Any of your children’s birthday’s are important milestones but for us, Dominic’s 5th birthday had been a long-awaited celebration he had been talking about pretty much daily since he turned four!

No respite for this Mama, the planning began way in advance and the theme changed innumerable times! We went through suggested themes of Paw Patrol, Pokemon, Dinosaurs (again) and an encore for pirates – you can have a look at how that one went here – but very late in the day, he plumped, quite randomly, for a Knights and Princesses themed bash. It was spawned from my attic find of his brother’s old dressing up suit of armour.

Cue a rush to Amazon,  Ebay et al for some bits and bobs to turn our kitchen into a happy place for the small number of children he invited.

I had the soiree on the day before his actual birthday, I thought this was genius until I realised it discounted me from lots of the shows at London Fashion Week, lesson learned!

His gifts were in except for his main pressie, a set of wireless headphones, that he really, really wanted. Against my better judgement, his favourite thing to do for recreation is to watch random stuff on You Tube on his Ipad and although he is restricted in the length and regularity he is able to do this, we are subjected to the screams and wails of FGTeeV all too often. So, after his big bro got some ‘Beats’ from Father Christmas, the little brother was keen to follow in his footsteps.

We were not going to give a newly five year old a set of headphones at a couple of hundred pounds, no way Jose! So I scoured the internet and came up with this fabulous buy.

Olixar Pro headphones which came in at a very reasonable £59.99 and my little cherub is delighted with them. So are our ears!We had to go wireless as I’ve lost count of the sets of wired ones that have been pulled too many times and ended up dead! He also now is an aspiring DJ with his cans firmly attached to his cute little noggin.

Back to the party and after a quick Google I came up with these fab personalised invitations from ebay. Just the job and very sweet, I typed in all my info and they arrived in just two days!

I think I bought up every piece of this tablewear design I could find, so the kitchen table was bedecked with on-theme décor, and topped it off with this amazing castle centrepiece from Amazon. I did buy one again from Ebay but it never turned up so had to grab a back up.

Not only a fab table eye-catcher, but it doubled as a cupcake holder for all the princess cakes and is now in Dominic’s bedroom where he plays with it endlessly. That’s what I call value for money!

A dragon piñata – what else? – and some horse ride-ons and shields from Flying Tiger completed the ensemble.

I was pretty chuffed with it, all in all, and these horse heads contributed to the traditional party game fun, which for some reason I put the husband in charge of for the second year running. Poor kids….

So that’s how I pulled together a knights party in a jiffy and on a budget, hope it has provided some inspiration for you. Let me know if you’ve done a similar theme in a short space of time!