As I mentioned in Friday’s blog post, we celebrated Collin’s birthday this past weekend. Because both of my kid’s birthdays are right around the holidays, there are two primary goals with the kid’s parties: make it special, but keep it simple. Here are some of the ideas I used to do both.
Idea #1: Make a banner.
It was really fun to pull out Collin’s birthday banner when I got out the fall decorations this year. There’s something special about having a decoration that is just for him, something we put up only on his birthday. And since it is used year after year, it fits the simple criteria. You can find step-by-step instructions via this blog post.
Idea #2: Tie balloons to a bucket filled with sand.
Collin specifically asked for balloons, and I wasn’t about to disappoint. When I went to pick up the balloons I was reminded of a bib he had as a baby. On this bib was Winnie the Pooh holding a bunch of balloons and it said something along the lines of no one can be un-cheered when they have a balloon. That Pooh bear was on to something. To keep it simple, I used a little white bucket I already had and filled it with sand. The balloons were tied to the handle.
Idea #3: Use reusable items.
Instead of getting a paper or plastic table cloth, I went to Target and picked up a white, hotel style table cloth. Now, I know, white table cloths with 10 and 11 year old boys may not appear to be my brightest move, but that’s what bleach and spot remover are for. We had one spill, and it came right out. So now…I have a table cloth for the next birthday party on the list, as well as through out the holidays. (By the way, the table cloth is from Target and is on sale this week…) Instead of purchasing disposable cups, I got some clear and blue reusable cups. Collin is really into going green, so these decisions honored his commitment to the environment, but it will also make future parties that much simpler by having everything already on hand.
Idea #4: Use a bucket to corral table items.
We served the kids pizza for dinner, so I put all the necessary table items in one of my beloved blue buckets. Salt, paper, paper napkins (which I had on hand from a prior event), Parmesan cheese and dried red peppers were corralled inside. This made for a simple but colorful table decoration, and kept all of these items looking tidy.
Idea #5: Keep party favors simple.
You may recall my thoughts about party favors from this blog post. So…the goal this year was something that said thank you for coming to my party, but didn’t end up in the trash can fifteen minutes after the kids arrived back home. These are ten and eleven year old boys…so the days of die cast cars or boxes of crayons are behind us. The solution was a Dollar Spot popcorn bucket, a package of microwave popcorn and a customized Hershey bar.
To customize the Hershey bar I created a festive wrapper using Microsoft Publisher. The wrapper was printed, cut to size with my paper trimmer, and taped to the original Hershey bar wrapper. Simple, special and quite useful.
On that note, I’ll say this post is a wrap. (Ha ha.) But before you go, I have one more party on the horizon, so I would love to hear your ideas for keeping kid’s birthday parties simple and special. Thanks for sharing.
I love this post. Great ideas–I am definitely going to steal the wrapper one. I also like the older posts, especially on goodie bags. I have struggled on this one too. I hate all that junk that just winds up in a landfill. Plus, frankly, it rubs me the wrong way. Why should guests expect more than the good time of the party?
Great ideas!
I love your party favors! I would love to do something like that but, sadly, there is a horrible disease in my community that knocks out the courtesy zone of the brain and causes adults to ignore the RSVP information on invitations. It’s very sad. I have held combination birthday parties for my 9yo twins every year since they started kindergarten and in all that time I’ve only received an RSVP 2 times! (From the same person!!)
How do you prepare efficiently for a party that started with invitations to 40 kids? The twins are in 2 different 3rd grade classes and each class has 20 other children. (If you pass out invitations to children at the school you must invite the whole class. : P) The invitations had RSVP info for 3 different ways to communicate (home & cell #s and email) and yet only one parent let me know their child would be at the party.(In person,while I was waiting outside to pick up the kids after school.)
I worried about how many people would be at the party and ended up buying enough of everything (paper plates/cups/etc.) for 40 kids even though
I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be that many in attendance. 28 showed up.
Even when I planned a party at a local gymnastics gym and only 10 kids could attend, only 1 person bothered to RSVP (the same person!).
Is there a change in what is socially acceptable regarding RSVPs? How do you plan for this?
