Our little Sam recently turned five which means a lot of things (kindergarten in the fall for one, which has me feeling A LOT of things) but immiently meant he got a birthday party. Sometime when Luke was little we decided our kids would get a "friend" party when they turned 5 and 10, anything beyond that we weren't thinking about yet. We have done a grand/god parent party every year of their lives, which they helpfully share since they have birthdays the same month. It means a lot of people in our small house in a month it's frequently too chilly or wet to be outside, but it does get it all done in a day!
With wrestling and trying to have THREE parties in the span of a few weeks (since Luke is soon to be TEN and we're also doing the grand/god parent party)...scheduling was challenging. Also, some people would have kids invited to both parties AND be invited to the grand/god party. Or have family members invited to 2 of the 3. I didn't want to overload anyone's schedules! It was tough to all work out. BUT, Sam got his solo party this past weekend and somehow, miraculously, it all came together in time for his birthday, despite not having any sort of plan a week out.
Sam went back and forth on wanting input on planning his party. After I suggested about 15 different versions of "pin the BLANK on the BLANK"....we landed on "Pin the tail on the Foxy". And when we were suggesting VERY easy pinata options after Matt spent A LOT of hours on Luke's Taun-Taun pinata 5 years ago...(Sam's options were BB-8, any ball, a jellyfish...)...Sam picked jellyfish. When I was asking my kindergarten teacher sister for craft ideas and she asked if we had a theme and I told her all we had figured out was the jellyfish pinata and the "pin the tail on the Foxy" game...she pointed out that we had a Fox and Jellyfish theme and boom...that made EVERYTHING easier.
Lesson learned: pick a theme even if it is very random. It really really helps.
Also, maybe pick a theme more than a week in advance so you can incorporate it into your invitations so maybe anyone else will realize there is a theme. It doesn't really matter but, also, nobody really knew we had a theme. It would have been helpful to pick that a tiny bit sooner. (Even though the invites were pretty pointless because we had already told everyone about the party and so the invite was a formality...almost everyone RSVP'ed with "we already told you our kid was coming" but in a nice way.)
I also learned from Luke's party and made sure everyone knew this was a drop-off party. Having grown up in the 80s, I assumed all kid birthday parties were drop-off parties and didn't know that had apparently changed in the past 30+ years. So I made sure parents knew they were welcome to stay if they wished but they certainly didn't have to. One of my sisters offered to stay to help. And we are directly related to 8 of the 9 kids who came and the last is the daughter of my long-time BFF. All of these kids have played at our house many times and know Matt & I. Nobody was left with strangers.
No parents stayed (besides my sister) and it made it so much easier on me to not worry about entertaining adults AND keep this party moving. We had 3 adults for 10 kids. And a neighbor kid came to play with Luke so he was happy too. (We did have an additional kid invited who backed out the day of due to illness.)
Decorations
Very minimal. I had already hung our birthday pennant before Sam's birthday and that'll probably be up until school starts again in August.
Activities
Stained Glass Jellyfish
I like having a craft to do as kids filter in, something easy to pickup and re-explain many times over. (Although, between 9 guests we did have 3 sets of siblings.)
These "stained glass" crafts are SO EASY and the only supply I had to buy for this was more contact paper. I traced the lid of a bowl on a cereal box to get the curve of the jellyfish and then drew a wavy line. Cut out my guide and then traced it over and over on black paper and cut those out. Cut out the inside. The night before I put each of those on contact paper and put them out, put the backing back on, and pressed under a book over night. Also cut up a bunch of bits of tissue paper that we had (I was SHOCKED we had a range of colors) and cut up ~6" strips of ribbon from my pre-used ribbon box.
Don't Drop the Foxy
We did this as sort of an ice breaker even though nearly all of these kids have been around each other before or at the very least, have been around at least some of the other kids. Dollar store balloons we drew fox faces on. Split the kids in 2 teams by counting 1, 2, 1, 2, then had them do a relay where they had to hold the balloons between their knees, walk ~10 feet, and then walk back to their starting spot and pass it off. We should have made the balloons a bit smaller but they could still do it (I tried it before we had Sam test it before the party and I thought it was too easy for myself...but I have longer legs.) Winning team got prizes. It was very low stakes.
A version of musical chairs that required no chairs. This is posterboard size (from the dollar store). Matt drew a jellyfish, Sam painted it, Matt markered the jellyfish and we cut it out. I "laminated" it with contact paper so it wouldn't get torn up with kids walking on it (just hung it in Sam's room today!). Kids walked in a circle around our ottoman (and then my sister when there were just a few kids left) and didn't want to be standing on the jellyfish when "We Will Rock You" (Sam's favorite song) stopped. Winner got a prize.
