Italian Birthday party

Yesterday my baby was invited to her second "Italian" birthday party.  This is her first year at preschool so she has only ever been invited to Dutch and Kiwi ones before.  One thing that drives me crazy about them is the late notice.  I received the invite for this party on Thursday for the following Monday.   I suppose this technically  gave me 3 1/2 days to go get a present, but of course shops are closed on Sundays, Thursday afternoon is the local day of rest and I had to work Monday morning.  This left me with Friday and Saturday to get something for the little girl, and in the end I sent my mother -in-law to get something on Monday morning anyways.
 However, this said I have known the mom of the girl for many years now and her family as well, so I was of course happy to take my daughter to the party.  Plus they were having it at their restaurant, which is of course one of my favorites in the area.
First of all the location of the restaurant is incredible, there is an incredible view of Civita di Bagnoregio from the terrace, then of course the food is incredible.  Of course they didn't serve my favorite faggotini pere e formaggio which are to die for, but the desserts were incredible!  There wasn't the usual pastry shop trays but tasty mousses, homemade cream puffs, crostini, apple cakes and of course pizza!
One thing that was different for me this time was the fact that they had called two animatrice.   They were two girls likely in their early twenties dressed as clowns.  They did hand painting, not face painting (which was a bit odd to me, but I am glad it was on their hands since they used markers for the outline and my little one still has the outline of a blue butterfly on her hand). They did preschool games with the kids and balloon animals (first time I've seen them here) and they took care of the presents.  Basically taking the presents when the kids arrived and putting the child's name on the gift (birthday cards aren't used much here!)  and once it was present time everyone was given back their present and they all sat in a circle and watched the birthday girl open them all the while chanting scarta la carta! scarta la carta! "open the paper! open the paper".
In the past I have always seen the kids open the presents as their guests arrive (something I really hate!) so this was a nice twist to the whole thing.
The animatirice were very entertaining for the kids and it gave the parents the opportunity to take pictures and video.  I had tried to do games and things at my daughter's party with no success but apparently I needed to be dressed like a clown to have gotten their attention!