I love giving parties, do you need some ideas?

[ShirleyKnot]

Hello!

If you don't know me I'm Shirley and I'm a great lover of planning parties. I do a blog about it (which I'm not going to link here, but if you look on the bloggers network for PartySpanner you'll find me)

ANYWAY

If you're chucking a do, I might be able to help - I'm not a business, I don't charge for my ideas or owt, I just love to trawl the internet find good invite ideas, games and food.

Jump in and I'll see if I can help.

Possibly you might have done

Chaos they'll have a blast. Done those things LOADS with my lot - they're tethered well and love it. so do I, but that's a whole other story

Rock

No, I don't think a hog roast is a stupid idea.

If she's an October birthday is she close to Halloween?

Oh I know.

I just cross I arrived late to this party (hemhem).

Shirl, my DCs birthdays start in March and finish in August. Could you be a tad more propitious next time please?

DD1 (the 18th) is a week after Halloween.

I LOVE hog roasts, and she does too. As her day is actually on the Sunday, I thought fireworks of some description possibly as it will be on the 5th (the Sat).

Aren't hog roasts about two grand?

£500 hog roast, I think,

DO you do grown up parties? DH & I turn 40 in November & haven't got our act in dear. We want dancing, and we're thinking of a local hall, and a bring a bottle type thing. But we could do with something to make it more exciting....

Blathers

OK. Teddy Bear's picnic links:

I love this next link, it really has got everything Plates and decorations with lovely theme

I like some of the ideas in this link

For invitations I was thinking that you could take a photo of DD holding her teddy and use this as a background to the invite. You could invite everyone to bring to their own favourite teddy to the party and arrange a place where they could all be "seated" (a special blanket on the floor) for their own party.

Am I heading in the right direction here?

STOP IT ROCK, we were talking about DD2 - the 17th? In October?

See I'm thinking something spooky/halloweeney for her and something Bonfire y for DD2.

You're confusing me!

Right. funnypeculi...argh you know

What do you both like? It's a joint party yes? How many for?

i'd appreciate some ideas for a theme for next new year. It's all adults and we get about 100 - 120 people. We've already done pirates, cowboys n indians, pop stars, underground stations, james bond, kings and queens, beach party, 70s, pink.
Ideas so far - Olympics, When I grow up ...., Pantomime characters, Bollywood.

yy Halloweeny for DD2 (that;s the 17th one - party to be held on either 15th or 22nd October)

DD1 is the 18th - party will be on 5th November, sorry for confusing you.....

If a hog roast's two grand she can have fucking ham sandwiches, and it won't nice ham either.

If it's £500 that's probably doable - for 75 people that's pretty good. Their Dad is sales director of a large booze company, so that's his domain. I can do the rest of the food though - I was thinking if hog roast, then I'd do thousands of baby jackets, a vat of 'slaw and a job lot of baguettes.

OK Hellsbells4

Themes for 2012 -

Apocalypse (it's written in the stars don't you know?) so how about about a party to end all parties? The theme could be the Final New Year, everyone gets to dress up in their finest, or if you want to go fancy dress it could be..zombie related? Decorations can be either the blingiest most fancy stuff you can afford, or fake. or broken down, halloween- edge of doom stuff?

When I was 12 - Hmm, how about a party for 12 year old adults? If you're into the fancy dress thing, then you can ask people to dress as they did in the year of their 12th birthday - Turn it all into a gigantic adult/child party...kid's food, play musical chairs, bowls of sweets everywhere etc...??

um. I'll keep thinking, let me know if either of these ideas are any good to you and I'll think on it some more

i quite like the 12 yr old idea.

Apoocalypse sounds good but I'll never forget the year we did the beach party with huge photos of gorgeous beaches for decor - and then that horrific tsunami happened just a couple of days before the party - twas a bit embarrassing. If we did apocalypse and then there was a huge terrorist attack, or devestating natural disaster I'd feel pretty bad.

OK.

rock

DD2 - the 17th let's hit it as a Halloween birthday party.

OK, let me think. Right now I'm heading towards a "Final Destination" theme...invites are something to do with narrowly escaping not attending the party, but that the party will get them in the end?

Food is simple as fuck for a spooky party TBH, it's all about hot chilli, hot chicken wings, pumpkin soup and sausages in buns.

