It's her party and she'll do what she wants! (Children's Parties)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Children's Parties
Date:	07/03/09 (346 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: home parties are fun and less expensive

Disadvantages: hard work

Well I'm sitting here feeling absolutely exhausted as today has been my youngest daughter's fourth birthday and less than two hours ago we waved goodbye to twelve lovely children who came to a party at our house. Back in January when I started to think about Natalie's party, I researched lots of different options, but eventually we decided to go for a good old DIY party at home for reasons I will explain!

These days there are so many different parties you can choose from. Many of my daughters' friends choose to have their parties at the big indoor play barns that we have nearby such as Monkey Mates or Little Angels. Although I can see a certain appeal in these types of parties particularly because the parent does not have to do much organising, they do seem a little bit too impersonal for my liking. The reason I say this is that your party guests are mixing with hundreds of other children that they do not know and it's possible that the first time the party girl actually sees her friends is when they are sitting down for their tea! These parties are generally around £8 per head which for an hour's pay and party food is not bad value.

We do have a couple of children's farms near us who offer animal handling parties. These seemed quite a nice idea and came out at roughly £10 per child, but my problem was that having a party at the beginning of March I could not rely on the weather. As it turned out today was lovely, but I'm sure had I actually booked such a party it would have poured - and I would have been on tenterhooks for at least a week.

There are loads of different companies that offer lots of different party themes. Most of these have websites where you can visit to find out more but it seems that almost universally, the one thing that you don't find out until you phone up is the price - I wonder why? I rang a couple of places!

The first was someone who offered fairy themed parties where all the children would dress up as fairies and do all sorts of fairylike activities. This sounded just the sort of thing my daughter would love and so would I - until I discovered the price which was £250 for two hours! This would have been for twenty five children but I would have been supplying all the food on top of this!

I discovered a lovely sounding company who offer to come and run a party where they will cook with your children and they pretty much produce all the food they are going to eat. You could choose from different menus and they woud dress all the children up as chefs which sounded like a lot of fun. I emailed to find out the price only to discover that they would charge £150 for six children. Well considering two of the children would have been the birthday girl and her sister that only left room for four guests!

Well call me a cheapskate if you like but there is only so much I am prepared to spend on a party. I much prefer to spend the money on presents for my own children that they will keep and enjoy for a long time!

Anyway, after all my research I was telling my husband about what people were charging and I suddenly thought - why am I even looking at getting someone else to run Natalie's party. We are capable human beings and we should surely be able to organise a party ourselves. However, I liked some of the ideas I had been looking at so I thought I would borrow some of these for our party and this is what we came up with!

We decided that we would have a total of twelve children including our two. We would organise them into small groups of four and let them have the chance to do different activities. So, this afternoon my husband has been making pizzas three times over. He made the dough in advance but the children rolled out their pizzas and chose their toppings. They also ate the pizzas as part of their party tea and because they were quite filling they took what they didn't eat home to their mums and dads!

At the same time I was doing an art and craft activity with another group. I had ordered felt bags and crowns and lots of felt shapes to decorate them as well as felt letters so they could all put their names on. They all seemed to really enjoy making these and as well as that the bags doubled up as their party bags!

Our third activity was a game where the children had to stand on various stepping stones which my friend and fellow mum was very happy to organise. By the end of the afternoon all of the children had done all three of the activities and had made their own pizza, bag and crown. We interspersed these with some traditional party games such as pass the parcel and musical statues. We finished off with them all sitting down to a party tea (including home made pizza) and blowing out the candles on the birthday cake (shop bought I confess!).

By the end of the afternoon we were exhausted. We had filled two hours and all the children had really enjoyed themselves and overall the party probably cost us no more than £70. We also felt quite proud as well that we had pulled it off and it had all gone to plan. I am not knocking parents who choose any of the other options but having a party at home does not have to be difficult and can be a lot of fun. It was hard work and I suppose I was slightly anxious in the run up but it was definitely worth it - particularly as Natalie enjoyed herself so much! I have to say though that I am glad that they only have to have one a year!

Summary: I think I'll offer my services out and start charging!