Lessons from Hosting a Kid Party

Pirate-theme party was a success (more on it later).  Although everyone left happy, there are a few lessons I want to document for the next party we host.  My husband and I tend to like to have people over for any excuse, so there will definitely be another party.

I had all these great plans for L.P.’s 7th birthday part bash.  And then my normally happy and content Butterball started crying for the first hour of the party, sending me into panic-mode as I hid in my bedroom trying to figure out if he wanted to eat, burp, be changed, whatever while the party continued without my hostess skills without me.  Consequently, things didn’t happen exactly as I envisioned it and I didn’t get all the pictures I wanted to document the fun.  Butterball had an excuse, though.  His bottom gums had some blood, as he is apparently cutting a tooth.  Poor little dude (and sucky timing). 

Anyway, I learned a lot despite the chaos.  We had ten kids at the party plus three teenagers and a lot of adults.  It was, to say the least, a full house, chaotic, fun, stressful, exciting, and a little bit overwhelming.  If I had to do it over again, this is what I would remember.

1.  Designate someone to take pictures.  Next time I’m going to commission our nephew to take pics.  As much as I want to take the pictures (and I’m usually the family historian in the picture-taking department), I can never take enough pictures when I’m hosting a party.  And then I’m left at the end of the day feeling bad that I didn’t capture those precious moments.  An easy solution is to pick somebody reliable to take the pictures for you. 

2.  Kids love $.022 punch.  Seriously…I bought apple juice, cranberry juice, sodas, water and more for the kidlets.  What did they drink like there was no tomorrow?  The punch I made from a $.22 Kool-Aid packet I bought from Target.  What the…??!!

3.  Save money and go with the cheap Costco cake.  At first I was going to buy a $40 Baskin Robbins icecream cake.  And then I thought…why?  So off we went to Costco, where L.P. picked a carrot cake.  I left instructions to make the cake plain with a simple “Happy Birthday” message on it.  We bought our own decorations (a paper treasure chest, gold coins, and pirate toothpick flags) and decorated ourselves.  It looked great, and it only cost $18 for the cake plus about $6 for the decorations. 

4.  If the kids are dressing up for a theme party (pirates in this case), get a picture of all the kids together!  I did not do this and I’m really regretting it. 

5.  Make your own decorations.  A little butcher paper and some paints can be turned into something cute by a kidlet. 

6.  Don’t waste money on fancy utensils and cups.  Kids don’t care.  I had cups with skulls on them and plain red cups.  Kids were grabbing the first thing they saw–the red cups–without noticing the adorable skull cups.

The Pirate Party Update, Part II

Party plans are progressing.  Invitations are done, and some have made their way to guests already.  We need to send out the rest. 

I did a little research on party games, and here is what I came up with for L.P.’s pirate party:

1.  Musical Pirate Ships.  Tape pictures of ships on the ground.  Play music, and when the music stops, children must find a ship to stand on.  One person will be left out and will have to sit down.  A ship should be removed for each session.  This game is like “musical chairs.” 
2. Catapult Competition:  Using homemade catapults (plastic spoons and clothes pins) and the small-size marshmellows, kids flick their “catapult”/marshmellow toward a pirate ship and compete for who can get the closest to the target. 
3. Pin the Flag on the Treasure Map:  This game is like “pin the tail on the donkey,” except you’re using a flag (instead of a tail) and a treasure map (instead of a donkey). 
4. Pirate piñata
5. Captain Hook.  Create pirate “hooks” out of large plastic cups (to fit on the hand) with an attached candy cane (to serve as the hook).  Fill bowls with pretzels.  Give participants a minute to “steal” as much treasure as possible. 

And food for the party:

Snacks & Sides

• Goldfish crackers
• Treasure Box:  strawberries, grapes, and other assorted fruit
• Pacific Ocean:  blue Jell-O
• Pirate Booty:  Ships
• Sea Slime:  guacamole
• Captain Skunkbeard’s Teeth:  corn

Drinks

• Shark Bite:  red Kool-Aid ice cubes dropped into a cup of sprite

Food

• Pirate’s Gold:  macaroni and cheese
• Golden Nuggets:  chicken nuggets
• Pirate Patty : hamburger
• Seadogs: hotdogs

Pirate Birthday Part I

After I finished hosting the retirement party, I knew it would be time to start working on L.P.’s birthday bash.  I had picked July 3^rd to host the festivities, thinking no problem… over a month in advance everyone would surely come.  WRONG!  I’m kind of new to these sorts of things, and I didn’t realize that everyone has crazy schedules in the summer.  I didn’t even think about it.  If his birthday was in February, no problem.  But July?  My husband’s family had insanely inflexible schedules due to all their summer plans.  My sister’s work schedule basically x-ed her out of the party, and my friend’s visitation schedule limited when her daughter could come.  Sigh.

So, we’re having it in June…which means it’s scramble time.

Luckily I’ve been experimenting with the invitations.  We’re making treasure maps/message in a bottle invites DIY-style.

Here’s what we used:

–           Plastic water bottles (we recycled…you know… “green family” and all)
–          Gold glitter paint
–          Paper (white, yellow, and purple)
–          Ribbon
–          Corks from wine bottles (we’ve been saving for a while, and it helped that we just had a party!)
–          Decorative sand (bought a bag of the white kind from Michaels)
–          Broken sea shells (decorative kind…had them on hand).  Also bought a bag of crushed seashells. 
–          Tea
–          Vegetable oil

So I did a practice batch a while ago.  I made a cute invitation design (complete with a treasure map) on the computer and printed it out.  Then I took a tea bag and stained the white paper.  You crinkle it up and then let it dry.  Once dry, you coat it with vegetable oil.  Let it dry, and then burn the edges (do this very carefully!  In fact, some people do not even want to try this because of the risks involved.  So…I’m going to cover my butt and say don’t try this at home without adult supervision!!)  Anyway, the map turned out great.

Flash forward a few weeks later.  Now I’m ready to make the invitations…the real ones.  I already mastered my prototype.  I’m excited.  I get started…and whoa.  Suddenly things aren’t working right.  Whereas my previous tea-staining process worked great, this time around it was making the ink on my paper bleed.  Badly.  I must have tried ten times before my husband told me I should really be looking for a different solution.  The only thing that was different was the ink—we changed the ink cartridge on our printer since the time I made the prototype invite. 

I’m beyond frustrated at this point.  I was hoping to get the invites out in the mail the next day and it just wasn’t going to happen.  Stress, stress, stress.

So, we’ve decided to ditch the tea-staining (although it looks amazing when it works!) and we’re going to use yellow paper (and some purple sheets too) and burn the edges.  Only my husband did the burning with me since he didn’t approve or recognize how cool it would make the invites look and wanted to supervise.  Sigh.

Please excuse the corny flashlight he has on his head haha.

And here are the bottles waiting for the maps:

They have decorative sand and crushed seashells inside of them already.  L.P. had fun putting them together. 

I made a trip to Michaels today and picked up some crushed seashells to add to what we had, ribbon, and stuff for the goody bags/buckets.  L.P. was so excited to look over all of his party supplies.  He even told us he thinks about his party whenever he is feeling sad or mad because it makes him happy.  I really, really want to make this the coolest party ever for L.P. 🙂 

Stay tuned for Part II…