Happy birthday Dear S

Come December and January and the main discussion at home centres around how do we celebrate the girls birthdays. I’m all for a big celebration with the girls, when I was growing up we had a party at home on the terrace for each of my birthdays and I still look upon those times fondly. These stopped after I turned 11 and then it was just maybe lunch out with friends, or cutting a cake at home. So while the girls are still young and want to celebrate with their mom and dad around why not make the best of it.

S has been asking for a party at home for some time. I’ve been quite reluctant since we have a flat and not a house and having 10-12 kids running around wrecking our apartment doesn’t seem like a great idea to me. But S promised to keep her friends under control and the hubby and her got into the act and started planning party games and activities with gusto so I thought why not. A was also happy to have the party at home and since there were only a few girls in her class and few girls she knew well in the other class the invite list was small for her party and we thought  we could manage it at home.

The parties turned out to be great fun, and all of us enjoyed the planning, shopping and the parties.

S’s party was held on her birthday, which was on a Friday after school from 4 pm to 7 pm. There were 11 kids in all included our 2 so quite manageable.

The games (all planned by S and arranged by her and the hubby) were :

1.     Pass the Parcel : We wrapped a small prize and a ‘punishment’ in each layer of the parcel, and whoever got the parcel would get the prize and have to do the ‘punishment’. S wrote all the punishments herself (with some friendly inputs from us!) – she had ones like ‘Sing a song in your mother tongue’, or ‘Tell a joke’ . It was great fun. Some of the kids were reluctant to do their punishment but then others offered to do it for them and then everyone got in it together. For eg for the hopping on one foot for 10 hops, we had all the girls hopping around the living room!

2.     Musical chairs: A classic and one of my favourites. I must say the girls were all quite aggressive in reaching the chairs in time. In the end there were just 2 girls left – a new girl and someone who’s been in the school since EY1. Everyone started rooting for the older girl and the hubby felt bad for the new girl and ‘rigged’ the music playing so she could win. If only life was so fair!!

3.     Musical Statues, or Freeze Dance : The hubby and the girls had been doing some research on this for the last one week leading up to the party and had the favourite dance music for the kids ready and stored on their favourites on You Tube. They found a couple of cute numbers like ‘I’m a gummy bear’  and another which I can’t remember the name, where they had kids dancing to the song and the kids could copy their steps. Whenever the music stopped the kids had to freeze and whoever was the slowest at freezing was out. We had bought small prizes for everyone who got out (no losers in the girls birthday parties…) and for this game it was bracelets and everyone wanted the princess bracelet and was more than happy to get out!

4.     Pin the Nose on the Olaf : The birthday party was Frozen theme so we had Pin the Nose of Olaf as a spin on the more traditional Pin the Tail on the Donkey. There was a big poster of Olaf, and cut outs of carrots for his nose and the kids could stick it with blue (pink!) tac.

5.     Wild hitting of the Pinata : We ended the games with a home made Pinata. The girls and the hubby had over the last week crafted a home made Olaf piñata and stuffed it full of sweets. It turned out to be quite strong  and the girls had many chances to hit it until it finally burst!

In addition to the games we also had 3 activities/crafts to keep the girls busy

1.     Crown making : Painting a paper crown and sticking jewels/stars etc on it

2.     Decorating a jewelry box: Decorating a cardboard box with sparkly stuff and ribbons (what fun). The prizes were all stuff you could keep in a jewellrey box, so the idea was for the girls to make the jewelery box and takje home their haul in it!

3.     Face painting : I had called in my nanny (she’s a friend’s nanny but sometimes babysists the girls during school holidays when I am at work) to help with the face painting and to generally help out in the party. We had bought some stecncislk to make flowers and butterflies on the faces, but that didn’t turn out so well so she just ended up drawing freehand on their face. It wasn’t very professional looking but the girls liked it.

And how can we finish without the food. Last time so much of the cake was left over that this time we instead went with cupcakes (the cake lady made some awesome ones with Anna, Elsa and Olaf figures on them) and then pizza, chicken nuggets and some treats for dinner. The girls were tired and hungry after all the games and running around and consumed the chicken nuggets and pizza faster than I could make them!

After dinner everyone relaxed on some mattresses on the hall and watched some of the Frozen movie

All in all S had a lot of fun both planning and enjoying the party. And I have to admit it wasn’t that difficult though I was quite stressed for some time before!

A’s party details coming soon...