This was submitted by Katie:

Hello Kim,

We had our birthday party on Friday night and it was ABSOLUTELY wonderful! The party was a TOTAL hit. The kids kept occupied and everyone walked away HAPPY. I don’t think I sent you the scan of the birthday card yet, so I will attach it to this message. I set up about 7 games on tables in the house. I scanned the tops of the game boxes to make stickers. I bought mini notebooks and put a cord through the spiral to make it a necklace. After they played a game, they came to me to get a sticker of that game. The rules were that they had to switch players when they switched games too.

They didn’t neccesarily have to finish a game, but it was encouraged. A few of the kids actually managed to play ALL of the games. We had Checkers, Chess, Yahtzee, Tiddly Winks, Chinese Checkers, Ludo (Sorry), Scrabble, Dominoes, Hi Ho Cheerio and Memory. The kids kept pretty occupied for about 1 hour or so switching the games. At random times I would hold up a sticker and call out the game. If they had that sticker in their notebook, they could pick a prize out of the prize box. Now I have a pretty big box of prizes. I made up goody bags that had mazes and number puzzles in them and of course candy. They were really simple goodie bags, but they were fun and the kids enjoyed them. There was also a maze book or puzzle book and a kazoo. (what party would be without kazoos right?) LOL

It was easy to tell when to switch to the next part of the party. After that first hour or so, you could tell the kids were getting restless and weren’t settling down to the games anymore. So we did the cake and ice cream thing. The cake was GREAT! I actually made it because I didn’t want to spend the money on buying one. I make a confetti cake mix and then frosted it with a cream cheese frosting that I added real cream cheese to. It made it a nice light flavor. I then washed some mini dominoes the boys had and laid them out on the cake. I took some gel frosting and made some red and black squares in the corner and then wrote the Happy Birthday in the lower left corner. The cake was definitely home-made looking, but it sure tasted GREAT! We bought those single serving ice creams this year and I can say I am converted! I will NEVER buy a half gallon for a birthday party again. These little containers were the perfect amount and there was no mess in serving it up! I was supposed to hang black and red streamers and balloons, but I plum ran out of time before the party started so we had already blown up balloons and the kids had a bunch of fun popping them!

That was a perfect segue into the present opening part of the party. The kids really had a blast looking through it all. After the guests left, they had 2 friends that stayed over night. They were allowed to play with their presents with their friends. I was so happy after the party was over. The kids had a TOTAL blast! I just had to share my success with you.

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