Sorry for such a long post but I am writing notes to myself for next years party planning.
Thanks!
I totally agree with you Katherine! I thought it was maybe a class thing to RSVP or not! I am southern English middle class but my kids go to a working class Northern school & very very few people RSVP even when I wrote on an invite one year- ‘please let me know if you can come or not’ in case they didn’t know what RSVP meant!! anyway, it just seems as though it’s one of those courtesies that is falling out of use, sadly!
Anyway, Aby I LOVE those customised chocolate bars! How fantastic! I must admit that I love goody bags but I always try to make mine useful & quality rather than full of sweets & crappy toys. For my son’s 8th birthday the girl’s got a notebook & pen & a small bag of sweets (never done that before but it was fun just once!) & the boys got a Hot Wheels car & small bag of sweets plus they all won a ‘big’ present in the pass the parcel which they took home (mini jigsaw or stationary set). I got everything in the sale so it cost about £1 a child (only a small party of 6 kids).
I love getting goodies together but increasingly I have become frustrated by all the plastic bags my kids get from other kids parties & all the plastic toys that break quickly & then clutter up the place. for my twins party last year my mum made little fabric draw string bags & they had a toy dinosaur, a chocolate fish, some bubbles, a pop up toy & a candy watch in. they went down a storm & the bags are still being used to keep small toys together & the pop up toy & dinosaurs are still being played with a year later! Cool! for my daughter’s 2nd birthday everyone got bubbles & a chocolate teddy lollipop I made & that was it! ;o)
Anyway, I have said enough I think! Great work on the party Aby. It looked fab! What did you do for the actual party? Thanks for all the great ideas. :o)
Ahhh – the fun of getting people to rsvp. I call people a few days before the event and flat out ask if they’re coming or not. If I don’t get in touch with someone then I don’t buy with the idea they’ll come. Watch a mom try to explain to her kid that there isn’t a seat/favor bag/etc for him/her because she didn’t let the party guest know they’d be coming and you can bet they’ll remember to rsvp in the future!. Luckily by calling I am able to get in touch with most everyone who hasn’t rsvp’d.
For my favors, I do simple clear bags with homemade treats, or paper bags with homemade items such as bookmarks, home made color pages (based on the birthday girl’s party theme). I have my child help me with all the crafting and it really makes the prep for a party enjoyable. The only guidelines I used for what goes in a bag is that it has to be either: edible, able to be recycled, or frequently used like small bubbles or pencils.
Great ideas.
I agree with the above- I call and ask if they are coming.
To keep our parties simple, they invite as many friends as how old they are turning. Works well as my kids are young. My dd is turning 4 this week, so 4 friends are coming. We do the balloons, streamers and paper pom pom thingys (do they have a real name) for decorations. Simple and makes it look nice.
I love the idea of tying balloons to a bucket. The only thing I could think of before was tie to chairs.
Agree on the gift bags.
I’d also love to know what you do for parties. So far we’ve had princess ones, and that needs to change 🙂
As my children have gotten older (turning 9 next week and 11.5), we’ve focused on experiences, rather than events. So instead of the party of 20 people where they just play games or something, we have a smaller group and they get to do something more substantial.
For example, my daughter is having her best friend sleepover this coming weekend. We are taking them out to dinner, coming home for a ‘fancy’ dessert and then the girls are watching movies and playing game until the late/special bedtime of 10:30 pm (cleared with her friend’s mom that it was okay to let them stay up until that time). The next day they’re having a special pancake breakfast with toppings we don’t normally have like whipped cream and chocolate syrup and then I am taking the girls to get their nails done. The ‘party favor’ is that each girl will get to pick out a nail polish that will be hers to keep.
They have a great memory of doing something with a treasured friend (or 2 or 3 depending on the activity), I haven’t spend hundreds of dollars on something nobody will remember, and no useless pieces of plastic party favors! 🙂
Wow. Can I say it … you are so amazing! First, love your blog. Second, you come up with the coolest ideas! Thank you for the continued inspiration!
I love the simplicity of it. It keeps the focus on the child and the celebration.
Thanks for even more useful ideas!