Matt knocked this out, with only a tiny internet picture to look at, in about 90 minutes. I do not understand it, I would have been crying if I had to attempt that. Dollar store poster board (that's 3 pieces, if you are counting), and some of my scrapbook paper (I have simplified many things but I've never regretted holding on to all of my plain paper.)
These were the tails. Matt made the template. I cut out 11 of them. Added the white tips just the night before (it was VERY hard to recycle those after the party when I had just spent an hour on the them less than 24 hours earlier!). Blindfold kids with scrap fabric, spin 3 times, see who got closest! Winner got a prize. (Matt also made a fancier tail we attached after the party and this is hanging up in the boys' room now too.)
A classic for kid parties and they LOVED it. This was newspaper from Matt's parents, streamers we already had, goggly eyes we had, and a balloon from our parish festival prize tubs that I had inventoried the week before (I think my work hauling and inventorying them earned us a free balloon from the 2000+ items in the tubs.) Matt finished painting it the night before and it was stuffed with mostly leftover Halloween candy and fruit snacks (we cleared out TWO containers of things from the basement for that. Sorry, fellow parents). Sam got to go first, then we went with the youngest attendee and worked up. Took a few hits before some fell out and then a bit fell out almost every hit after that. Kids LOVED it. This is the most obvious place to hang it in the house (my office doorway) but didn't think how that would mean much of the candy flew into my office. I was taking pictures from that side and kept throwing it out to where kids could reach it better. But it all worked.
Cupcakes
Then it was time for cupcakes, Foxy cupcakes as requested by Sam. I prefer using a boxed cake mix (strawberry, as Sam requested here) and then making the frosting. I've made cakes/cupcakes from scratch but most don't taste that much better than a boxed mix to be worth the effort (the only exception I have found is some chocolate varieties). Used my friend Monica's buttercream recipe that I have been using for years. Dyed half-ish of the frosting with Wilton Copper Icing Color (aff. link). Frosted the whole cupcake. Piped the cheeks and then used a knife to smoothen (Matt helped me with this at about 7pm on Sam's birthday when we still needed cupcakes for his actual birthday). Piped on ears that don't look as good as they could have but we were in a hurry. M&M eyes and nose. The last time I did these we had mini M&Ms for eyes and regular size for nose but I didn't realize it was two different sizes until about when we were frosting them so regular size for all face parts this time! Kids did not care and ate them no matter how they looked. (We still have a few goofy face ones with various colored eyes and noses, since we ran out of brown, in the fridge. Because, lent.)
I am most proud of the goody bags of anything I made for this party because I did them entirely on my own. And making 11 of these probably took me more time than Matt spent on that giant fox. Bags are from Target. I used this photo for my fox inspiration (although that doesn't seem to be the original post). Drew a fox. Redrew many times. Drew half of a fox on scrap paper and then folded in half and cut so it would be symmetrical. Made a guide on a cereal box and cut out 7 of them. Boys got foxes, girls got jellyfish. Scrapbook paper stash to the rescue yet again. Added triangles for ears and goggly eyes (dollar store). Colored on the noses. Glue stick for the ear whites but the rest was assembled with these glue dots. Also used on the jellyfish bags and the pin the tail fox tails. Those were very helpful and I didn't worry about anything falling apart!
Jellyfish were traced from a sour cream container lid, wavy line at the bottom. Before sticking the body on I taped ribbon to the bag and glue dotted the jellyfish on top. Goggly eyes, curled the ribbon. I was especially proud of these and still think they are ADORABLE.
As for contents, they each got a bagged Lego set we had bought on sale a year-ish ago, a snack bag of Cheetos (Sam's pick), and a Saint magnet from Shining Light (although I should have stuck in a note ID'ing each of them because I forget not everyone has played 100+ games of Saint Memory like we have).
They all got candy and/or fruit snacks from the pinata and then our games prizes were to pick from Poptarts, Pirate's Booty, or Cheezits (to be honest, leftover from Christmas stocking stuffers). Poptarts were the biggest hit there although when Sam tried one the next day he didn't even like it. Hah.
Sam opened presents and I made sure to take a picture of Sam with each kid (or sibling set) before he opened their gift which helped me remember who gave what but also SO NICE to have a picture of Sam with everyone. I'm really glad I did that. And everyone gave wonderful gifts and not an overwhelming amount of stuff!
It was a lot of fun for me, as a parent, and Sam seemed to have a blast. All the kids got along really well and a few times between things they got into our regular toys which was fine. They've all played here before and many of them knew exactly what they were looking to pull out which just felt nice that they were all comfortable! It was a relief to have it all come together in time but then also go off so smoothly. I really had a lot of fun with those 10 kids. It's wonderful to have other people celebrating your kid, even if they were all 4-6 years old.
Next is to pull off a TEN year old party for Luke! Although, I'm sure that one will involve A LOT less paper crafting.
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