Mini Bonfire Party at Home

I really like Bonfire Night. Ok, the idea behind the night is...interesting...but it always feels like such a cosy night, and for me marks the start of the run up to Christmas. Although we usually head to an organised firework display (the school PTA puts one on) these rarely ever happen on the 5th, so this year I decided we would mark the occasion at home too.

First things first, the bonfire. Of course, it is not necessarily the most sensible idea to have a large bonfire in a residential area, with loads of houses tightly packed together. We do, however, have a little fire basket. I love our fire basket and we tend to use it a lot on summer evenings if we have friends around, and we all stay out to chat in the garden with a drink. However, as it rarely gets used over the autumn and winter months I thought it’d be great to pull it out again for Bonfire Night. To reduce the antisocial factor of an outdoor fire we use smokeless logs, which are pretty good. We did toast marshmallows on the fire (something I’ve never done before), but the children found the toasting of the marshmallows far more exciting than the eating. 

Toasting marshmallow over a fire basket
The week before Bonfire Night I made some parkin using this recipe  I had to hunt far and wide for the oatmeal to make it, but I finally found a pack in a health food shop...before swiftly adding all the sugar, treacle and syrup to it. On the day I managed to have plenty of parkin, and I think I’ll finish it later in the week with a bit of custard.  

I personally leave fireworks to professional displays. If I set off fireworks in the garden myself I’d probably end up setting fire to the garden fence...and I’d definitely be complained about on the local village Facebook group! However, my parents did do some in their garden for the kids over the weekend (they bought some low noise level ones, and we set them off pretty early) and, as I said before, we’ll head to the school display which will be held later in the week. As always, *cue patronising safety notice* make sure you read the instructions carefully and maybe check this piece from the Fire Service out . So, with all this in mind, we stuck to some glow sticks we had left over from Halloween. We have no outdoor lights so managed to have a good “glow stick hunt” in the garden (we took it in turns to hide 5 glow sticks in the garden and the others had to then find them all), which was actually trickier than you’d imagine. 

Bonfire party with glow sticks
(Yes, my daughter is wearing shorts in that photo...don’t ask!)

To round off the evening we brought the glow sticks up to the bath. I put in loads of bubbles, turned off the bathroom light (kept the landing one on so they weren’t in complete darkness) and the children had a slightly spooky, glowing, bubble bath, which they loved and we will definitely be doing again.

Now we’re just looking forward to the firework display on Thursday!

Mini Bonfire Party






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