Surprise Party - Tie Dye Deocrations

Some basic tips for suprise parties: 1. I highly suggest not letting friends help plan the party. They might spill the beans and the suprise will be ruined. You cant trust their judgement. The only area they could help in is who to invite. 2. Just in case your party girl is a bit overwhelmed, after she has arrived and has greeted all her friends, if she looks a bit shell-shocked" ask her to come help you bring out some food so she can have a bit of break. 3. Make sure the party isn't too long!! A friend of mine threw a 6 HOUR SUPRISE PARTY for her daughter. 4. Suprise Parties aren't for younger kids Plan Plan! Too much down time is bad and kids are always up for some suggestions! 

INVITATIONS: I invited 30 of my daughter's friends both boys and girls. I also invited some special family friends to stop by and wish Lexi a happy birthday! I sent the invitations out three weeks in advance. I made nice quirky envelope-free invitations! First make a nice copy of the invitation base to act as a stencil. First draw a 4 x 4 inch square on your paper. On every side of the square draw a triange with a tip facing outward. Each triangle should be two inches tall with a four inch base. Thus the invitation will be 8 x 8. Then fold the triangles along the sides of the square so they cover the whole square.

On the inside you need to put all the party information. I found this black wrapping paper that I taped to the square part of the inside and then pasted lacey ribbon on top of the wrapping paper. Then I formatted 4 to a page who what where when what to bring and suprise reminder card that we pasted in the middle of that. The color combination I found looked best with the white and black details were red hot pink and yellow. Then on the triangles I added some of the lacey ribbon in diagonal stripes on the triangles. Before sealing the card I added a sprinkle of glitter to the card. Then I folded the triangles over and using a label maker I wrote "SHHH!" and had a blank piece to make an X. Then on the other side of the card we put a stamp and wrote the adress. Perfect! 

DECORATIONS: Okay so we used the classic streamers table clothes glitter etc... But then I had another idea. My daughter really likes TIE DIE. So one day long before the party my younger daughter and I had a little party! We bought some cheap white sheets. Then we cut them into long  thin strips and tie died them in all different colors with rubber bands and red blue and yellow color. Then we twisted and made a circus tent kind of ceiling decoration.

I also made a banner with one of the best ones writing HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEXI and hung it in the main area. Another interesting decoration we had was a beach ball ceiling! We put some pins in the celing and had strings hanging down from them. Then we bought 8 different sized beach balls and hung them from these pins. We attatched the string through the plastic blow up nipple of the ball. This looked really cool. A sort of beach theme in the decorations started to form. So my girls own a lot of beach shirts Hollister and American Eagle have a lot of these. We hung up these shirts on the wall. It may sound strange but it looked fantastic! 

ACTIVITIES & GAMES: As the kids were arriving I had them place their presents on a table and arranged them nicely. Then we also layed out a book that all the kids could sign and write a message in for Lexi. We set out three activities: 1. Cookie and Hot Chocolate Making- on our kitchen table we layed out chocolate chip and sugar cookies with two types of frosting sprinkles and candy that the kids could make for a snack. We rented out a hot drink container a huge nice silver one and bought a bunch of plastic hot cups then put out crushed up oreos peppermint sticks  crushed snicker's bars etc.. that they could put in their hot chocolate. Because some parents were invited and I knew there would be cars lined up on our street I asked them to park on the next street over so she wouldn't suspect anything.

We also set aside a place for shoes and the guests were asked to come 45 minutes earlier than the party girl! After Lexi arrived we played a game in the backyard with all the kids called LAP TAG: Everyone finds a partner. Then the kids make two circles one kid of the partner sits in the middle one on the outside. The kid on the inside sits cross legged inside the other kids spread out legs. One person DOES NOT have a partner. That person calls two names of kids on the inside circle and they try to get as quickly as they can to the person sitting alone. While they do this their partner sitting on the outside tries to hold them back! Whoever reaches the alone person first becomes their partner and then the person who lost their partner is left alone and they call two other people. This is such a great mingling game!

My daughter also really likes acting so we played YOU'RE FIRED: This was also outside but it could be an inside game too! We set up three chairs. Two people are assigned as potential workers and they sit on the two outside chairs. Then the middle chair is for the "boss". The boss asks the employees questions about why they want the job etc. While she is talking to them they have to act like a perfect respectable employee. But when she looks away they have to make funny faces and gestures. If the boss catches the employee making faces she says "YOU'RE FIRED!" This game is not only fun for the players but fun for the audience members also! We also hired a caricuturist for 50$ an hour for two hours of the four hour party. The kids loved this. We had a seperate den for this artist.

ARTS & CRAFTS: In our basement we laid out newspaper all over the walls and floor and had tshirts that the kids could paint on! We set up little stations and someone was always monitoring this. The shirts were from target and we bought ten 5 packs of medium white tshirts. On the shirts we wrote LEXI'S SURPRISE PARTY '07 in sharpie. This was the most time consuming thing to prepare but the kids really liked. In another room of the house we set up a beading station for the kids to make jewelery. Then in one of the main rooms they had music going and some of the kids danced a little bit. 

SNACKS: The party was from 2-6pm. The kids were asked to come at 2 and Lexi came at 245. We had some crackers and cheese brushetta chocolate dipped strawberries mini pizzas (with mini bagels sauce & cheese) fruit kabobs (strawberries blueberries grapes and pineapple) watermelon ice cream chocolate bites (put little scoops on a pan and then add hershey's shell chocolate sauce then put it in the freezer) and smoothies. We put out 2 platters of each food. Instead of a cake we had tons of mini cupcakes and wrote 14.  IT WAS FABULOUS. "