We often have clients ask us how to put across on a wedding invitation the fact that children aren’t invited, so we thought we’d put this post together to hopefully give you some useful examples should you find yourselves in this situation:

In no particular order:

“We regret that we are unable to accommodate children or babies at our wedding.”

“With respect, we would like our special day to be an adult only occasion.”

“We would like to respectfully ask that our wedding day be for adults only.”

“Regretfully, we are unable to accommodate children on our wedding day.”

‘Parents please note: It is our wish to have an adult-only celebration. We hope that this advance notice means that you are still able to share our big day.’

‘In the hope that you can let your hair down, we have chosen for our wedding day to be an adult only occasion.’

‘We hope you understand that we have chosen to make our special day adults only.’

“We would like our special day to be an adult only occasion, we would however like to extend the invitation to your children at the evening reception”.

“As much as we would like to invite all the children of our friends, regretfully it is only possible to accommodate the children of close family”

“Unfortunately, it is only possible to accommodate children of the immediate family and wedding party for the ceremony and wedding breakfast. Children are very welcome for the evening reception. We hope that you will understand this decision and we very much hope you will still be able to join us on our special day”

‘We want to make you aware as early as possible that due to numbers and maximum capacity of the venue, we will not be able to invite children to the wedding or reception. We thank you for your understanding on this matter.’

“Owing to the nature of our venue, children under the age of 12 will not be able to attend. We hope that you understand and will be able to join us on our special day.”

Another somewhat more subtle approach would be to address the invitations to the adults, leaving off the children’s names – however, if a guest does not spot this (or ignores it!) and puts their children on the response card, you will then be faced with taking the responsibility to call that person and explain to them that there will be no children at the wedding.

If you would like further information on this, Martha Stewart Weddings has a great article here on the etiquette of weddings with/without children.

If you are inviting children to your wedding, we have some great tips and ideas for making them feel welcome and keeping them entertained here.

Hello! It’s Friday and we’re feeling generous, so we’re running a little competition this weekend for all our Facebook followers…

If you’d like to win a set of postcard activity packs to keep the kids entertained at your wedding, (up to 20) simply leave a comment over on this image on our Facebook page. You must be a ‘liker’ of our page to win.

Please note, this pink paper band is merely a ‘serving suggestion’ and not included in the prize as we are sure you’d like to use something to match your own wedding theme…

The winner will be picked at random and announced at midday on Monday so do get your entries in by then..

Good luck and have a lovely weekend!

You may look at the title of this blog post & think, huh? Really? Did I miss it? Unfortunately the English summer seems to have escaped us this year, but there’s a new, beautiful & very cherished Summer in the world now, my little baby niece! Biggest congrats to my brother & lovely sister-in-law – Summer was born on 15.8.2012 and the family are doing amazingly & enjoying life together. Here’s the birth announcement I designed for little Summer – hope you like it!

You can view more of our birth announcement designs here or over on our Facebook page…

We can’t believe it’s almost time to start the new term already! how did that happen?! …Here are some cute back-to-school themed cakes, cookies & projects to get you in the mood!

Image Credits:

Cake / Wreath / Chalkboard / Cookies / Free Printable Lunch Box Notes

Hooray! It’s time for a new addition to our Free Printables Library – today it’s some cute little lunch box love notes for you to give someone a smile at snack time!

Print out the A4 sheet, cut them out and write a little message on the reverse to pop in a lunch box.

If you’d like to join the Free Printables Library – you must have ‘liked’ our Facebook page or be a client of ours. If you fit into either category, please email info@inthetreehouse.co.uk with the subject Free Printables Library and we’ll invite you to join…

With all the exams coming up & results coming out, we thought we’d create a cute little Free Printable for you to either wish someone special good luck, or say well done.

Tie these free printable tags around a packet of smarties & write your own message for a sweet little gesture….

They’d also make a cute & thoughtful treat for someone about to have a job interview, or who’s just been given a new job, passed their driving test, submitted their dissertation etc.

If you’d like to join our Free Printables Library, you must have ‘liked’ our Facebook page or be client (past or present) – please email us at info@inthetreehouse.co.uk with the subject Free Printables Library & we’ll invite you along.

Hope you like them!

It was our little girl’s third birthday party at the weekend – big thanks to all our friends and family who joined us and made it so special… Unfortunately, I barely remembered to take a single photo of the occasion (isn’t that always the way?!) We had a ‘Countries of the World’ theme for the party and I thought I would take 10 minutes out of the extensive quantity of design proofs I have to get through tonight to bring you a blog about some of the ideas/details we incorporated. The whole concept of party themes has a bit of a marmite effect – some people love them and some people hate them. In this case, I wasn’t actively trying to think of a theme for the party at all, but when we put together our invitation list, the vast and varied heritage of our friends and family really stuck me, and we decided to celebrate it – hence our ‘Countries of the World’ theme was born.

