The party in the OP sounds ridiculous, and I say that as someone who used to do kids’ birthday parties for a living.
We’ve done the party-at-home (I just dusted off the old toolkit and went retro: pin the tail on the donkey, Bozo buckets, ring toss) and it went pretty well…but then I remembered the number 1 selling point for my old biz: no clean up, Mom! Damn…organizing, shopping, precleaning and running the party I can handle, but the clean up afterwards…I’m pretty sure there were deflated balloons on the floor for a month.
Last year we went to a local art school and the birthday girl and guests got a lesson in clay modeling and got to make and glaze their own designs. The people there were wonderful, and found a great balance between educational and fun - enough supervision to prevent a free for all, and enough laxity to allow for squeals and giggles. They had a blast, and I scheduled it for a time when I didn’t have to feed them anything but cake. I made it cupcakes so I didn’t even have to cut anything. And when we were done…someone else cleaned up. Bliss!
To the outsider, an art studio birthday party might seem extravagant. In reality, it cost me less per head that it would have to feed all those piranhas at home (I priced it out, 'cause I’m not wealthy!), and I barely had to lift a finger. And I got to drive home to a clean house.
Don’t worry; people still have parties that way too. It’s just that now there are a lot more people who don’t think twice about spending more money than they truly should on things that are shiny/their neighbors have/keep their kids from complaining. I blame credit cards.
I was a kid in the 80s. My birthday parties involved having friends over for dinner and cake, and maybe some games or a movie rental or something. A few ‘event’-type parties that I had involved:
[ul]
[li]Pirate-themed party where everyone (maybe 12-15 people) got party favors which included a bandana, plastic gold-hooped ear ring and an eye patch. And, my dad and I built a maze in the basement out of old card board boxes and tape (pretty small and simple, but for a 7 year old, SO COOL) that you had to crawl through in the dark to get said favors at the end.[/li]
[li]There is/was a cartoon festival in a nearby city, and I got to invite three friends (ie, the number of people who would fit in the car) to go out to dinner and to a showing of some cartoons at the movie theater.[/li]
[li]Another time, I also got to invite a small number of people for a late-night visit to the observatory at a local college. We got to look at Jupiter or something like that. It was pretty cool.[/li][/ul]
Big parties with lots of expensive (in either money or time) preparations are almost always about how the parents feel, and not the children.
That is absolutely brilliant. I’m going to pass this idea on to my sister, who has one grandchild and is eagerly awaiting the appearance of the next one. Just a maze without the pirate theme would be great.
It was very cool. And not much of a maze; I think there was one dead-end turn (two at the most), and the whole thing was maybe 10x10 foot square. Of course, this was 27 years ago, so take my recollection with a grain of salt. But I continued to play in that maze for a few months after the party, until it started to fall apart (or my parents decided to get rid of it).
Whenever I read Calvin and Hobbes strips that involve the time machine or transmogrifier, I am reminded of the power of a cardboard box!
I guess my in-laws are unusual in that there are more adults than children at their kids’ birthday parties. Generally its the families of the kids all there, with maybe a few friends. there will be quite a few people, like 30+, but keep in mind only 5 or 6 are actual kids, the rest are adult cousins/older siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, godparents, godparents of relatives, and so on.
They’re Mexican, and accustomed to having a lot of people over at the house and cooking for an army. My sister-in-law is quite good at designing her own party favors/cakes- last summer my nephew had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party and my SiL made Cake Pops that looked like Ninja turtle heads. Another time they had an Angry Birds theme and she did the same with the different birds.
Some people mentioned some of these parties are more for the adults than for the kids, and while that is true in a lot of cases, I don’t necessarily think its a bad thing. I know a lot of adults that are not going to want to willingly go to a kid’s party due to all the noise, chaos, and boredom. But my in-laws throw a great bash that has plenty of food, beer, wine, and tequila for the adults. Typically as the party is winding down, the kids will be inside playing video games/toys the birthday kid got, while the adults are gambling among each other and getting sentimental while listening to Vicente Fernández turned up way too loud.
I think a good indicator of how fun a kid’s party is going to be to visit is the number of adults voluntarily there. I’ve been to a few where it occurred to me I was the only adult male (other than the father of the birthday kid) because all the other dads/male relatives made excuses to get out of it. For my in-laws, people want to go because while the kids have their own fun and party, the adults do too
I used to throw large parties for my daughter every year, until last year, when she turned 11. Her birthday party was attended by four girls, three of whom were related. She had invited her whole class To make the best of it, my sisters broke out a box of old Halloween costumes, and we had a fashion show/photo shoot, which the girls enjoyed. This year, I told her I wasn’t throwing a party for her, because of the expense and poor attendance, and she was OK with it. Instead, we had pizza and fruit pie (she doesn’t like cake much) at home with relatives on her actual birthday, and last Saturday I took her to a cosplay gathering and later to her favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. She had a great time. I think I’ll do this every year from now on, till she’s 15 and her quinceanera rolls around. :eek:
When I was a kid we only cared that our friends were there, there was pizza, there was cake and ice cream, and that there was something fun to do. That could range from dumb little games like pin the tail on the donkey to getting a bunch of tokens to play arcade games.
Born in 1961 - I didn’t have any other than blood relative/family birthday parties until I was 16 and out on my own. I invited 5 friends from school over, we cooked a really nice dinner and we hung out playing cards, checkers, backgammon and joked around for a few hours. It was a really fun way to spend a Saturday.
As I remember the menu, we started with a spring vegetable soup [chicken broth, julienne of lettuce, baby peas and fresh parsley leaves], then segued into collops of veal in a sauce over wide egg noodles, heaven and earth [cabbage and apples] and ended with grand marnier souffles baked in hollowed out oranges.
What can I say, we were strange teens - we were the geeky history and science nuts in the school system.
I have never really had anything you could call a birthday party since then. Maybe now that mrAru is not in the Navy and is dependably at home we should start a tradition of something other than going out to dinner on the 27th of September. Maybe getting friends together and having a nice little dinner made here at home with videos and games might be fun.
for the adults. Typically as the party is winding down, the kids will be inside playing video games/toys the birthday kid got, while the adults are gambling among each other and getting sentimental while listening to Vicente Fernández turned up way too loud.
To make the best of it, my sisters broke out a box of old Halloween costumes, and we had a fashion show/photo shoot, which the girls enjoyed. This year, I told her I wasn’t throwing a party for her, because of the expense and poor attendance, and she was OK with it. Instead, we had pizza and fruit pie (she doesn’t like cake much) at home with relatives on her actual birthday, and last Saturday I took her to a cosplay gathering and later to her favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. She had a great time. I think I’ll do this every year from now on, till she’s 15 and her quinceanera rolls around. :eek: