I Am Five: Kid’s Party Tips

Lillie: ‘when’s my birthday?’
Mummy: ‘tomorrow’
Lillie: ‘is that the next day?’

Today Lillie, chief toddler, turned five. Which, I suppose, means she’s not really a toddler any longer. In fact she probably hasn’t been a toddler since she started school waaaaay back in September. She’s certainly behaved like she’s about 16 for some time now.

This weekend she had a party, her first ‘proper’ party (last year’s cramming of princesses and their parents in to our tiny house is best forgotten) and I thought I’d share with you some tips from our (fairly) successful bash.

Hire a Hall
I’ve always assumed hall hiring to be out of my budget and slightly unnecessary. I mean, isn’t it just a bit extravagant? Actually, to my surprise, and to that of some visiting mums, it only cost us £8 an hour to hire Great Bowden Village Hall which is near home here in Market Harborough. We hired it for three and a half hours but would recommend taking a wee bit extra before starting the party to get set up.

Making Stuff
If your kids are anything like Lillie and her friends they’ll love nothing more than ‘making and sticking and colouring and drawing and cutting and decorating’. With this in mind we decided to give Lillie’s party a cupcake theme and made a couple of batches of cakes for them to spend some time decorating. We whipped up tons of pink icing, laid out sugar sprinkles, dragees, edible confetti and mini marshmallows and let the kids go to town. They seemed to enjoy it, didn’t make too much mess and it made a cute addition to the party bags (which they also decorated)

Tat Free Party Bags
Call me a snob (everybody does) but I hate all that plastic rubbish that goes in to party bags. My house is full of it. We filled ours with pink pencils, sweeties, those kid-made cakes, cars for the boys and sweetpea seeds. I really liked the idea of seeds - it’s something that children can do and learn something from but its still fun. Homebase sell basic packs of sweetpeas for 39p.

Other ideas I like are joke bags with whoopee cushions etc or crafting kits with a tube of glitter, some stickers, feathers etc. I’ve also seen little bags of cookie mix with a cookie cutter which is soooo cute. In fact, damn it, we so should have done that!

Amazon Marketplace
Amazon Marketplace, we discovered while planning this party, is the equivalent of the world’s biggest Wilkos. I mean they sell, literally, everything. We picked up cheap balloons by the armload, empty party bags, paper plates and cups, favours, even cake decorations and bunting. It makes you realise that you probably need not brave town on a Saturday again.

Phone a Friend
Don’t underestimate how much hard work a kid’s party is. Between reassuring unsure children, running games and activities, fetching drinks, making cuppas for parents and ensuring nobody escapes via the back door it’s probably second only to commanding an army. I was extremely lucky that we had friends on hand to wash up, help clear away and step in to entertain children in the lulls in activity (thank you Daisy’s mummy and especially Luke’s Mummy and Daddy who saved the day with their clearing duty and invented the new sport of child curling while holding a newborn baby).

My advice? Call in back up from whatever corner you can. You’ll need it.

Kids Like Running Around Screaming
Daddy and I like to be prepared in these sort of situations. Therefore we had a raft of activities planned to fit predetermined slots, thus (theoretically) ensuring nobody got bored. Ha. Turns out the bits they all liked best were running up and down yelling and hitting each other with balloons, hiding in the loos and trying to sneak a peek at Lil’s birthday presents.

Count Your Pass the Parcel Layers
If you want to dictate who should win in Pass the Parcel be sensible enough to know how many layers of damn paper you’ve put on. You know it make sense.

Mummy x