Event Planning: Birthday Fun!
Jun 7, 2008 Consumer Brands, Event Marketing, Family and Friends, Parenting and More
Two weekends ago my son turned 3! It was a big decision on what to do for this birthday. In past years, we have invited friends and family over to our house for a BBQ. But, now he is three and he actually understood that it was his birthday. He knew that meant cake, and friends and fun. We had recently been to a few of his friends parties – so he knew it was finally his turn to be host and the centre of attention. His other friends had had a mix of home based parties, pool parties, and parties at local farms.
I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a location, a pool rental or mazes at the farm. I figure, there are plenty of years ahead for spending oodles of money keeping up with the Jones’. But having it at home brought its own set of issues… how to entertain 14 kids for an hour and a half…being the biggest! Following that issue of course is keeping my own sanity in check before, during and after the party.
I put on my marketing hat, beside my mom hat. Event planning…I can do that! We needed a theme, then we could work decorations, games (to keep the kids entertained) and food around that! We needed a theme that was somewhat common and easy to do, as I didn’t want to be searching forever for pieces to the puzzle. We needed a theme that lent itself to games – Mickey Mouse or Nemo wouldn’t cut it!
I decided to do a “Construction” theme party for him since he loves trucks, and helping his dad with “work” around the house. Construction theme was perfect, some of the entertaining of the kids wouldn’t even require my help. We put out all of my sons dump trucks, diggers, and tow trucks. My husband bought some moving boxes, taped them up and we had giant building blocks:
The kids build towers, walls, and castles. Then knocked them down. No parental help required. We put out the sand buckets, shovels and lawnmowers and put the kids to work in the back yard:
I set up two games (which required my guidance) including a ring toss with orange construction pylons (dollar store!). The kids quickly took over this one, pilling the pylons up, or arranging them in lines, circles and squares. Pin the pylon on the dump site was far more successful. Each child automatically won a small nut-free chocolate bar no matter where they pinned the pylon!
Entertainment complete! Decorations? Well, the boxes and pylons, and dump trucks were all a good start. I also bought “Caution” tape from the hardware store, a stop sign from the dollar store that said “The Party Stop is Here” and a construction theme Happy Birthday Sign. All plates, napkins, cups and balloons were construction orange and dump truck yellow. I bought a black table cloth and put a yellow dotted line down the centre to look like a road. Since it was a nice day the party was outside – so we taped the caution tape across the doorways in our house – blocking the kids from our living room and family room! This kept the house clean (until we brought in all the gifts!)
We got hard hats from a party store, tool belts from the dollar store, and donated some money to Rona’s social committee in order to get some L’il Hammer aprons. When the kids arrived they all put on their construction site uniform (although some kids were too shy to do so!)
Here are some of the workers on site:
The great thing about having a theme is it made planning easy. Similar to planning your marketing activities – I just had to ask myself – does it fit the objectives? does it make sense to the theme? does it achieve the goals? does it fit the budget? While the party required a bit more shopping than our usual BBQ, the added time spent planning was minimal. And, the pay-off was well worth it. My son wore his hard hat (he had a white one – he was the foreman), apron and tool belt – all day!
Oh and the best part, what construction party would be complete without cake with dump trucks and diggers on top? This cake from Loblaws even had cookie crumbled up to look like mud in the trucks!
His birthday gift from us was a big boy bed with a construction/transportation theme bedspread and new pictures up on the wall.
Popularity: 11% [?]
| 3.2 |
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
New blog post: Event Planning: Birthday Fun! http://megoagain.com/?p=211
June 9th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Nice idea!!
We just had our 4th party and decided to go out of the house for it. We went to the local community gymnastics centre. I too had always thought that it was cheaper to have it at home but I ended up spending the same or less than any of the other three parties. Each year I had a theme, but after food, decorations, and any “littles” the cost of the ‘at home’ parties got up there.
One great thing about having it ‘out of house’ is that I didn’t have to super clean the house before or after which made the day so much more enjoyable!!
August 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am
As someone who attended this party, I can attest it was a big success! My daughter had a great time, and still likes to wear her hardhat around our house.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I am in the construction industry, and I would have never thought of that theme for a birthday–great idea. I might do something like this for my nephew–he is the only boy and has two sisters, so he really likes to indulge in “boy” stuff. A construction themed birthday will be right up his alley. Thanks again.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:37 am
[...] Event Planning: Birthday Fun [...]
May 24th, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] just have a party at the house and throw the kids and some toys into the backyard. Last year the birthday theme was Construction as at the time Bear was into Bob the Builder. We had a few games planned but the kids were more [...]