Lydia's birthday was a month ago, but we're just now getting around to having her party. (We had it on July 20th). She was in Utah visiting grandparents. Then we had girls camp for Katie and Anna and then Nathan and Michael went on a "High Adventure" activity with a group of kids from church. So we finally found a day that everyone was home. I wanted to post about it - not because it was fabulous (although it WAS fun), but because I'm proud of myself that I pulled it off for $29.42 for the entire party! (Yes, I figured it out to the penny). [EDIT: Make that $15.42 because I bought a craft for them to do, but it came too late so I returned it.] That's not including a few things we had on hand like eggs for making the cake. It turned out great and everyone had fun and most importantly Lydia loved it. She hasn't had a friend party for a loong time. The last "real" party was when she was 4, and since then we've just done party places like bounce places and mini golf, etc. So it was a big deal to her and she begged me to have a party. I really didn't want the expense, but I was determined to give her a party on a budget.
So in true Lydia style, she picked the theme of Snowmen! I think Lydia's the only person I know who would come up with the idea of having a snowman party in July. I love how she always thinks outside the box. She helped me plan games and did a lot of the work getting ready. It was hard for my control-freak self to let go, but they loved being involved!
Getting games ready and blowing up balloons:
At the last minute before the party Lydia freaked out saying that she had nothing cute to wear to the party and didn't even have a snowman shirt. I suggested maybe a white shirt, and that sparked her imagination. She came downstairs wearing a white shirt, a scarf, and a hat... voila - she dressed like a snowman! I thought that was cuter than anything we could have planned in advance!
Elizabeth copied her, but we didn't have any more snowman-looking hats, so she said that snowmen sometimes wear ski hats. They both wanted to pose for a picture with their arms out straight so it looked like they had sticks for arms.
We played a few games. The first one, they all had white balloons and had a "snowball fight" while we waited for everyone to arrive. Then they had a contest and they all drew snowmen on their balloons. I was surprised that they liked this game so much.
I took a picture of each kid and their balloon with Lydia and we'll use those for thank you notes later. Most of them looked like this:
When it was Anna's turn, she stuck the balloon behind Lydia's head kinda like bunny ears, so Lydia did the same to her. Those two kids of mine! They sure have fun together!
Then we played "The Candy Bar Game". We modified it to work for our snowman theme. All the kids sit in a circle. They roll 2 dice and if either dice (die?) is a 6, they get to pick a candy bar from the middle of the circle and hide it in their bag. There were 13 different candy bars (for 10 kids - a few extra) and each had a different picture of a snowman on it. We labeled the snowmen with things like, "Cute snowman", "stick snowman", "real snowman", "Lydia's favorite snowman", etc.
Once all the candy bars were gone, the kids could "steal" from the other kids when they rolled a 6 if they could guess the correct snowman. This game was a HUGE hit for this age group!! We've played it at family Christmas parties before, but it never occurred to me that I could just tape a picture of the party theme on the candy bar and adapt it to any theme. I'm sooo going to use this game for future parties. We set a timer for 20 minutes and at the end, you got to keep whatever candy bars you had. I told them at the beginning of the game that if they got a lot of candy bars, they had to share one with anyone who didn't get one. But once everyone got one, a couple kids would get extra. I can't believe how much they loved this game and how excited they got once it got down to a couple minutes. They were laughing and screaming and jumping up and down, "Pass the dice!!" "I want to steal the stick snowman" "Awww, **I** wanted the stick snowman!" Fun game! They would have played it for even longer if I let them. I highly recommend it. And it was easy to plan for and cheap(ish). They got to bring their candy bars home as party of the party favors. When the game was over, I just had them label their candy bars and then collected them (so they wouldn't melt) and passed them out at the end. And the best part was Anna and Lydia helped get it ready. I printed out the snowmen and had Anna and Lydia cut them out and tape them on. It kept them busy for a long time as they decided which snowman went on which candy bar. Lydia picked the clip art for each snowman and one of them that she picked was a snowman with a mustache. She called this "Villain snowman" (because "all villains have mustaches" ) and she put it on the Snickers candy bar... "The Villain is snickering mom!!" Hehe, I love Lydia's personality and creativity.
After that, and this was totally Lydia's idea and why she wanted a snowman party, we went swimming at our neighborhood pool... "Swimming in melted snowman!" She's so funny! (Swimming pictures are on Blake's phone since I forgot mine. I won't wait till he sends them to me since that will take forever. Just lots of kids in a swimming pool, having fun.)
Then we came back and had presents and snowman cupcakes. Lydia originally wanted snowman cake pops, but that sounded like a lot of work (not to mention more expensive). So she decided we could have snowman cupcakes. The girls decorated them by themselves. They loved it and once I let go of my perfectionist self, I loved that they had something to do and I didn't have to do it. I'm totally going to let them plan/help with Caleb's party. Lydia picked red velvet cake, her favorite. She's not a fan of chocolate and likes red velvet because it's "unusual - no one usually picks red velvet. They always pick chocolate or vanilla." That's my girl!
See how much fun they had:
Party favors were simple and cheap. I decided awhile ago that I don't want to spend lots of money on other people's kids. Bad, I know.) They all got their candy bar and then a package of popcorn that had a cute snowman saying on it that I think I got from my sister... "There's SNOW buddy like you". It's funny, but they were all excited about getting a candy bar and popcorn! Weird. A couple of the girls said, "Oh wow, popcorn!" Who knew cheap and easy could be such a hit?
And that's it - our cheap, but fun party. It kinda re-sparked my interest in party planning. My new goal is "cheap but fun" party planning. We'll see what I can come up with for Caleb next month.
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