Making a birthday pinata has become our new April tradition. We made a frog prince pinata last year for Boo’s birthday and then a leopard pinata in June for Kooks’s birthday. This year we are having a combined Gruffalo party for both girls and so of course we needed a Gruffalo birthday pinata. I was a little intimidated by this until I found some great free printables at the Gruffalo website. Once we downloaded them it was a very simple project.  This post contains affiliate links. We are having the party at the same tea estate cottage that we rented last year and this year two sets of grandparents (one from America and one from Botswana) will be in attendance. One of the guests to last year’s [...] Read more »

We decided to make a leopard piñata for Kooks’s safari birthday party. We had a lot of fun in the process and thought the end result turned out pretty well. For our base we taped some egg crates to a balloon. Then we added our layers of torn newspaper strips dipped in paper mache paste. We used a simple paper mache recipe with just two ingredients – one part flour, two parts water. We did four coats and left it to dry thoroughly between each coat. Then I cut out the top and two small holes for the wire to hang it from. We always stick a little piece of cardboard on the wire inside the pinata before twisting it off. It acts as a [...] Read more »