P-A-R-T-whY? 'Cause I gottaaa...!

Here is a lovely photo of me with two of my best chums.
You see we enjoyed the chocolate cake.

It's February! The greyness of January is over and we can make our official start to the New Year. I don't know about you guys but Jan is such a depressing month that my brain has reprogrammed itself to take it out of the equation. That's right kids, in my head, January doesn't really exist; the year ends on 31st December and starts again on the 1st Feb. January is reserved for grey skies, empty bank accounts, miserable faces and post-Xmas pot bellies. The one shining beacon of light in the whole month is my birthday, a day in which I crank up my diva setting to 11 and stamp around making demands like a six year old with too much sugar. I try to make amends for my irritating behaviour by throwing a kick-ass bash for my lovely social circle every year, in a desperate attempt to shake us all out of our 'Santa's gone for another year' slump.

I'm a big fan of themed parties, and am unashamed by that. I LOVE them; don't get me wrong, they are a heap of extra effort and expense to throw, and I usually have a minor breakdown at the 11th hour when some inevitable planning catastrophe occurs. My Mr Big was exceptionally skilled in the art of recognising the meltdown symptoms, and was ready with tea, calming words and a vodka chaser to settle me down again, clutching his debit card and ready to run errands to fix whatever it was had made me sit cross-legged in the middle of the lounge sobbing and snotting all over the place.
Some of my past favourites include:

• My Merry Un-Birthday: an 'Alice in Wonderland' party with playing-card banners, a giant 'EAT ME' cake, cucumber sandwiches, goblets with 'drink me' tags, red painted roses and a bin-liner 'rabbithole' all the guests had to climb through on the way into my house. I went for a casual Queen of Hearts-type outfit, and made a red t-shirt with pink hearts glued all over it, a tiara and heart print heels. Later in the evening, one of my guests came bursting into the room screaming 'SILLY STRING!!!!' and proceeded to spray a full can of heavy-duty fabric glue spray directly into my hair. It took two days to comb out.
• One Night in Tokyo: a Japanese pop-culture affair with a range of random treats from the asian supermarket, sushi, sake and Hello Kitty cupcakes. I was chuffed with the effort everyone went to; we had a Japanese tourist, a Powerpuff Girl, GoGo Yubari (from Kill Bill, complete with a spiky mace) Fook-Mi (from Austin Powers), an 'origami expert', several ninjas, geishas and harajuku lovers, and my particular favourites: The Not-So-Newlyweds who arrived in matching inflatable sumo suits, and one of my besties, who turned up wearing a painted chef's hat and a top with tiny plastic people sewn onto the shoulders. That's right, she came as Hiroshima. Fabulous.
• My Beardy B'day: the entire group of 20+ braved the knee-deep snow and hit up a local shisha lounge wearing a variety of fake beards. Mine was a white Gandalf-type affair with pretty purple flowers sewn into it to make it special. Bless.
• Requiem: my leaving party for Edinburgh. The idea was that it was a faux-funeral for 'my life in Belfast', with blown up portraits of me up everywhere, lots of lit candles, a slideshow of photos up on the projector screen; a classic wake buffet with lace doilies, triangle sandwiches and sausage rolls, and a highly potent Long Island Iced Tea in a tea urn with paper cups. All guests arrives in full funeral gear (black suits for the boys, lots of black lace for the girls). I have to say, this was an interesting experience for me; I think I successfully freaked myself out. At one point Smoky and I were in the livingroom, watching the slideshow of photos and listening to 'Dust in the Wind', when it suddenly dawned on me just how morbid this theme was and how it perhaps was not the best idea for a party I'd ever had. But then again, any party in which the hostess has to question as to whether or not she has actually died, sounds pretty successful to me.

I hope I never get too boring for theme parties; they are great fun, and a way to tap into being a 5-year old again, for one blissful evening. People are so quick these days to dismiss them; you can hear the collective groans and complaints every time there is a costume party on the cards. It's highly upsetting.

I am all too aware that the time bracket in which it is socially acceptable to shoehorn your guests into fancy dress is getting smaller by the year; suddenly it seems to be the vogue amongst my friends to have a proper job, a hubby, a couple of sprogs and a mortgage. Apparently when you have one or more of these you have become 'sensible' and are no longer required to stoop to such childish levels; well, I'm afraid that just won't do. I will be keeping a close eye on these nouveau-adults and attempting to normalise them with glitter and novelty cakes as soon as it becomes necessary.