Choose one of these one-of-a-kind parties, and your child will have a unique and unforgettable party. And because [...]]]>

Looking for a dynamite birthday idea for your child this year?  Skip the cartoon-character-of-the-month birthday party. Every other kid on the block will have the same  party – same paper plates,  same streamers, maybe even the same games.

Choose one of these one-of-a-kind parties, and your child will have a unique and unforgettable party. And because of the timelessness of these ideas, you may even be able to recycle your efforts on a younger sibling’s party.

Jungle Party: Decorate the room with green streamers and lots of houseplants. As the children arrive, direct them to a table stocked with white paper plates,  construction paper, scissors, glue, pipe cleaners, and any other craft items you think the children would like.

Instruct them to make a mask of a jungle animal: tiger, elephant, monkey, lion, toucan, gorilla, etc. When they’ve finished their masks, attach elastic with a stapler and let them wear them.

Play a charades game in which the children act like different animals. For younger children, allow them to act out the animals that correspond with their masks.  Play “Pin the Tail on the Elephant.”

Decorate the cake with green frosting and plastic animals.

Tea Party: This is a favorite among little girls. Send out sophisticated-looking invitations to the children instructing them to come to the party all dressed up (preferably in their mother’s clothes) and to bring a companion (doll, teddy bear, etc.)

Your daughter will likely love the preparation involved for this party. She can make fancy place cards to put on the table and set the table with a lacy tablecloth, flowers, and pretty plates and cups.

Instead of musical chairs and pin-the-tail games, play croquet. If the birthday girl has willing siblings, dress them up like maids and butlers, and they can serve the  “ladies.”

Serve dainty pastries like éclairs or ladyfingers. Of course, don’t serve the girls tea, but they’ll love fancy lemonades with their birthday cake and ice cream.

Firefighter Party: Arrange with your local fire department to bring the children to the firehouse to look at the engines and talk with a firefighter. They’ll love  listening to the siren, and the firefighters may even let the climb up in the truck.

You can buy plastic red firefighter hats at party supply stores. Buy one for each child and write his or her name on it with a magic marker. They can wear their hats to the fire station and for the rest of the party.

Traditional birthday party games work well for this type of party. You can also play a variation of freeze tag in which the kids have to be sprayed with imaginary fire hoses to be “un-frozen.”

Decorate the birthday cake with fire hats and Dalmatians.

Arts-and-Crafts Party: If you have an artistic child, this may be the perfect party. Set up three or four tables with supplies for simple crafts. If you’re the type who doesn’t like to think up crafts on your own, check a book out of the library or search a kids’ site on the Internet.

The first table they go to should be equipped with brown paper bags, big enough to carry their crafts home in. They should write their names on the bags and decorate them with paints, stickers, glitter, string, crayons, and markers.

If you want this to be a real hands-on party, you could bake cupcakes instead of a big cake and allow the children to decorate their own cupcakes with frosting, candy, and sprinkles.

Water Party: Lucky is the child whose birthday falls in the summer months. On the invitations, tell the children to come in their swimsuits and bring a towel. You must have a yard equipped with a hose for this party, and you’ve got to have a back-up plan in case it rains on your child’s birthday.

Borrow or buy a “Wet Banana” or “Slip-and-Slide.” The kids can line up and run and slide down the slide. You can also play run-through-the-sprinklers games. The rainbow-type sprinklers are great for games. The children will just make the games up as they go along.

Set up a picnic table with a checkered tablecloth. If your party is scheduled for lunch or dinnertime, serve barbecued hot dogs, chips, and soda pop. Then follow the meal with cake and Popsicles.

The Instant Party is always fun to try and is so easy to do.

Get all of the party items first. After the children have arrived tell them you are going to celebrate that fact that you are all just here together. You will then split the children up into three groups.

Group one will be the interior decorators and they will be in charge of decorating for the party.

Group two will be the games group and they will be in charge of the afternoons activities. And last but not least, group three will be the treat team and they will be in charge of making sure that there are some wonderful snacks.

Give each team about 20 minutes to prepare with items that you have already bought.

When they are finished it will be time to PARTY!

Gather the kids at the end of the party and tell them how happy you are that they could all work together to make the party so much fun.

If none of these party ideas speaks to you or your child, examine your child’s interests. Does he love trains or picnics? Does she love rock climbing or dancing? You can design a party around virtually any interest, and if your child loves it his/her friends probably will  do, too.

So skip the cartoon characters and plan your child’s birthday party around an activity he/she loves. It may not be the trend of the week, but it just may be the party of  the year.

Original article: Written by Rachel Tolman Terry – © 2002 Pagewise

The cute little blonde girl in this image was the “keeper” [...]]]>

It’s been a while that I have been thinking about changing the look of my kids-theme-parties site and today I actually did it. I hope if you are a regular visitor here, that you won’t click away thinking that you are on the wrong site.

The cute little blonde girl in this image was the “keeper” of all my posts on kids’ party planning and various other party stuff for many months , but she and I moved into different directions and today it was time to finally say goodbye to her.

I would like to hear what you think about the new look of kids-theme-parties…  I have  also changed the name of the site to “Kids Birthday Party Ideas” as I feel that it is more appropriate for all the  information I write about on hosting your kid’s birthday party.

You now have the option of subscribing not only via my RSS feed or to receive updates in your inbox whenever I post some new ideas, but you can also subscribe to receive updates when you leave a comment on a specific post.

Don’t forget that you can also listen to the posts and subscribe to the podcasts that you can download to your computer or iPod. Just click on the “listen now” button at the beginning of a post.

To celebrate the new look of my site I am sharing Peter Rabbit’s Family Recipes with you. This e-book has a beautiful little story of Peter Rabbit that you can print out for your kids as well as some delicious recipes that you can print out for yourself.

Cotton-tail’s Blackberry Lemonade and Peter’s Gooseberry Foolishness will be great for any kid’s party. You can soothe your nerves after the party is over with Mrs. Rabbit’s Chamomile Tea. Just click on the image to download the pdf. file to your computer.

Don’t forget that you can contact me with any questions or suggestions you have about planning your kid’s birthday party. I would also love to hear about the themes and ideas you came up with for birthday parties. Why not send me some photos as well and I will create a special page to share it with the other readers of this site.

As always, have fun when you plan your kid’s birthday party!

If I look back on it now, I realise that kids in the ages of 2 years to maybe 5 years, don’t really have to have a theme party. I tried to put a lot of colour into [...]]]>

So Mia’s 4th birthday party has come and gone and I can share a few photos with you.

If I look back on it now, I realise that kids in the ages of 2 years to maybe 5 years, don’t really have to have a theme party. I tried to put a lot of colour into the party decorations and even the food. One thing I noticed was that they could have cared less about all the hard work and preparations. They played, they ate and drank and most important of all, they enjoyed it all.

So it is ok if you can’t come up with a theme for your child’s birthday party or don’t have the finances to do it. Although kids love theme parties, as long as they enjoy the party, then it was successful, no matter if there was a theme or not.

Ok, let’s look at some of the party photos…

My son came up with the idea to tie the balloons to the willow tree’s branches and it immediately added a festive touch to the party settings. It was a lovely summer’s day here in South Africa and even though the inflatable swimming pool was a bit small for all the party guests, it was the main attraction of the day.

Adri (Mia’s mother) used different coloured frosting for the cupcakes to further give a colourful look to the party. The 4 pink ones was for Mia although she did not even eat one of them. One of the younger boys actually ate it after she blew out the candles (with a lot of help from the party guests…).

Here’s the recipe I used  for the cupcakes

Funnily enough the crisps in the foreground was not really a big hit at this party, the children actually ate a lot of the home-made pizzas, cocktail sausage rolls and the fried Vienna sausages.

It just goes to show that children will eat if there are food available, especially at a party. I really feel it is important to provide “real” food when you host a birthday party for your kid. It may be a little more work than to just put out crisps and candies, but so much healthier.

The only other food  I made was Marie Biscuits with a Marshmallow Filling.

This is one easy party snack that can be done in no time at all. My mother used to make this for my kids when they were small and in later years for all her other grandchildren as well.

You just need a packet or two of Marie Biscuits, marshmallows and a microwave oven. Place a marshmallow on a biscuit, pop into the microwave for about 5 – 15 seconds on high and watch how the marshmallow swells to double it’s size.

Take it out of the microwave and just place another biscuit on top, press down lightly and leave to set. I rolled the sides in 100′s and 1000′s while the marshmallow was still warm.

I printed these cute butterflies to decorate the straws, but to tell the truth, it was not a big hit with the kids although they did take the straws home afterward. They did not use the straws at all, maybe all the swimming made them so thirsty that they did not have time to use straws to drink their juice.

When I saw these lovely coloured paper in a shop a few days ago, I knew it would be perfect to make favour bags from and it practically cost next to nothing. Although I bought four rolls of paper, I could easily have made four bags from one roll of paper. The party favours consisted of a pencil and a cute animal eraser, two small bars of chocolates, a candy bracelet, a lollipop with a whistle handle and a noisemaker.

Of course there has to be bubbles at every kid’s birthday party and as always, it was a big hit with the party guests. Adri bought a pack of 24 bottles at a discount from a wholesaler that specializes  in children’s party supplies, so the party guests were also able to take a bottle of bubbles home with them.

The face painting session went really well. In an earlier post on face painting I mentioned that you need a lot of patience when you paint kid’s faces but it is mostly to curb their excitement and getting them to wait their turn. Even though Adri and I are no experts and we only did a few basic lines and dots, the kids really enjoyed this activity.

I also made some play dough as a party favour. A few of the kids wanted to stay on after the party was officially over, so they kept themselves busy for quite some time with the play dough and all my cookie cutters that Mia “claimed” for herself when I made her her first batch of play dough when she was 2 years old.

My conclusion about this party without a theme? It had all the elements for a great party… balloons, food, games and activites and above all, fun! It was also done on a low budget.  So next time don’t break your head coming up with a theme if you have no idea about one, just follow your head and plan the party with what you have and can afford to buy. It does not have to be perfect, it just have to be fun for your kid and the party guests.

Maybe you have noticed that I did not say anything about party hats?  There were NO party hats; I wanted to make “crowns” from the willow branches but the kids were so busy enjoying themselves that it totally slipped my mind.

Oh well, this was certainly not the last party I will plan for Mia and since I have this easy party hat template on my computer, I will be able to make the party hats in no time at all.

Don’t forget to have fun when you plan your kid’s next birthday party!

That is what happened this past weekend while I was still busy making the plantable handmade paper I originally wanted to use for Mia’s birthday party invitations.

My daughter and [...]]]>

Sometimes when we plan a birthday party or any other event, circumstances beyond our control can force us to change our plans, sometimes with a neckbreaking speed.

That is what happened this past weekend while I was still busy making the plantable handmade paper I originally wanted to use for Mia’s birthday party invitations.

My daughter and I decided to change the Rapunzel party theme to a “normal” party and I had to come up with something else for the invitation cards.

My computer and I have a wonderful relationship…lol, so after an hour or two of playing around, this is what I came up with:

A spiral invitation card printed on pink card, cut out with decorated edge scissors. Small paper butterflies and some glitter glue lend a festive touch to the invitations. (The glitter does not really show up well on the photo, but it was a lovely purple/blue/pink mix)

Not a very good photo but it shows you how the spiral card opens and twists around – nice to play with!

The envelopes were designed using a square and 4 circles and printed on white paper.

The front of the envelope were decorated with the image I used in the countdown to my granddaughter’s 4th birthday party post. It added a personal touch to the invitations and immediately told the recipients that Mia will be 4 years old on her next birthday.

I actually forgot to add the names of the guests on the envelopes but since Mia handed it out personally, I guess it did not matter so much.

With a few hours and a little bit of work it is so easy to make unique cards and envelopes for your kid’s birthday party. I will admit it is also just as easy to go out and buy some invitations in a store, but to go that extra mile shows your kid that you really love him/her.

If you would like a blank template of the envelope, just use the contact form (in the navigation bar) and I will send you a .png file you can personalise yourself.

Don’t worry, your e-mail details are safe with me, I value your privacy as much as I do mine!

I would really like to hear what you think of these spiral invitation cards, so please leave a comment in the comment section of this post.

Remember to have fun when planning your kid’s birthday party!

If you have read the previous post, you will know that I am busy planning [...]]]>

Papier mâché has been one of my favourite crafts a few years ago but as is so often the case, crafts come and go and my period of paper mâché gave way to quite a few months of salt doughing.

If you have read the previous post, you will know that I am busy planning my granddaughter’s 4th birthday party.  While I was busy jotting down ideas for the table decorations and trying to come up with a way to make a tower, my eye caught the spaghetti tin on top of one of the kitchen cabinets and I suddenly knew that a tower made with paper mâché will be perfect!

Paper mâché is really one of those crafts that cost next to nothing to start out with, but the end results can be fantastic!  It is also an ideal craft to do for kids theme parties, as you can make masks, favour boxes, noisemakers, even favours like bracelets, earrings, small jewelery boxes,  small animals  and fearsome monsters from paper mâché. The very popular pinata is also made from papier mâché.

To make the tower for the Rapunzel theme party, I  use newspaper strips, a mixture of flour, water and wood glue and of course the spaghetti tin to form the shape of the tower. If all goes well it should be finished by the end of the week as the only drawback is the time it takes for the newspaper layers to dry thoroughly. I have to add at least another six layers of newspaper strips to make the tower sturdy enough to stand on its own.

