Sabrina's Littlest Pet Shop Party

Sabrina is crazy about Littlest Pet Shop, so together we worked on pulling together a fun party for her friends.  I totally underestimated how long things would take, so I won't bother trying to assign start times for the activities.  Let's just say that the party ran over by a good 30-45 minutes.  It was fun, though, and hopefully the parents didn't mind too much.

When the girls walked in, I painted their faces to look like their favorite animals.  Most picked dogs and cats, but Devon was a wolf and Sabrina and one of her friends were foxes.  We took a purple ribbon, cut it to size, put on a jingle bell and stick-on velcro as a closure and let them decorate their own "collar."  They also got to decorate their party bags, in suitable neon colors.

Next, we worked on Make-It Bake-It kits.  Each girl had a cat frame that she filled with colored plastic beads.  We put them in the oven and baked them during the other activities.  When they came out, they each had a beautiful sun catcher!

While the suncatchers cooked, we next went to the "Pet Shop Pick-Up" game.  Rob his behind a sheet with goodies.  The girls through a fishing rod (a dowel with an alligator clip tied to some string) over the sheet, and Rob would attach either a bracelet, a pack of goldfish, or a pack of bone-shaped graham crackers back to them.  Rob made different strange animal noises during the proceedings.

Next, the climax of the party - the string game.  We had strung yarn all over the den and upstairs.  The girls had to unwind the string to find a prize (a Littlest Pet Shop blind bag) at the end.  To do this, they had to climb over and under everyone else's string.  This took waaaay longer than I thought it would - every bit of 45 minutes.  The girls had fun, though.

We then played the "Animal Acoustics" game, where I gave them a list of possible animals and they had to figure out which animal's call I was playing on the pc.  While some of them were easy, like a cat, dog, or frog, the giant anteater and hippo were a bit challenging.

Of course, it's the details that really make parties fun!

Afterwards came cake, shaped like Littlest Pet Shop paws, ice cream, and opening the presents!  We all had a great time!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Party

This is our second Harry Potter party.  I've gotten a lot of information and ideas off the internet, and I wanted to share our ideas as well for throwing a great party.  It took a TON of prep work for a 2 hour party, but I think my son will always remember it, so it was worth it.  Plus it was fun for me too, I admit.

The Monday before the party we delivered invitation via "owl post" (aka Honda Odyssey), leaving at each guest's house an invite printed on parchment paper and rolled into a scroll tied with ribbon.

Party Schedule:
Orientation (10:00 - 10:30)
Herbology (10:30 - 10:45)
Find Scabbers (10:45 - 11:00)
Potions (11:00 - 11:15)
Quidditch (11:15 - 11:25)
Care of Magical Creatures (11:25 - 11:40)
The End of Term Feast (11:40 - 12:00)

To get the kids' attention, I blew a wooden train whistle and told them to be quiet whenever they heard the Hogwarts Express blow its whistle.  It worked really well sporadically until they got too much sugar in them to focus.

Orientation:
The purpose of Orientation was to give time for all the party guests to arrive.  We gave each child a goody bag to decorate, which they carried with them the entire party to place prizes in after each "class."  We also made magnets with the crest of each House.  I got the idea from a Star Wars party blog on the web (here's a link for instructions - http://craptasticcrafts.blogspot.com/2011/04/glass-magnets.html).  Use the round, flat glass beads you find in craft stores, glue a 1" picture to the back, and glue a magnet on.  Voila!  I printed off small pictures of the House crests and used a circle cutter I got at a craft store to punch out the image.  (The cutter was in the scrapbooking section of the store.)  Some of the kids liked this, and some of the boys weren't so much.  It kept them busy until everyone could get there, though.

Herbology:
We planted mandrakes, using a super cute idea found here at The Leaky Cauldron: http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/features/crafts/potterparties/growingmandrakes.  In our invitation, we asked kids to bring earmuffs to wear while they planted the mandrakes so they wouldn't pass out from its cry.  : )  We asked them to write their name on the cup and put them on a table near the front door to take home with them.

Find Scabbers:
We got a bunch of stuffed mice from IKEA - only $1 each!  Then we hid them all over the house and told the kids that Ron's mouse Scabbers was always getting lost, and that his relatives had invaded.  Their job was to find all the rats.  They had to bring them back to a table, after which we gave one to each child to keep and put in their goody bag.  This was definitely a hit!  The kids had a great time running around searching for rats, and they liked to play with them afterward.  One of the boys carried it with him in his pocket the rest of the party.


