Rubbish mum alert - I PROMISE this is the last time I'll mention children's parties

[earlgrey]

For this year, anyway.

We've always (well, since they could eat it, anyway) taken our dds and their chums to the local pizzaria for their birthday tea.

But this year dd2 is adamant she wants the tea at home

So what do I do?

So far, and remembering parties they've been to, I've got:

Carrot batons (which no-one eats)
Sandwiches (ditto, I'm told), but what to put in them?
Cold slices of margueritta pizza
Testicles (our euphamism for those mini Scotch eggs with the egg chopped up instead of whole)
Crips of various varieties
Babybells
Sausages
Cup cakes (so I can send them home hyper

But that's not much of a variety

Oh, and one mum's told me her dds allergic to anything containing sesame, so breadsticks with hoummous is out. I did check to see if she was allergic to any other nut products, but she said no, just sesame. Is that possible?

Please help me out - I'm going to make a start this morning.

BTW there are 11 of them coming, ranging in age from 6 to 10.

I would keep it simple.

Pizza, chips if you want to but not necessary. Babybels a good idea. A lot of children like cucumber so I would do slices of that with the carrots. Ham/cheese finger sandwiches.

Cupcakes - fine.

Birthday cake.

That's it. Children don't come to parties to eat in my experience!!!

You've got to do jellies for them to leave, it's traditional.
If your furniture will stand it, ice cream cones are fun.

get a disposable tablecloth and spread it on the floor. They can eat picnic style then you can bundle it all up and shove it in a bin bag. Tidying up done.
They will eat sandwiches if they're cut up into interesting shapes (children are so shallow!) Cheese spread, marmite and ham.
Cherry tomatoes.
Grapes.

How old is your dd?

Agree - most of our food gets eaten by starving adults!
Sounds ok to me. I was going to suggest tomatoes, but I can't remember anyone eating those, either. Yoghurts?
Juice/squash.
Got your party bags sorted?

Helsey, she's 7. I was going to get them to decorate their party bags when they arrive and then stuff them when they leave after they've dried.

I will put some baby tomatoes in, that's a good idea, but there must be some more savory crap they'll actually eat?

And what the eff am I going to do with them all for 3 hours?

Are they all girls? It depends on how much room you've got, but one of the best parties ever had for dd involved having three rooms - the kitchen table had lots of craft stuff laid out, her bedroom had dim lights and all the cushions we could find to make a sort of chill out zone and the living room had loud music for jumping up and down to. You have to be careful that no one gets left out and no girly cliques develop though. We made up boxes with the food and they ate on the cushions in dd's room. They loved that because it was unusual. And noone in my experience is too old for pass the parcel!

Yes it's possible to just be allergic to sesame seeds.

The food sounds fine. I wouldn't even have provided that much variety.

Don't think you need pizza and sandwiches - which gets over the what to put in them problem.

im having a bday party soon as well, it has a halloween theme and the guests are coming in costume. Also they are going to paint each others faces and play music and maybe watch a halloween themed movie. we are setting up a mini buffet on our kitchen table so they can just pick and choose what they want to eat. This is for 10-12 yr olds.

things on sticks. Kids love things on sticks.

Oh for foods we will be having. Slices of pizza, Crisps, Chips, Quiche,Lemonade and squash, Cucumber slices, cheese slices, sandwiches. And of course bday cake and ice cream after. We bought jackolantern halloween pails to fill with goodies to take home.

colditz- lol thats true, shame I cant find any corn dogs in UK.

Oh and we are considering those mini sausage rolls

Order takeaway pizza?

for ds' party I'm planning to do:

sandwiches, jam/ham
minni sausage rolls
cocktail sausages
cheese cut into cubes
grapes
crisps
and an aray of cakes/biscuits.

I think it also depends though on whether the mums are staying as well - if there are parents there and you have too much food there's plenty to feed them as well. Also get 2-litre water bottles and make them up with orange/blackcurrent.

All good ideas. Work out what you think you need then halve it..they never eat it all.

buy some cookie cutter and make "shape" sandwiches, stars, circles etc kids find these more interesting then fingers. or even halloween cutters, bought mine in tesco 89p, there is ghost, pumpkins etc.

Really don't think food is the big issue because they don't eat it as everyone says! The problem is how to keep them occupied for 3 hours.

They should be fine with pass the parcel. I put some little goody in every layer for the smaller kids, like a sweet or a lollipop or something. Then there's musical chairs, even 10 years olds should enjoy that. How about statues? They dance and have to freeze when the music stops. I'm afraid that only kills about 20 minutes though!

Shame you can't continue with the pizzeria, sounds like a great idea to me.

testicles rofl