-Paper Airplane competition – this ended up being mainly a game for the dads! Just give anyone who wants to play a sheet of paper (we used airmail handmade paper from Paperchase) and 30 seconds to make their planes. We had two rounds, distance flying and precision flying!

- Mexican paper garlands – these beautiful decorations are really good value and very bright and cheerful.

- World music – there are loads of compilation CDs available but for us, it was an opportunity for my other half to traipse the internet for a good few hours putting together the playlist – any excuse!

- ‘Around the world’ puzzle, it’s so lovely, both for the party and for home.

- (Above) This Travel Doodling & Colouring Book by Usborne made the perfect Pass-the-Parcel treat.

- I collected some hats from far & wide from charity shops, for some reason, they were mostly worn by the grown ups!

- I got these African percussion instruments and foreign children’s costumes from our local Plymouth Play Association – (box of instruments £4 to hire, costumes £1 each for a week).

Morning all! Continuing with the party preparations for our little girls upcoming birthday bash, today’s blog post features the party bags we’ve been preparing. As we’re having loads of bright colours to decorate the hall, I wanted the party bags to reflect this while still having a natural and recycled look, and first and foremost for them to be cost effective – the idea for these homemade pinwheel party bags came after much pondering! There’s a DIY tutorial of how to make the pinwheels here on our Facebook page – they’re so simple and quick to make, and you can stick them on anything!

If you’re curious about the goodies we found to go inside the party bags, all is revealed here…

You may have noticed that whenever a special time of year comes around, I search the web for some inspiring little treats to get us in the spirit! With Easter in mind, I had fun finding these – hope you like them.

I love these cute little Spring garden cupcakes above!

Easter Nests by the Vanilla Clouds & Lemon Drops blog – Ah, now here’s a recipe I could manage! These really take me back…

These Easter Bunnies look kind of achievable don’t you think? I might try them with my little one soon…

This week, I’ve started to think about my little girl’s 3rd birthday party in April (trying to do a little bit of organising every week so it doesn’t just creep up on me!) - I know I want some watermelon there somewhere, so did a bit of research and am feeling just teeny weeny bit inspired by these cool ideas… Hope you like them! x

I love these cookies! (although somehow, I doubt they’d look quite like this if I cooked them!) http://glorioustreats.blogspot.com/2011/05/watermelon-shaped-cookies.html

Watermelon Frosty: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2011/05/watermelon-frosty-or-margarita.html

Watermelon Ice Cream Cones: http://www.bakersroyale.com/fruit/fruit-salad-ice-cream-cone/

Now this one is ambitious! Watermelon Shark: http://www.watermelon.org/Carvings/Shark-30.aspx

Watermelon Lollies – these look fun! http://hiphiphoorayblog.com/

Watermelon Stars - little bitesize chunks of fun! http://hiphiphoorayblog.com/

Probably the easiest DIY project we have ever featured – I made this button lamp for my little one as an extra Christmas present. I mean ‘made’ in the loosest sense of the word – I literally used strong glue to stick buttons (Which I bought for £1) all over a lamp (which I bought for £3.99 – both from The Range – www.therange.co.uk). She loves it though and it looks lovely and bright in her room, shining pretty buttony light over the bed time story! I think a more boyish colour lamp with blue, yellow & red buttons would be great too! x

We can all think of a special, lovely little girl who brightens up our days in some way or another – whether she be a daughter, neice, flower girl, Bridesmaid etc. I have had the pleasure of spending the day with mine (playgroup, then lunch date, then play date! – exhausting but fun!) She’s now fast asleep and I’m in my little office, working what will (hopefully) be my only late night of the week, and wanted to share with you some little-girl-gift inspiration. Here’s a selection of presents which are bright, fun and a little bit special…

So, time for another New Year’s resolution… My little one will be 3 in a few months, and it really is a wonderful age – the things she says and does can be heart-meltingly lovely, funny, kind and not to mention embarrassing at times! Over the last few months, I’ve not been writing all these wonderful things down enough and I know one day I will really regret that. So my solution – these little ‘…Wow Cards’. – each time she does something that makes me or her dad think, er, ‘wow’ – we’ll write it down on a card and stick it in the special jar. One evening each week after dinner, we’ll go through them as a family and Temisan will stick them in her own scrapbook (sticking is a treat in itself!).

