Swamping Parties (Children's Parties)

Member Name: spangle359

Product:	Children's Parties
Date:	14/03/06 (1151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun, kids love it

Disadvantages: Takes time and can be a bit messy

Every year, just after Christmas, my son starts to get excited about his birthday which is at the end of March. We spend the next three months debating the gifts and the venue for his party.

I have yet to work out why we seem to be the only family that had to borrow the school register whenever he had a party. His class had 26 children and every year, despite the date usually being part of the Easter holidays, everyone seemed to manage to his party.

So far we have had the pool party, the play area party (a few times), the Lazerzone, the disco, the bowling alley, the ice rink, trip to see a show...you name it,we’ve done it.

However, a couple of years ago I decided that I was not about to pay £300 for his birthday party as his gift was a new bike....and at eleven, that bike was an adult bike with every extra you can imagine. So I decided to have the party at home and by all accounts, it was the best party ever.

So, how do you keep a large group of eleven year old children amused, in your house for 2-3 hours. This is quite a difficult age to cater for as they want to be grown up but a part of them still wants to be a child. Well, their course books for English were the Goosebumps books, so I decided to have a Goosebumps theme party.

We made up the invitations on the computer, asking everyone to dress as their favourite character and waited for the replies. Once again it was a full house. We decided that my husband and I would also dress up as characters and set about finding the most gruesome costumes we could. I spent the next three weeks stitching and patching together old quilts, curtains and patches of fabric, while my son looked lovingly at bikes.

One of our son's favourite books was about a swamp monster and we thought that decorating the lounge as a swamp would help create the right atmosphere. We bought every pack of green crepe paper we could find and cut it up to resemble long leavy branches hanging from the ceiling. That was a lot of work but it looked quite authentic when we finished several hours later. The floor was a problem as we had a bright red carpet, so, I set off on a trail of the local charity shops and picked up three king size dark green duvet covers. I quickly washed and dried them and bought about two hundred balloons which we inflated and stuffed into the duvet covers. I should probably mention that we had emptied the lounge of furniture....we were about to decorate anyway. We added plastic and rubber spiders, snakes and other creatures and awaited the reaction.


We had a treasure hunt in the garden which took about half an hour, before stopping for tea. Food at this age is easy as hot dogs, burgers, pizza, crisps and cakes seem to be about as sophisticated as it gets. After tea we had a few games in the lounge. Games were easy .....we did a bug collecting competition with a good prize and a swamp lucky dip (I filled a couple of basins with small prizes and several pints of jelly, mixing them together once the jelly had set) and the game where each child had to crawl over the man-made balloon swamp without bursting a balloon and ended it all by giving them the opportunity to pull down our forest. We played guitars and the bongo drums while they pretended to be their characters (without realising that they were clearing up their mess and stripping the room of decoration).

I cannot imagine what was going through the minds of the parents as they arrived to collect their offspring. entering the kitchen to the sound of guitars, drums, very loud singing and their children apparently tearing our home apart, this was not helped by our appearance in full fancy dress with green faces.

Each child went home with a tub of jelly containing an insect keyring and some sweets. The birthday cake was very simple to decorate....it was just a swamp and ideally suited to my lumpy sponge cake efforts, which I then covered in dark green icing and green foil leaves.

Of all the childrens' parties we have organised, this was far and away the most successful but, now that we have decorated the lounge, it will be a while before it happens again:)

The cost of this party:

Decorations: around £20
Food: around £45
Prizes: around £30
Items for costumes from charity shops :£10
Take home gifts:£25

Total £130

A huge difference from the £300 of previous years. This saving included not having to hire a coach (we lived in a rural community) and relieved us of the worry that all the children would not return home on the coach. We had much more fun and yes, we did have a mess to clear, but that took all of an hour or two and was nothing compared to the mess made by the eight friends who just had to stay the night:)....nothing is ever that easy.

I would recommend it if you intend decorating anyway because you and your children will have a great night....and where did we go this year............ah well, back to the bowling alley, coach hire and the worry of ensuring their safe return... and a huge bill for food and bowling........now we are looking at teenage parties with our older son...you know, the ones where they don't want you around and where you don't dare leave the house. I know all about those, because I was a teenager once.....lol

Thanks for reading, caroline:)

Summary: childrens party idea, lots of fun and laughs