My daughter just turned 6, and we actually had the guests help decorate for the party. It was a coral reef themed party, so I hung blue wrapping paper type paper (that teachers use to decorate their rooms) and let the kids draw the coral reef. We’re cutting out bits and pieces from each of the kids to make the thank you notes (and scrapbook pages!), and the rest of the paper can be recycled.
We also use resuable plates, cups and silverware in a basic frosted clear color so it will go with everything.
Thanks again for the continued inspiration!
Thanks for all the comments and ideas! The RSVP thing would be super frustrating. I love Heather’s idea to call, and then not to buy things for the kids who don’t RSVP. I think that is excellent! We keep the parties very small, just close friends, so the kids find out who is coming, or if the kids aren’t sure, I would just pick up the phone and call the parents to find out. This party was very low key…just four friends who came over to hang out and eat pizza for four hours. They played Air Hockey, Rock Band, and some another game that Collin made up…and ate pizza, and then cake, and then some other snacks…so they kept quite busy.
For my daughter the last couple of years we have had just one friend over for a sleepover. We take them to Build-A-Bear and out for dinner, and then they just come back and hang out. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and a bear for the take-home treat. 🙂 It’s pretty fun.
In the past we’ve done away from home roller skating parties at our local YMCA, and one year, I combined both kids birthday parties and we went to a place that had a big climbing contraption. That was a total nightmare…too many kids to keep track of in a public place. So…we have simplified and everyone is much happier. 🙂
Aby
In Australia people are very good about RSVPing, well the parents of the kids at my childrens kinder and school are. Quite a few parties are at playcentres where numbers must be confirmed a day or two in advance and paid for. Most parents know that an RSVP is important. For my childrens parties there are usually only one or two who dont RSVP at most. Maybe its a cultural thing not to RSVP but its pretty rude in my opinion.
Sarah xx
Aby, you and I think very much alike (must be why I love your blog!). I keep our parties very simple yet full of fun.
I call parents that haven’t RSVP’d and say something along the line of, “we’re confirming our pizza order/lunch menu and are trying to get an accurate head count”. If I don’t get a hold of them and they don’t get in touch with me I assume they’re not coming.
I bought a personalized birthday banner for my daughter from PBK about 7 years ago and we pull it out every year and take a photo of her standing next to it. We hang it for the week of her birthday. I was a bit nervous when I had my son many years later b/c PBK stopped selling the banner. Lucky me, they had a new banner right after he was born so I ordered one right away. The kids love when I bring them out.
I make a lot of the decorations with my Cricut. I decorate the kids’ bedroom door with their age number and whatever character/theme they chose for that year (Ariel, Thomas the Train, etc.) with clip art I found online.
I, too, keep goodie bags simple. For my son’s birthday last weekend his 3-year-old friends received Thomas the Train bubbles, stickers and the train ring that was on their cupcake–they loved it. I also send a photo of the guest with the birthday child in with the thank you note.
Thanks for your ideas, Aby. Love the personalized candy bar wrappers. Will have to remember that for my daughter’s party in March.
I loved these ideas, as for my own ideas I was proud of this one I did in August. Instead of a cake, make fairy cakes, 2 per child. Now whilst they all play some party game, ask 2 kids at a time to come to the table. I had already made some runny icing, in a couple of colours. They got to ice and decorate the 2 buns each (I put all the decorations in a muffin tray so there was a dip for each type of ‘bit’. They got to choose a candle too (just for one bun, the other bun goes home with them instead of a party bag)I find that I have a lot of candles from previous years lurking in the party box. Then I put an upturned small bowl on the cake stand and positioned the buns around it. Emilys bun got to go on the top of the upturned bowl ( a proper tiered cake stand would be good here too. We lit all the candles and everyone got to eat their bun. The kids really enjoyed this and it looked surprisingly good. There is a pic on my blog I think.
Very cute ideas! I love the party favor. That was a neat idea!
Great ideas…too cute. I love the ‘Thank you for coming to my party’ candy bars. What a fun party blog. Thanks for sharing.
Brilliant ideas!
Quite Simple & easier homee Birthday Party Idea. I like it thanks for sharing…