I’ll be uploading them to a new page coming soon full of personal family stationery, but in the meantime – email me if you’d like some – they’re £10 for 40 Wow Cards. also designed some for my lovely nephews at Christmas, so if you’d like to see the boys version, give me a shout.

Speaking of those moments to cherish, her we are over Christmas, a magical time for all of us!

PS: New Years resolution number 1 (blog daily) is still intact (ish) – but the terms have changed slightly… I’ll be blogging everyday but only weekdays! Does that still count? It’s been so crazily busy here with sooooo many orders and enquiries which I didn’t expect at this time of year (our first January in business!). In fact, the treehouse inbox is rather in need of attention so if you’re waiting for an email from me, please be assured I will get back to you over the weekend.. x

Mmmmmm. Peppermint Creams – I have such fond memories of making these with my lovely mum & sister as a child. I think I’ll make some next week with my little one & neices…

(Recipe & pic is courtesy of ‘Christmas Cooking with Kids’ by Anne Rigg)

Ingredients:   (Makes 20-30)

1 ¾ cup icing sugar

4-6 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

green food coloring paste (optional)

mini star-shaped cutter

Instructions:

1. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl. Gradually add the condensed milk and peppermint extract, mixing with a wooden spoon. The mixture should come together like dough, and you may need to use your hands towards the end of the mixing.

2. To knead the dough, sprinkle a little icing sugar on a clean work surface. Shape the dough into a ball and push on it and press it onto the work surface, turning it around often. Do this for just a minute or so until smooth.

3. If you like, you can divide the dough in half and tint one half green using a little of the food coloring. Knead the dough again until it is evenly green.

4. On the work surface, roll the dough out to a thickness of ¼-inch using a rolling pin. Stamp out stars with your cookie cutter and arrange them on a sheet of baking parchment.

5. Leave to dry out overnight before packing into pretty boxes

We’re feeling festive over here at In the Treehouse and recently came up with this little feature for the lovely Annabel at Love My Dress blog. If you head on over there, you can view the step by step instructions, loads more photos, free printable downloads and the full write up…

http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/2011/11/how-to-make-your-own-advent-calendar.html

These amazing little Reindeer treats were made by Bakerella (www.bakerella.com), who are maestros in cake pops – Cake Pops have been storming the internet steadily over the last few years, as they can be decorated in so many ways and are (supposedly) easy to make. I decided to take on the challenge with my lovely 2 year old, and make some reindeers of our own for her nursery Children In Need party.

Cake Pops are made by crumbling up a baked cake, mixing in melted butter, sugar and cream cheese, rolling them into little balls and baking them. The crumbling job is fab for little ones, (although can be messy!). As we had limited time, instead of baking the initial cake to crumble up, I bought ready made plain fairy cakes from the supermarket.

My regular blog readers will know from my attempt at Creepy Cobweb Cupcakes a few weeks back – it seems I’m not destined to be one of those mums who can make a recipe actually look how it’s supposed to! In fact, it turns out I’m the sort of mum who remembers at 8:30am that my child has a ‘Pirate Party’ at 9am that same morning, scurries around looking for stuff to make a costume out of, gets her to the party in an outfit made of an old haloween outfit and some bin bags (so sorry love) and then is told the party is indeed next week. hmmm.

Our reindeer cake pops turned out like this:

So  first of all, obviously they didn’t reach actual cake pop status (ie: they’re not on sticks) – truth be told, the stubbon little reindeer outright refused, and promptly fell to bits when I threatened them with sticks. Still, I think ours are rather full of character, they tasted good and my little girl and I had a great time doing it together. Unfortunately, seeing as there were meant to be 12 (one for each child at nursery), and only 5 made it this far, we had to buy shop bought cakes and eat these ourselves. All in all, not the most succesful baking venture I’ve embarked on! If you fancy having a go at cake pops, (I’m sure you’ll do better than we did!) have a look at this video tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXCm7XTKXRc - I couldn’t find inctructions for Bakerellas Reindeer Cake Pops, and although it’s seemingly not a good idea to take inspiration from mine, I used Curly Wurlys for the antlers, white chocolate chips for the eyes, mini smarties for the noses and some tube piping icing for the smiles. If you have a go, we’d love to see some photos of how you get on, and share them with readers & facebook followers – email photos to info@inthetreehouse.co.uk xxx

My 2 year old and I made these this morning – (I should point out that she was only responsible for stirring the chocolate, and the icing was all down to me) it’s safe to say I won’t be giving up my day job any time soon! We had a fun & messy time making them though. If you fancy seeing if you can do a better job than me, follow instructions at http://halloweenerrific.co.uk/halloween-food-2/top-5-halloween-cupcakes. Good luck!