Stress Free Party Planning (Guest Post)

Let’s face it, it’s a great feeling when the party is finally over. All those last minute adrenalin-fuelled moments of panic meant it all fell into place and you can finally sit back, feet up and not think about whether, little Tommy's mum has replied, and if not, will they still turn up at the very last minute like they did last year smiling and expectant. This is when you have to raid your carefully organised party bags for bits and pieces to give him so he doesn’t go home empty handed.

When organising children’s parties, the thought of next year is unlikely to go away completely, despite all the distractions of daily life.  Not least because most children like to mull over the many and varied possibilities for their next birthday, changing their minds on a regular basis.  Swimming party, anyone?  Soft play?

So what are the best ways to make it as smooth, easy, and stress-free as possible when planning a party for thirty five year old boys?

Let’s assume most of us won’t be employing a Party Planner a la Jennifer Lopez, but will be doing it all with the help of friends and family, and, of course, the birthday boy or girl themselves.  Lucy Sheridan, Life Coach and CEO of Proof Coaching www.proofcoaching.com suggests you ‘start with the end in mind – but not with your guests leaving!’  So give some thought about the kind of party you wish to create. ‘Measure your preparations against that and you’re not working blind,’ Lucy says.  That’s great advice.  Basically, it’s all in the planning.

Here are some more hot tips from us www.partysupplies4you.co.uk to make it as stress-free process as possible:

  • Keep a list: In other words, be organised.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But, let’s face it, we’ve all done it from time to time, left things until the last minute.  It’s so easily done, we all have busy lives.  But, if you have a list you know exactly what there is to do, and if you are super-organised, when you should do it too. So, you might have a ‘to do’ list – send out invitations, book venue and entertainer.  And a shopping list – party bags, party bag fillers, food, drinks, tablecloths, balloons, all those party essentials.
  • Choose a theme (and stick to it): Well, encourage your child to do so.  Who hasn’t groaned at the decision to switch from the Very Hungry Caterpillar to The Gurffalo theme at the 11th hour?  So, just as you are about to ‘proceed to checkout’ with your pre-filled party bags and other supplies (link to party things) you have to empty your basket and start all over again.  So have all those discussions early on.
  • Get your invitations out early: Chase those who haven’t RSVP-ed – in the nicest possible way, of course.  Try and be sensitive about invitations; if you’re not inviting the whole class, but just a select few of your child’s close friends, maybe try not to hand invitations out at school. It’s never too early to learn the essentials of party etiquette!
  • Keep it simple: Especially where party food is concerned.  You know what it’s like – you put on a veritable feast of homemade goodies and the children eat a giant bowlful of crisps and nothing else.  Buy food boxes (link to party things website), one per child and fill them with a sandwich, a drink, a piece of fruit, some veggies and a sweet and savoury treat. Check with your guests that there aren’t any allergies, and if there are, the ‘box per child’ will enable you to tailor the food accordingly.
  • Try to enjoy the planning process Easier said than done, maybe, but you can have fun involving the children, unless of course the party is a complete surprise.  So, if your son is pirate mad, it can be great fun doing stuff together – creating a treasure map, burying trinkets of treasure in the garden, and creating a sheet of coded clues for each guest, with carefully singed edges (done with adult supervision, obviously!).
  • Accept help: You call up your child’s entertainer of choice, and they’re fully booked until 2016.  Typical.  And then you remember Maisie’s dad’s turn as Coco the Clown at a party last summer, and he did a grand job – there’s nothing he likes more than to don his water-squirting bow-tie, out-sized boots and make balloon animals for hours.  So, go on, give him a call!
  • Set yourself a budget: Keep a record of what you’ve spent as you go along.  It’s so easy to get carried away when party planning, buying little things here and there.  If you set yourself an upper cost limit, and stick to it, it will help throughout the planning process.  It will determine, for a children’s party, the number of guests your child can invite – work out a cost per head, for say, 15 children, and work within that.

And enjoy!

After all, you won’t need to go through the process again for almost another year…

Share your stress-free party tips and experiences with us below

Fran is the Managing Director of Party Supplies 4 You and has provided an insight into ways that parents can plan a stress free party.

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How To Make Pirate Party Bags

When The Boy had his pirate party recently, I decided that plastic 'loot' bags weren't going to cut it for authenticity so I bought some hessian fabric from eBay and made my own loot bags.

Pirate Party Bags

The hessian was neatly woven along one side already, which is the side I used for the opening. Each bag measured 15cmx25cm, requiring a rectangle of hessian measuring 33cmx27cm which was folded over and stitched along the one side and base using a sewing machine. I tied the bag using natural garden twine.

I'm a stickler for party bags at children's parties and hate most of the cheap tat that comes in them; I'd rather spent 25p more a bag for some relevant and quality items than give something which is pointless. Cheap sweets and plastic toys are a waste of the host's money, and are usually forgotten within half an hour of the party.

