iCarly Party 7&9yr

I hosted an iCarly birthday party for both of my daughters this weekend (ages 7 and 9). Here's what we did:  Invitations: Since there are currently no iCarly birthday invitations, I created my own, using Hallmark's greeting card software. I found pictures of the iCarly gang on the internet, and then my husband was able to PhotoShop my girls into a picture with Carly, Sam, and Freddie. I then added You're Invited!" to the picture and used that for the cover of my invitation. On the inside I wrote "Please join us for an evening of fun-filled iCarly activities!" then I listed the activities: "iCarly Trivia" "Spencer's Sculpting Corner" and "Shoot your very own WebCast". Then I added the details of when where etc.  Decorations: Since there are currently no iCarly birthday party decorations we bought clear plastic plates printed some pictures from the show off the internet then taped them onto the bottom of the plates so they showed through. My kids loved helping with this project! (We originally tried decoupage but the ink ran from the pictures so taping worked just fine and it was faster.) I also bought a pinata that you can decorate with your own mylar balloon except I decorated it with the picture that my husband PhotoShopped with my kids and then added "Rachel & Hannah's Birthday Bash September 19 2008" to it. I also used that same picture with the wording to create t-shirts for my girls to wear to the party. We also created some balloon bouquets of different colored balloons and put them around the house like on the gift table the cake table the mailbox etc.  Activities: We had "Spencer's Sculpting Corner" since Carly's brother's scuptures are often featured on the show. You can use any kind of clay or other medium to create the scuptures but I used a recipe for "Candy Clay" that I found in one of those "Kid Concoctions" books. This is a very inexpensive option. Basically the ingredients are Powdered Sugar Corn Syrup and softened Margarine then you can add food coloring and flavoring. I made the basic clay a couple of hours before the kids arrived and then let them pick their flavor and color. I gave them each a little plastic plate with their name on the bottom to use as their base. Then I put a drop of the flavored extract they picked onto their plate and let them mix it into the clay. I also had different candies for them to decorate with as well as cookie cutters for them to create different shapes with. These do not need to bake or anything - they just need to set out to harden.  When they finished we put them on my dining room table to set up so they could take them home to share and eat. (Between the cupcakes and the pinata they didn't need anymore sugar at my house!) Our other activity was called "Shoot your own WebCast" in honor of the TV show. Basically I just turned on my video camera and the kids did all kinds of crazy things for me. I copied the videos to DVD and included them in my thank you cards plus I'm uploading the videos to iCarly's website - If you do this make sure you have the parents of the children in the videos sign a release. I used the verbiage from the release on iCarly's website for my form. Also during the gift-giving time I played some pre-recorded episodes of iCarly. Some might argue that this is a distraction from watching the opening of the gifts but I had a large group of kids with varying attention spans so I NEEDED the distraction. It worked out really well because each kid paid attention when my girls were opening the gift from them and then they watched the show when gifts from the other kids were being opened. I kept the volume low so they HAD to be quiet if they wanted to hear. :-) We had a slumber party so in the morning while I was making breakfast I stuck the memory stick from my camera into our Wii game system and selected the "Photo Channel" then picked "Slide Show". This is so cool for ANY occasion! This Slide Show option turns your TV into a giant digital picture frame! The kids LOVED watching all the pictures that I took from the night before! At Christmas I load Christmas pictures from years past onto my memory stick and play that while we open presents and have our Christmas Dinner - my guests love it!  Games: We played iCarly trivia using a quiz I found on a website. To prepare for this game I printed index cards with the letters A B C and D on them and then we played the game "Survivor" style - they each got a set of index cards I read the questions gave them the 4 choices then they held up the index card with the corresponding correct answer. If they got a question wrong they were out of the game. The last one standing was the grand prize winner. She won a t-shirt with the birthday logo (like the ones I made for my girls). I gave little trinkets (the ones you find in the party aisle at WalMart) to all the other participants. I ended up having just one winner but if I'd had a tie I planned on putting the names of the winners in a hat and drawing the winner of the t-shirt. We also had a limbo contest and I played the soundtrack from iCarly as the background music for that.  Costumes: We didn't have any costumes - just the aforementioned t-shirts that I made for my girls to wear.  Party Snacks: I kept this real simple - I made a party dip from those mixes you can get at just about every festival where you just add sour cream and mayo then I made a cheeseball from another mix that I got at a festival adding cream cheese and butter then I had pinwheel sandwiches that I bought from Sam's. Our party started at 6pm so I also ordered pizzas and had the pizza place cut them into squares to reduce the amount of wasted pizza - this really worked!!! For drinks I iced down some Capri Suns - the clear kind so it didn't stain clothes or carpet. I had pre-printed labels with the kids' names on them so we could slap those on the drinks to avoid confusion.  Cake: Again no iCarly cakes but I didn't care because I discovered last year that the best way to go on cakes is to get the cupcake-cakes - the ones where they place the cupcakes into the shape of a cake! This is the best time-saver ever! NO CUTTING!!! I ordered one shaped like a 7 and one shaped like a 9. I think most places do this but I got mine at WalMart.  Favors: Using the PhotoShopped picture I made magnets using magnet sheets that you can run through your ink jet printer (I made 8 per page). I do these for lots of occasions - you can probably get these sheets at any store that sells greeting card paper for your computer but I've specifically seen these at WalMart and Fry's Electronics. The brand I use is Avery and they work great! If you're not a PhotoShop expert you can use any pictures including pictures from the party or just make up your own birthday logo. Also in their goodie bags they had their candy from the pinata plus some little trinkets like rings prizm things etc.  Thank You Cards: I customized these on my computer for each guest using pictures of them from the party for the cover then the obvious thank you stuff on the inside. I do this every year even when my party themes have thank you cards available. People really like to get cards with pictures from the occasion and it really doesn't take very long if you have your digital pictures organized in easy-to-find folders on your computer - I highly recommend Creative Memories Memory Manager for organizing digital pictures. It's also easy to crop and edit pictures in this software.  I received lots of compliments from the guests as well as the parents. I hope you find these suggestions helpful!"