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When I was 10, I was invited to a birthday party of one of the girls at my swimming club. It was a slumber party. Her family had six children so the parents were pros at having birthday parties. We had a scavenger hunt. Her parents sent us in teams all over the neighborhood asking the neighbors for wire coat hangers with paper still on them, seeds from trees, a 1962 penny, objects starting with the letter K and other odd things. I figure the neighbors had been part of these shenanigans before so they were quite helpful.
That night after settling down on the floor in the family room in our sleeping bags, I thought that was it for the night. Her parents had other ideas. “Get up!” they exclaimed at midnight. We were shepherded into the giant dining room where her parents acted as short order cooks, asking us what we wanted for breakfast. Yes, breakfast. At midnight. French toast, pancakes, whatever our heart desired.
I had a lot of fun at that birthday party. My friend was not the first child of that family, nor the second or third. She was the sixth. And her parents treated each of those kids as special.
Nothing cost a lot. We were treated like gold.
This month is my significant other’s birthday. What to do? I’ve gone over kids’ parties in an earlier post. The Real Simple website has free downloadable print-and-mail invitations here.
If you do a search on their site, they have other good ideas for birthdays.
I either make a cake or get a Costco cake like carrot or Black Forest because a lot of people show up and those cakes are about $20 and you can serve about 40 people. I don’t put dozens of candles on the cake because I don’t want the smoke detectors going off for us middle-aged types.
This year, I’m going to the Niagara Falls, NY outlets across the border and picking up him up a couple of shirts for under $10 each.
Less is more when you’re older.
I’ve put on my share of kid’s parties. I was known as the “fun” mom. When my son turned 5, I used two cake pans, one round and one square and made a “5” cake. Kind of like this cake here but the bottom part of the “5″ was rounder. I used a lot of icing and decorations and presented it on a big tray.
That year, I bought a huge balloon and a smaller one and, using the art of paper mache (newspaper and flour/water mixture), I made a snowman piñata. I put all of the kids’ party bags inside and sealed it up with more paper mache. Painted it white and hung it from a tree. I figured that way one kid wouldn’t end up grabbing all the contents of the piñata as each kid had his party bag labeled. Some good information here from eHow on making a snowman piñata.
You can do scavenger hunts in the neighbourhood. Some great ideas here.
My brother performed some elementary magic tricks to entertain the small guests. The older ones tended to figure out the tricks.
If you have kids, you’re going to be putting on a few parties and it can get costly. There are some great books here on parties for children.
