Party Planning

We’ve got a few parties coming up in the pretty near future and so I’ve been finding myself spending too much time browsing around Pinterest and Oriental Trading company looking for fun party stuff.

The first party on the horizon is Tabby’s class Valentine’s Day Party. A friend and I and one other mom are the politically correct “room parents.” It’s funny because we have quite a few dads involved in school stuff – crossing guards, PTA presidents, etc. – but I’ve never seen a room dad. But I digress.

So we get to put together a little soiree for the kinders on Vday. My friend was a teacher and she always has great ideas for activities for the kids. She came up with a cool puzzle scavenger hunt that the kids can do on their own and then bring all the pieces together to reveal a secret message. It sounds like great fun and is even learning based what with the puzzle pieces and the reading and all that.

I on the otherhand, have Pinterest. And there I found these great Valentine’s floats. They’re made with Cherry 7up, ice cream and twizzlers for straws. We have to have a bunch of healthy food options available, but I thought these would be a fun treat for the kids and it’s nice to break away from cupcakes and cookies. Plus no decorating! And those are about as far as I’ve gotten. We’ll need to come up with a simple craft and probably some stickers for the kids to take home.

Then there’s Tabby’s impending 6th birthday. I think we’ve finally decided she’s going to have it at our local rec center with swimming afterward. Now we need to figure out about the party part. The activity portion is taken care of with swimming, so decorations, food and maybe a little craft or take-home something. But I don’t know where to go with this. I’ve had two thoughts: hedgehogs and kawaii (random Japanese cuteness).

Hedgehogs are obvious, but I thought the Kawaii “theme” would be fun because T has the slightly bizarre distinction of being the kid in her kindergarten class who listed her favorite food as “sushi” and I thought it would be fun to have candy sushi at her party. But that’s where that idea ends. The problem with either theme is that there’s no page in the catalog for hedgehog or kawaii birthday supplies so I have to come up with pretty much anything that we use and I don’t really have the time at the moment. So maybe we ditch themey things and she just picks a cake she likes and we buy some balloons.

Lastly there’s Ben. He and Tabby have been at their new schools the same amount of time, but while we’ve met lots of Tabby’s classmates and their parents, we don’t know ANYONE from Ben’s school. There’s no set pickup/dropoff time for his school so whereas with Tabby’s you’re constantly seeing the same people at start and end, the parents trickle in and out and rarely do we see any of them let alone stand around chatting for five minutes before/after school. As a result, we don’t really know Ben’s new classmates and I’m trying to figure out if we should do a party for him this year. He definitely wants one. We could easily invite our family friends and their kids (few of whom, I should point out, are actually Ben’s age) and have a nice party for him. But I’ve considered inviting his classmates and seeing if anyone will come and trying to get some of that friendliness started. Part of me also wants to have him wait until next year for a friends party so we can alternate who gets a big friend party each year, but next year may be the same friend situation all over again. It’s a bummer.

So I leave you with party on the brain.