to be so fed up with so many ignorant people

[kerryk]

dd is having her 4th birthday this weekend, she has been so excited about it for ages and we decided to have her party in the house as past experience has taught us that a lot of parents cant be bothered to travel to the local soft play.

after seeing the shocking weather report for the weekend we realised we could not use the garden so have organised a entertainer instead.

i have sent 14 invites out and have only heard back from 5 people so i take it the others are not coming.

i am so bloody skint this month but wanted to give dd a great party and it has really backfired, had i just booked the local soft play it would have cost £6-50 per head so would have been about £65 (min numbr of kids is 10) as it is i have spent over £200 on her birthday party and 9!!! people have not bothered to say they wont be coming.

i feel really sorry for dd, she is a really popular little thing so im not upset about that being the reason people wont come, its just the ignorant parents that are getting to me.

i feel really now all i wanted was for her to have a lovely time, she has been looking forward to it for so long, and even at the tender age of 3 (nearly 4) she had said she would not be bothered if she had no presents as long as she had a nice party for her friends.

get some rich tea biscuits - and some icing and little sweets, and do biscuit decorating. This went down a STORM at ds1's 4th birthday! Pass the parcel and musical bumps can take as long as you want it to, and children enjoy this.

make them all take their shoes off - for safety, rather than hygiene. They won't injure each other with sock feet.

I strongly recommend having as little furniture in the party room as possible - I don't know what your children are like (so you may be hip to this already) but my children are like chimps and will jump and climb on anything when excited.

They are little, your daughter is little, if 4 or 5 children show up she will think she has had Gatecrasher 2000 at her house.

thank you everyone, had a call from a (nice) mum this morning, she only recieved her invite yesterday as her daughter had been ill but she phoned to say she will be here.

it looks like there will be 9 children (inc my 2) then 2 older sisters that i have said could stay. i really dont want any of the others to turn up now.

At this age, the party can be more like a scaled-up playdate and the children will love it.

I wish that I had cleared away more toys though from the room we had the party in (playroom/conservatory) as the children were so keen on playing with toys they weren't that interested in the games - we only managed pass the parcel! That said they all had a great time and it didn't cost much at all.

Awful that people haven't replied - terribly bad manners apart from anything else.

9 children in your house!! You're a brave one! (I'm a chicken and usually hire the village hall!!) Have a good party and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to your DD! Chinese whispers is a good one!

My MIL, when she does pass the parcel, puts a small prize (a small pack of sweets or little pack of crayons etc.) into each layer, that way every child gets a prize. I always thought this was lovely

I've seen some great party activities recently:

melted chocolate onto greaseproof paper in a big round shape.
Kids put loads of different sprinkles on and a long stick - skewer thing but not sharp.

Leave to dry - a huge chocolate lollipop!

Also - match the sticker. Give kids blank greeting cards (A5 folded) with three stickers on. They've got to find the exact matching sticker, which you've hidden around the sitting room/kitchen. Then they stick them on their card next to the matching one, and get a milky way or whatever when they've found all three. And they take it home as a hand-made card, with matching envelope, in their party bag.

Just remembered something else I did that went down well - an indoor treasure hunt which lead to finding the pinata.

I drew crude pictures of the various clues eg, microwave, then when they found that there would be a picture of the next place to search. They loved it. Mayhem though. Might be too much with 9.

party could not have gone better