Meaningful Nest: Parties

This weekend we had my daughter's 7th birthday party at our house. Now I don't have a problem with birthday parties at bounce places, bowling alleys, skating rinks, or swimming pools because she has gotten to attend many of those in the past year and they are all always fun. However, since we had not had a friend birthday party for her before, I really wanted it to be more traditional and simple. I also feel when kids have their parties in public places you lose some of the personal feelings you get when they are at home. Some parents have shelled out over $300 to rent a place. Plus, I have been at parties with her that she barely had any contact with the birthday kiddo because they are all running around bouncing or playing all over the place and they don't even see eachother let alone really talk or interact.

That being said, we decided on a simple birthday party at our house. We wanted a summery, beachy theme. Riley and I found some great pieces at a nearby Party City that had some great colors in them...pink, blue, and green. We bought the large pouf balls and a few other small things. Then we went to the Dollar Store and got lots of goodies...pink straws, shells, leis, headbands, and flowers.

Birthday girl and her favorite little cousin

We purchased a pack of 12 pink gift bags and some foam letters at Jo Ann's on sale. I used the foam letters to spell out Happy Birthday for the banner (I loved how this turned out! Scrapbooking paper + ribbon + foam letters) and the girls also got to put their name on a bag with these letters to hold their things. We had them do this when they got to our house to give them something to do while we were waiting for all of the party-goers to arrive.

We had a headband for each girl that we got at the dollar store (6/$1). We took apart a couple of bushes of large pink silk flowers (also from the Dollar Store) and my step-daughter, Kaitlyn, hot-glued them onto the headband. They turned out so cute and everyone wore the headhands and leis.

I kept the decorating simple. Other than the banner I made (which I got the idea from Courtney at
A Thoughtful Place--thanks Courtney!), the hanging poufs (Courtney had these exact ones too--I just realized that!) and a couple other little things, I used shells, starfish and other beachy things that I already had or that fit the color scheme we were going for.

To eat we made hot dogs on the grill, mac 'n cheese, fruit skewers, blue jello cubes (to look like water of course!), and chips.

I scored the polka-dot platter with the fruit skewers on it for 75 cents and the shell platter for 62 cents on clearance! I love when a plan comes together! The "tablecloth" on the sofa table that we brought out to the porch from the great room is actually an extra flat sheet from my daughter's bedding set.

For dessert, we made Funfetti cupcakes with colored icing that we made to try to match our color scheme. We found sprinkles to match too!

We put fun sour sugared candies on skewers that the girls got to take home with them.

There's my red cart! Didn't quite go with the scheme, but I covered it up a little with scrapbooking paper and it was great to hold the sweets.

For games, we had all kinds of "beachy" themed fun. Here are the games we played and a short description. I have pictures of the girls playing these but since I forgot to get permission from parents to put their daughters' pictures on my blog, I left them out. All of the games were fun, simple, and mostly free! If you have any questions about any of them, just e-mail me or leave or question in a comment.

Games:

Musical Towels- same as musical chairs but use their beach towels. We had beach-sounding music going and used that to start and stop for the game.

"Hot Potato"-but with a wet sponge- The girls sat in a circle. As music played the girls passed around the dripping wet sponge. When the music stopped, the girl holding the sponge had to squeeze it over her head. We re-wet the sponge after each time to get it really wet. They LOVED this game!

Water Balloon Toss-Traditional water balloon toss where each girl had a partner and tossed, starting out close together. They stepped back each time until their balloon burst.

Beach Bingo--I got my set at Party City for less than $3. All of the pictures were beach related--sunglasses, bikini, sailboat, etc.

(Another game that we ran out of time to play that is cute is "Shark, Shark, Fish"--played just like Duck, Duck, Goose.)

We also had a laundry basket full of water balloons to run around and throw at eachother, and hula hoops and beach balls to play with during any down-time---all from the Dollar Store.

Our party was super-fun and successful. I loved watching my daughter's face and hearing her giggle with her friends. I think it will be a birthday she will never forget.