With clever shopping and a bit of time, quality and relevant contents for a party bag can be found in supermarkets, pound shops and craft stores. eBay is also brilliant for party bag contents!

Pirate party bags - loot

Inside each bag there was:

  • a treasure chest (decorated by the children during the party as one of the activities) – Baker Ross
  • a pirate pencil – Wilkinson's sale section
  • a working compass – Asda
  • a party blower (pirate themed) – Wilkinson's
  • a maze (pirate themed) – Wilkinson's
  • pirate stickers – Asda
  • chocolate coins – saved from Christmas when they're a lot cheaper!
  • bubbles (pirate themed) – Wilkinson's

The hessian bags worked out exactly the same price as a standard bag. The fabric was £2.49 a metre and I made ten bags out of half of the fabric which meant they cost 12p each. The items listed above were between 10p-25p each. The treasure chests were the single most expensive item at 99p each, but they were also one of the activities that the children did during the party so have a dual purpose with cost. The total cost of each bag (without the chest) was £1.12.

Days 160-166 of Project 365

160-166 of 365

160. Ground Force! (Little did The Boy know that the groundwork that he and daddy were doing on Sunday was for the area that his climbing frame – his birthday present – is destined for. We've done some relocation work of some fairly permanent features to accommodate the frame, this area used to be a patio which housed his Little Tikes house.)

161. Retro (The four eyebrows and tongue of concentration make a reappearance in this photo. I'd bought him one of those snake twisty things (that could make telephones and balls and stuff) that were all the rage in the 80s and he was absolutely fascinated with it.)

162. Shadow (Today was one of those deceptive days where it seemed mild and cloudy, yet when the wind blew the clouds away, the heat was extradordinary. We had to do a lot of shopping for his birthday party and as he'd been such a good boy we went up to the clifftop park. It's very peaceful up there looking over the Bristol Channel, and the skies cleared to reveal a scorching heat and the most amazing late-afternoon shadows.)

163. Surprise! (The Boy's birthday! Unfortunately I had to work, as did Mr. TBaM. This is a new one for us on The Boy's birthday as I'm usually off work, Mr. TBaM takes the day off and we have a family treat day out somewhere, but not this year and it made me sad. However, I raised home from work and we led The Boy into the garden with his eyes covered by his woolly hat. This photo was taken the very moment that he whipped it off to reveal his birthday present; a climbing frame.)

164. Adventurer (The climbing frame is going to play a huge part in our play I suspect! His confidence has grown in just one day from slowly stumbling from one rung to another of the jungle run, to walking over and barely holding on!)

165. Monkey Boy (I wondered when he'd discover the monkey bar aspect to the jungle run, it seems it was to be today. He's swinging from a single bar, he can't move himself onto the next rung yet, but he is enjoying hooking his legs over the frame – to take the weight – and moving his hands along to the next rung. He's certainly building his technique though.)

166. Blow (Today was the big day, The Boy's Pirate Party. Up to goodness knows what time last night baking a cake, decorating it at 7.30 this morning, running around like a blue-arsed fly all morning, and it all paid off as the party went brilliantly. It did rain for the first hour, but stopped and brightened during lunch. They were able to get outside and play – on the climbing frame – once the birthday cake had happened.)

TheBoyandMe's 365 Linky
akiltandacamera.com

How To Make Pirate Bunting

How to make pirate bunting

We're fortunate enough to have a perfectly south-facing garden and a son born in the Summer. This tends to mean that we are able to utilise the garden for his parties and bedeck the trees and bushes with bunting and balloons.

(That's the theory anyway, but on his second birthday there was a near monsoon outside in south Wales, and his third was in a church hall because it had rained for the fortnight before and I wasn't taking any chances.)

However, one of the things that I adore in the Summer months is seeing brightly coloured bunting draped through trees, and although we have 50 metres of home-made Very Hungry Caterpillar bunting from his first birthday, I felt that we needed some new flags for his fourth birthday; a pirate-themed party.

I did some research and found a huge selection of red, white and black fabrics suitable for pirate bunting from a variety of online shops and Ikea.

How To Make Pirate Bunting

More specifically the fabrics I bought were:

Using this Pirate Bunting template, I traced out the triangles of fabric and cut them out using pinking shears (prevents the edges from fraying and saves time on stitching them too). For each 5 metre length of ribbon, I had nine different fabrics and used three of each. I laid them out in a pattern which meant there was a good contrast of red, white and black, along with alternating patterns and stripes.

Pirate Bunting flags

Next job was to pin them on to the ribbon. I used 5 metre lengths to make it more manageable with sewing and untaggling, and had a 15cm strip of ribbon free at either end for tying onto the tree or fence post. I left a 1cm gap in between the triangles and pinned three complete repetitions along the 5 metre length. After pinning the triangles into place, I used the sewing machine with red thread to stitch them into place.

How To Make Pirate Bunting

In total I made thirty metres of fabric to string around the garden for his pirate party, very jolly!

How To Make Pirate Bunting

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