I've hosted my share of children's birthday parties and if I've learned one thing it's this; keep is simple. You'll save your sanity, your budget and the neighbors won't hate you. As a matter of fact, I've had more than one parent thank me for not going over the top.
Start by setting a time limit. For the 4 to 8 year old crowd, two hours is plenty. I always had my kids do their own invitations, which does wonders in keeping the guest list down to the 'must haves', and eliminated the need for me to put a limit on the number of children they could invite.
Rather than having a traditional birthday cake, we were the family that had cupcake decorating contests! I'd bake at two or three cupcakes per child, depending on age. Each child would get one vanilla cupcake and one chocolate cupcake to start.
I'd go to the local bulk food store and purchase small bags of edible decorations like gummy worms and gummy bears, different colored sprinkles, broken Smarties, and whatever else caught my eye. Variety is the key here!
I'd use vanilla icing and have four or five bowls of it on the table, each colored with different food colorings. The brighter the better!
The kids absolutely love this! Of course it's messy, but that's half the fun.
I usually planned at least two activities. Since my son's birthday is at the end of May, I usually chose an outdoor activity, but always had a backup in case of bad weather.
The year my son turned five was the year that Super Soakers were all the rage, so I had each child bring their favorite water pistol and a bathing suit or other appropriate clothing. We had a target shooting contest (knock the can off the fence post) that was very popular and finished off with an all out water pistol fight. It was a great way for the kids to burn off all that sugar!
For one of my daughter's parties, when she and her friends were simply too cool for pin the tail on the donkey, I created Pin the Shorts on the Hunk. I took a roll of paper and drew an outline of a guy, and added lots of abs and pecs. Then I drew a pair of shorts and voila! Screams of laughter from the 11 year olds confirmed that this was a good choice!
A good old fashioned game of tag or hide 'n seek is always popular. And it's a sad fact that some children have never played these games before. I remember being stunned into near speechlessness when one little girl at my son's 7th birthday told me she didn't want to play because she didn't know how! She sure does now.
So keep it simple, set a time limit and most of all, let go and have fun.
This article was written by Shawn Wilson, a member of the customer support team at Datepad, where internet dating is always free. Datepad has a massive directory of informative dating articles along with a great list of dating site reviews on their dating blog.
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