Potions:
We did this last year, and the kids enjoyed it, so we decided to pursue Potions again.  I got this idea off of another website as well.  We mixed up a lot of different colored Kool-Aid and poured it into interesting containers.  We then affixed labels such as "Gillywater," "Dragon Blood," "Acromantula Venom," "Pureed Fluxweed," and "Leech Juice."  We also had marshmallows labeled as "Doxy Eggs," black sugar crystals labeled as "Lacewing Flies," silver sugar crystals labeled as "Powdered Horn of a Bicorn," and strips of Fruit Rollup labeled "Boomslang Skin."  We then invited the kids to mix and drink their own potions - if they dared.  Several of them feigned exploding or turned into zombies after drinking their mixtures.  At the end of the "class" we gave everyone a chocolate frog to take home.  (You can get frog-shaped candy molds at Amazon.  I was going to make some Jell-O frogs to put in the potions but ran out of time.)

Quidditch:
I made a pinata shaped like a Snitch, and the kids lined up and swiped at it with a broom.  If you're as bad at crafts as I am, make sure you start the pinata a week in advance!  I used a punch balloon, and the stupid thing started deflating.  The top of my Snitch looked like a raisin.  I managed to reshape it when it was still drying.  Next time I'll use a better quality punch balloon I guess.  Anyway, here's a link to how to make a pinata - this was a Death Star pinata, but I spray painted it gold and stuck feathers in the sides:  http://saramason.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/death-star-pinata/.  (I made the Death Star pinata for my son's Star Wars birthday party three years ago.)  Once the kids smashed the fruit of my labor (the thing took several hours to make, and it was smashed in about 5 minutes), I gave each of them a Snitch lollipop for doing well at Quidditch Practice.  This was my own invention.  I bought gold foil for wrapping candy from a craft store, wrapped it around a Charms blow-pop, and glued feathers on.  (Thanks, mom, for all the help manufacturing Snitches!)



Care of Magical Creatures:
 I told the kids that if they passed the course they'd be able to take home a Ministry of Magic-approved "pygmy" dragon.  They actually paid attention!  I created a quiz for them to identify different magical creatures.  You could have heard a pin drop!  This was a welcome break from the chaos surrounding the pinata.  When they finished the quiz, they each got an egg (a gold-painted plastic Easter egg) with a small plastic dragon inside (we bought some Toobs filled with dragons).  The picture below is a three headed dog concocted by rubber banding three Webkins together.



The End of Term Feast:
We held the feast.  The main course was an Aragog cake, which the boys enjoyed cutting up.  I mixed up two boxes of cake mix and then poured one into a large bowl and one into a small bowl.  I trimmed off a little of the resulting small cake until it fit snugly against the body and frosted it with chocolate frosting.  We decorated it with chocolate jimmies and used white gum drops for the eyes and fangs.  We also found chocolate Twizzlers for the legs.  For the drinks, we got lemonade and Sprite.  My husband put a few drops of food coloring in the bottom of each cup and put ice in.  We told the kids to say the spell "Morpheo" to change the color of their drink, and when we poured in our clear beverages, they transformed into all sorts of cool colors!  (I got that idea off of someone else's blog - I can't remember where, but it was a great idea. The kids loved it!)  We of course used Harry Potter plates, napkins, and cups.


The End:
At the end of the party we passed out Harry Potter silly bandz and magic "wands," pretzels dipped in chocolate with sprinkles.  We all had a great time!

Please note that it took quite a bit of time to pull this together, so if you are interested in a similar party, plan ahead, and make everything in advance that you possibly can!  My dear husband took the kids out the day before so I could bake the cake, make chocolate frogs and wands, sort the favors into bags, spray paint the eggs, etc., etc., and after 6 hours I STILL hadn't finished!  But it was well worth it.

Welcome

Welcome to Sondra's Soapbox!  This is my first time blogging.  Mainly I'm posting because I've found a lot of helpful information on the web that I've used to plan birthday parties, research issues, etc., and I'd like to be able to give back and hopefully help others too.  We just threw a Harry Potter party for my son today, and I'll post an article about that later when I've recuperated.  It was tons of fun.  More later.....