Decorations - easy. Halloween stuff abounds aplenty. The pound shop is amazing for this sort of shit (if you're on a budget) if not why not look at the SUPER AMAZING stuff they have in TK Maxx (I am currently coveting yet another "snow globe" that plays the Addams Family theme tune)

Things To Do - scary films - provide popcorn and sweets and drinks (not sure how you feel about underage drinking, but I'd deffo give some beers) Let Them Get On With It - this is my fave top tip, let them make of it what they want.

Um. As I said, I'm still learning about teenage parties...

hellsbells

I'm off to bed now, but I think a party for grown ups as adults is certainly something I can run with...

Nostalgia is great and I have some great ideas for catering (cakes with love hearts in the frosting, banana sandwiches, jelly and ice cream etc) and I think a bunch of silly games involving balloons and dancing would be such good fun.

Brilliant Shirl - there's a good TK Maxx at the Junction and a poundland at Southside, so can mix and match if needed. Love the food idea (could drink pumpkin soup through a straw...), that all sounds perfect.

Drinking - I don't have a problem with that at all - they went out enough here in the summer and all the parents had no problem with it. The boys will be on cider for sure, and the girls are a mix of vod/malibu and cokes anyway, so could come up with maybe some kind of cocktails for them. I am of the VERY chilled mother variety - they work extremely hard at school, score highly and therefore deserve to play hard as well IMO.

I LOVE YOU. Cocktails in tea cups and jamjars will be on me!

Oooo!

I have a billion great cocktail ideas (nothing too heavy for kids this age) and you can make an excellent punch with a small hit of alcohol in it (and the added ingredient of an ICE HAND which is a bit disconcerting...)

So you make a punch, I like to use blood orange juice, cranberry, lemonade and you could stick some vodka in, or malibu or whatever...but before you make the punch, you pre-pare 2 x rubber gloves (brand new) by filling them with water and tying the top into a tight knot before putting into the freezer.

Freeze for 24 hours (or more) and then add them to the punch. As the kids fish into it they find fingers and (hopefully) if you time it right the punch appears to have dead, cold hands floating around in it.

*Obviously you cut the bloody rubber off before adding to the punch.

LOVE IT. LOVE YOU.

No shit

Okay How about helping out a single person who would just like to invite some people round for a party .
I'Ll be doing it on my own so easy to do and clean up ideas please and I don't mean fancy dress or anything just simple start from basics
I have completely lost all my hosting skills after being on my own eek but would like to start having little parties
sorry for the ramble

hellsbells4 the best New Years party I ever went to had a movies theme and gave out Oscars for the best outfits :)

If someone's having a Halloween party for adults then can they please use the idea I never got to.... Make up a "potions book" with ingredients like 'wolfs blood' and 'pond water' then get a load of funny shaped or decorated glass bottles and fill them with your booze. All you need to do then is translate a load of cocktail recipies into your potion ingredients so a Purple Rain would become something like Paint stripper (vodka), Zombie tears (Archers) Radioactive waste (blue bols) and Rainwater (lemonade). People can then pick thier 'potion' and mix it themselves from your spooky ingredients.

OK, hi-jack over :)

I love the plates and cups Shirley and there are some lovely ideas on that website. I like the decorating teddy bears activity suggestion. I'm wondering if it would be good to swap the carboard teddies for gingerbread ones though and put out icing tubes and bowls of sweeties to decorate them with? Too sticky maybe?

Thinking I could mark the invitations BYOB? - Bring Your Own Bear? :)

At least food is easy with a teddy bears picnic theme. Maybe I can get some cutters to make bear shaped sandwiches?

Oh and obvisouly there will be s :)

Mama.

What sort of party would you like to throw? If you're just getting back on your feet, how about a dinner party to start you off?

Blathers

LOVE the BYOB idea! Haha, you're good at this you dont need me!

Gingerbread teddy decorating sounds lovely. Remember that you can play lots of traditional party games (and honestly? The children LOVE it) and just give it a bear name. Like "musical Bears" for exaample.

I think food wise, it'll be pretty easy TBH. Lots of sandwiches (stick some honey ones in there a la Pooh) cold cooked chicken, sausages, etc etc. As you're going towards a summer in winter thing, how about trying some ice cream cakes? I made them for DS2 and they look incredible.

Can link you if you like?