty then. There was a strong desire for a yellow handmade pony costume but thankfully a generic party dress filled the gap nicely.

My primary obsession quickly became the ubiquitous party bags. I despise them. A bag full of crap that ends up in the bin. However, children love them and I had a sneaky suspicion that the lack of them would send us spiralling down the social ladder which wouldn't really be a long drop to be fair. Anyway, I caved. My plan for the bags was: make them vegan, make them mostly edible and have any tat vaguely useable and practical.

To say I had a vision of how they would look is definitely taking things too far but I knew I couldn't bare to go along with the plastic princess style party bags so went with Yellow striped paper bags because they went with the yellow theme and were unisex. I have been to various children's parties where there is a bag for boys and a bag for girls. No my friends, this is not the way. One bag to rule them all. I also ordered gold labels because, well I'll be honest, because I wasn't intending to put a whole heap of much in the bag and I wanted to have them well and truly sealed so that they would be opened in the car or at home. Sneaky.

Contents B

I have to say that it was while searching for vegan chocolate that I came across Alternative Stores and I am impossibly pleased that I did. They have a fine, in fact mighty fine, selection of small vegan sweets that are individually wrapped (for those parents worried about hygiene) and are recognisable as 'normal' sweets (for those children who are easily weirded out). The best was discovering that they sell 1kg tubs of sweets which I then scattered amongst the bags.

The swirly curly straws came from the 99p shop and were included for the reason that every single child loves a swirly curly straw. I was right, they were a huge hit and made up for the lack of pencils, noisy lips, mini bubbles and other such assorted party bag loot. (The mini Chuppa Chups also came from the 99p shop).

The mini horses came in packs of 8. I had a bit of an awful time with the company I ordered them from (along with some other essential party supplies) so I'm not mentioning them here but I see that Amazon have a set of 10 Plastic horses . You're as well ordering them there as anywhere.

Stay tuned for Part Two where I become even more obsessed with what food to make and how many cakes I feel the urge to bake...