Bubbles/Balloons Party 4yr

For my son's 4th birthday he wanted a magician, not for the magic but for the balloon animals. Since magicians are kind of expensive to get I came up with the party idea of Bubbles & Balloons.   INVITATION: I blew up regular balloons of various color. I didn't tie the balloons I just held it closed while I wrote the Date,Time, and Place information on the balloon. The rest of the party information (and instructions to blow the balloon up for more info) was written on a computer made invitation that had pictures of balloons all over it. Then I put a deflated balloon into each invitation and mailed them out. (since the invitations were basically flat there was no extra postage fee) I made sure to put the RSVP info on the invitation in case the balloon popped. Many of the parents said their kids had a ball playing with the balloon.  DECORATIONS: The decorations were simple. There were colored streamers and Lots and lots of balloons. Most of the balloons were just blown up with air, some were taped to the walls and ceilings and some were just moving around freely on the floor. There were also 4 helium balloons that were tied together on the back porch (as most of the party was outside)  ACTIVITIES: there were a couple things the kids could do. 1) there was a fan (child safe) plugged in and loads of bubble liquid. Most kids would just pick up a wand and blow the bubbles themselves but some (like my son) couldn't quite do that alone so they were able to just hold the dipped wand in front of the fan and watch and chase all the bubbles it made. This was a huge hit (even with some of the parents) 2)there was a kid size table with coloring pictures of balloons and a bucket of crayons. a little hint if you don't have the fat" crayons for little hands wrap duct tape around normal crayons. they will still break but the tape will hold it together so the kids can still color with it.  3) Since my son loved balloon animals I got some books and learned how to make several of them before the party. It wasn't too hard actually and if you are thinking about this I recommend getting a book/kit that comes with a air pump as it is darn near impossible to blow up the balloons without one. Also be sure to allow for plenty of time to practice before hand. Of course there was the swing set and playhouse the kids could play on as well  GAMES: BALLOON HUNT- was the first game. we hid the smaller size balloons around the yard and kids were told to find however many balloons that they were old (so a 4yr old found 4 a 5 yr old found 5 etc) since there were some older kids they were told to find different colored balloons (so a 7yr old found 7 different colored balloons). I think we hid 100 balloons (at least it seemed like that many). Once all the kids found balloons we played BALLOON FIGHT- which was basically everyone threw the balloons at each other even parents got involved. BUBBLE BLOW- kids tried to see who could blow the biggest bubble. for older kids (and some parents) there was bubble gum for this.  COSTUMES: there weren't any real costumes planned but one of the older kids (a big brother to one of the guests think he was 12) taped or stuck balloons all over himself to become the "balloon monster" and chased kids around and played tag and if he tagged a kid he would put a balloon on the child. It was a lot of fun for the kids and really fun to watch as a parent. I wish i had thought of it!   PARTY SNACKS: Snacks were simple- Chips hot dogs fruit snacks. To make things easy I opened all the fruit snack packages and dumped them into a bowl. And to save on messes we had juice boxes. I wrapped each juice box with a piece of paper that had a picture of my son's head and the words "Birthday Juice" under it.    CAKE: the cake was a simple white sheet cake with balloons all over it. (and of course Happy Birthday) and since my son can't have milk we had popsicles (the ones in the baggie not the stick kind).  FAVORS: for party favors I found goody bags with balloons on them at the party store. Each bag had a small bottle of bubbles a safety stick sucker a larger size bouncy ball and some stickers. Each child also got to take home some balloons (if they wanted to) and at least one balloon animal.   All the kids seemed to have fun and the party was a great success. Plus it was a relatively inexpensive party which was a plus! "