Party, party, party!

Phewwww!

We made it through ... just ... a party of 14 three to four year olds, (plus mums and a few dads & siblings), crammed into our house for littl'un's third birthday.  Although, she did get a bit overwhelmed by it all for a while - too many people, too much noise, too much having to share mummy with others - overall we all had a fabulous time.


After much debate & reflection - and demanding of ideas from Twitter! - we went for the following plan.

Timing:
11am - 1pm on Sunday

Not great for any church goers but most people tend to be free otherwise and gives time to prepare on Saturday & clear up Sunday afternoon.  The children seem to eat much more savoury because they're actually hungry so soak up at least a bit of the sugar! And it also avoids early afternoon nap times and end of the day melt downs.

Games:   
Hear we go round the mulberry bush
Honey bear
Duck, duck, goose
What's the time Mr Wolf?
Pass the parcel
Pin the tail on the lion
Sleeping lions
Musical bumps

We invented our own version of the Mulberry Bush which proved a big hit when everyone was arriving as it was lots of noisy fun and easy to join in.  Basically, everyone danced around a basket of soft toys and took it in turns to pull out an animal who we then danced like e.g. "this is the way we stretch our necks like a giraffe", "this is the way we hop like a bunny", "this is the way we stomp like an elephant".

Duck, duck, goose was a bit of a disaster as there just wasn't enough room.  Everyone liked the idea of Pin the tail on the lion but most of the 3 year olds wimped out of the blind fold so would recommend saving it for fours and older.  We had a wolf mask for What's the time Mr Wolf? which went down well but lots of them did forget to shout dinner time!

We just had prizes for Pass the Parcel and Pin the Tail on the Lion but gave out huge numbers of stickers for Sleeping Lions and Musical Bumps.  Sleeping Lions was a surprising success that got everyone to lie down quietly and calm down just a little bit whilst we laid out the food.

Food:
Pizza
Sausages
Crisps
Cucumber & carrot sticks
Jelly & ice cream
Blueberries
Fairy / cup cakes for decorating with sweets & sprinkles
Birthday cake
Cartons of apple & orange juice

We took the radical step of ditching the sandwiches! No one eats them and they are too much of a fiddle to make when you've got everything else to do.  Needless to say almost no veg or fruit was eaten but at least we tried.

As always decorating fairy (cup) cakes was a massive hit.  Even the most boisterous child will - in my experience - sit down and carefully stick jelly tots, chocolate buttons and sprinkles onto a their cake before scoffing it all down.

Party Bags
A Meg and Mog book
Lollies
Chocolate ladybirds & butterflies
A balloon
Birthday cake

We'd been to a couple of parties recently where everyone got one bigger going home gift rather than a bag of little things and this went down well, so we shared our love for the hapless witch Meg and her wonderful cat Mog with our friends.

Theme
A Peppa Pig party was requested but in the end managed to limit this just to the cake!  And otherwise we stayed theme-less and managed to heavily dilute the desired pink decorations with lots and lots of red and purple so it wasn't too girly and lurid!

Join the "Party Planning Party" link-up on Friday!
In the hope of sharing some of our hard won, cadged, begged and borrowed "party wisdom" I'm going to be posting planning lists including top tips and printable check-lists and time-tables throughout the week so do come back to check these out.  And on Friday I'll be hosting a "Party Planning Party" in which you can link up all your party related posts - old and new - and pinboards.  Look forward to seeing you then.