Our non-Jubilee celebrations!

I had to reach a bit of a compromise with my anti-royals husband Tom, about the Jubilee celebrations. I am by no means a royalist, but I do think to be involved in such a landmark occasion is really rather important for the children.  It is a celebration that they will probably remember forever.  My own mum recently recounted her memories of the coronation, sixty years ago, in very impressive detail.

So although we didn’t go to any street parties, I was determined that we have our own little celebration.  I dressed Betty and Dolly in red, white and blue, and painted their faces with little flags on their cheeks.

Betty, my five year old, absolutely loved watching the Queen and celebrations on TV, and enthusiastically waved her union jack flag at the screen for most of the morning, much to Tom’s horror.

We also made a Jubilee cake; it was a classic Victoria sponge recipe with homemade damson and apple jam in the middle.  We used ready-to-roll icing, and added blue and red colouring to produce a flag-style top to the cake.  The girls had great fun cutting out the shapes, and dying my wooden kitchen table red! I cunningly used strawberries to cover up some of the icing botches.  Once our flag covering was in place, we decorated it with some fabulous royal decorations sent to us. They were made from cardboard but looked very effective I think!  And despite the cake being a very royal piece, Tom ended up devouring most of it – in fact he even declared that it was the best he had ever eaten!

Yummy Jubilee Cake

To mark the day as a special affair, we had a cinema party in the evening, and let the kids stay up later than usual.  I got Betty to make the cinema tickets for each of us; she personalised each one with drawings of our favourite things (ie an octopus for Tom, the sea for me, a rabbit for Dolly, and a rainbow for herself).

We organised our sitting room sofas into rows, and all sat there in our sleeping bags (the heating had been turned off and it was a freakishly cold evening).  We bought a new film specially, and had popcorn, crisps and mini red, white and blue iced doughnuts.  And of course, ice-cream at half time, which Betty and Dolly served up for us.

And after the kids had gone to bed, Tom and I settled down with some red wine, blue cheese, and white chocolate (I didn’t point out the very deliberate colour organisation).

So the girls loved our day, and I managed to get Tom to unwittingly join in too –  a result!

See you again on the 2nd Wednesday in August

Elsie Button