I was going to make a little Rapunzel from salt dough but since Mia has a Barbie doll, maybe I will just use her as our “Rapunzel” for the day. Somewhere in her toy box there must be a prince as well…

It is not always necessary to buy new items for a kid’s theme party, you can use toys and other items in the house if it fits in with the theme of the party and sometimes you can even ask friends or family members to help out with odds and ends that you will need (as I am going to do in the case of tablecloths for this party).

Remember, imagination and  fun go well together when planning your kid’s theme party!

She has heard me talk so much about the Rapunzel theme party I posted about in December 2009, that she was quite happy when I [...]]]>

My granddaughter Mia will be 4 years old on the 6th of March. Yesterday I sat down with a piece of paper to start my checklist for planning her birthday party.

She has heard me talk so much about the Rapunzel theme party I posted about in December 2009, that she was quite happy when I suggested that we should use this theme for her party this year.

I have decided to keep you up to date with my planning and I can tell you that a preliminary guest list has been set up already. I decided on the party snacks, but still have to decide if I am going to make a faux tower/castle cake or bake two cakes and “chop and paste” them to build the cake.

This weekend I will try my hand at making plantable  paper and will add some herb seeds to the paper. I will then use the paper to make  invitation cards.

While I was writing down all the ideas that popped into my mind, I realised once again how easy it is to use items that would normally find their way to the dustbin to make decorations for a kids theme party.

The eggs that I bought last night, came in lovely green cartons that will be perfect for party favours or to hold candy and will fit in nicely with the colour scheme of the Rapunzel theme. It can quite easily be turned into little treasure chests with the aid of  glitter and a few other odds and ends.

Empty toilet rolls (or any other empty rolls like kitchen paper rolls) can easily be turned into fun decorations by using paint, coloured paper, buttons, wool and many more. I will use a few rolls and turn them into small towers to decorate the party table.

With some  imagination and creativity, you can save a lot of money when you plan your kid’s theme party.

Remember also, always have fun when you do it and don’t forget to use a checklist from the moment you start planning the party.

On the other hand, the small guests enjoyed it thoroughly.

There was a [...]]]>

My granddaughter went to a kid’s birthday party and although I do appreciate the fact that the mother of the birthday child is working long hours, I really feel that she could have gone to a little more trouble with her child’s birthday party…

On the other hand, the small guests enjoyed it thoroughly.

There was a birthday cake, nothing fancy or outrageous, just a normal frosted cake with some decorations and candles of course.

The mother bought candy from a wholesaler that stocks candies in all shapes and sizes and not normally found in ordinary grocery stores. She also purchased small packet of crisps from this wholesaler as well as small, inexpensive items that she used for party favours.

I was actually quite impressed with the small guitar shaped bottles filled with bubble mixture that my granddaugter brought home.

A small carton of fruit juice was added to the favour box, and that was  the sum total of the party snacks.

The kids had a wonderful time in the inflatable swimming pool, jumping for hours on the trampoline and playing and talking to each other.

The party also kept on for an hour or more than the time stated on the invitation cards.

This set me to wondering if we do not sometimes go overboard when we plan a theme party for our child. Should we not try to cut back on expenses especially in these tough economic times when it can be  difficult to give your child a party that really incorporates all the elements of his/her favourite TV character, superstar/hero or just to keep up with the Joneses.

I know and understand that you want to do the best you can for your child’s birthday party and to make it a special day for him or her. However, do we not also unwittingly teach our children to expect theme parties that have to get bigger and better each year?

Would it not be more beneficial for them if we teach them to enjoy their parties even if there is not all the things kids automatically expect these days when they have a birthday party.

A party can still be fun even if it does not have a specific theme. It should be planned with love and should be fun even if it does not have all the elements of a fully fledged theme party.

What do you think? Should we really go all out when planning our kids birthday parties or can we get away with a more simple party but still have lots of fun in planning the party?

Mia's 1st birthday fairy theme party

fairy theme party cake

close up of fairy wings on fairy cake

meringue fairy wands

bread snails and bread flowers

butterfly and marshmallow flower party biscuits

personalised fairy theme party favor box

Click on the link to read the post [...]]]>

Photos of my granddaughter Mia’s 1st birthday party

Mia's 1st birthday fairy theme party

fairy theme party cake

close up of fairy wings on fairy cake

meringue fairy wands

bread snails and bread flowers

butterfly and marshmallow flower party biscuits

personalised fairy theme party favor box

Click on the link to read the post about the fairy theme birthday preprarations.

Remember to have fun planning your kid’s theme party!