Home Shopping Mall -8yr- 8 Station Stores

My daughter just turned 8 and she loves to shop so we turned our house into a shopping mall. For the invitation I printed out the into 6 to a page and cut out and matted on pretty paper. For the envelope, I cut out colorful paper in the shape of a purse and cut half circles for the handles and wrote the girls names on the front.

For decoration, we set the table with pink and green cups, fork, placemats and flowered plates and napkins that were pink and green. We also had matching coasters and name place tags and goodie bags. I found them in the clearance section at Hobby Lobby. I got small tote bags that came three to a pack at the Dollar Tree and put a lotion from Bath & Body (the small travel ones that are $1--the preview scent they always have by the register), stickers, pencil, nail file and shopping list.

The girls got to shop" in 8 stores: Food court candy store bath & body jewelry music arcade and nail salon. I made a sign for each store and hung at the entrance of the room it was in. The food court was first because it was lunch time. I had a bunch of food on the kitchen island and they got to make there plate and eat together. The we split up into groups. I had a helper do nails in the nail salon. I got lots of bright colors--blue light blue aqua purple pink yellow green. I found them for $1 at Walmart. In the jewelry store I set up some jewerly and the girls made a bracelet or necklace. In the candy store I got 12 different types of candy from the Dollar Tree-blow pops smartees gum laffy taffy ring pops etc.

I put them in the tall plastic containers (3 for $1 at Dollar Tree) then I cut the package the candy came in and wrapped it around the container as a label. I put them all out with plastic goodie bags that matched the plates napkins etc. The girls went around and picked out their candy. They added that to their goodie bags and then made a sucker from a mold that they got at the end of the party. At the bath and body store we made a brown sugar scrub. I got small plastic containers (3 or 4 for $1 at the Dollar Tree) and cut out a flower shape and glued to the top so it was pretty then we added flower sticker around the outside.

The girls got the containers with brown sugar. I mixed dark brown sugar and a raw brown sugar that was a little more grainy. They took craft sticks and stirred in baby oil with aloe and that was there scrub they got to take home. I also had some already made up for them to use. At the scrapbook store they made a 6x6 scrapbook page for my daughter's scrapbook and then we took pictures of each of them with my daughter so we can add the pictures to their pages they made. The music store was my daughters CD and some cd and they played music and we also had the Dance Revolution set up on the xbox for them to do. I was going to do Kareoke but couldn't find a machine in time. We have the WII kareoke but the girls wanted to do the Dance Revolution instead. It was really fun to watch. The arcade was the pool table air hockey and WII aracade/carnival games.

The girls had so much fun doing everything else that they didn't even get to the arcade. The party was only 2 hours but they were busy the entire time. I was going to do several other stores but had too many girls and it would have cost too much but if you have the budget or a smaller groups here are the other ideas we came up with. Clothing store-t-shirt (hobby lobby has them 50% off all the time so it would be $1.50 or $2 per shirt) and either do an iron on or fabric markers or tye dye. Build a Bear (hobby lobby has the bear kits lots cheaper and they always have 40% off coupons you can print off their website--I actually used them one year and did a build a bear party at home). Hair Salon-do the girls hair. Cosmetic store-make a lip gloss. I usually make a cute theme cake but I worked all weekend and had my son's birthday party the night before so I didn't have time. Ideas for a cake might be a purse shaped cake shopping bag shape cake. I just went with an ice cream cake from the store. It was an easy and cheap party and the girls had a really good time!!"