[mommamarci]

I need some ideas! We are having an open house birthday party for our new daughter next weekend. We decided to do an open house and have people coming and going rather than overwhelm her with everyone at one time. Since she is new to our family, we felt she would do better with smaller crowds.

I am going to have chips, pretzels, drinks, and cupcakes for people to snack on. I feel like I shoudl have some activities planned, but I am drawing a blank. There will eb lots of kids there. (It is not a kid party, but most of our friends / family have small children.) I thought if it was nice, I could have a bubble station, a sidewalk chalk station, and water balloons set up outside. But, what do I do if it is not nice? I cannot come up with a craft where I don't have to worry about my walls or floors being destroyed...

Ideas? Should I just stick to snacks and not plan anything?

Thanks!

[ChromaKelly]

If you are having cupcakes anyway, you could just frost them, and then have some sprinkles and jimmies and things for the kids to decorate their own cupcakes. That shouldn't get too messy, you can just vacuum that stuff up.
You could also get those ready-to-decorate things from Michael's and have some washable markers or paints.

[jalapeno]

Well, this might not work well in tight quarters or if you end up having a ton of people inside at once. But I did a "photo scavenger hunt" type of thing for my husband's birthday party a few years ago. It can be an all ages sort of thing and we had a lot of fun with it. We did it outside but it could be done anywhere. People made their own groups and then I had a list of things they needed to take photos of. And the point was to take fun photos that would make the party more memorable. Then I gave out silly little prizes to groups that completed the list. Here are some of the things I had on my list . . .

** each group with the birthday person
** a child doing or appearing to do something they shouldn't (like one group made it look like a 3 year old was driving a car)
** two people having a karate fight (the facial expressions we got on this one were great!)
** somebody with an extra body part (like one person hid behind another and made it look like they had two heads)
** somebody posing for the cover of vogue
** somebody with a milk mustache
etc etc

Another thing I did at both my kids' adoption parties (which were open houses also) was to have each guest put their handprint in paint on a canvas. It made for a quick activity that got everyone participating in the party and then we had a nice and meaniful canvas to put up in the child's room.

You must be so excited!! Have a great time!

[OnTheJourney]

Cover a kids table or card table with a roll of paper (tape it down) and get one of those big things of foam stickers with the peel off backs and a stack of colored paper. Maybe a few washable crayons (NOT MARKERS!) - makes for lots of fun.
Do you have an older neighbor/niece/cousin that you could pay $5 to supervise crafts? If there is supervision, you could do play dough - the homemade less sticky stuff. Or have the supervisor do 'magic trick to entertain the kids - baking soda volcanoes and such.

If you have a bit of space, a crawl through tunnel with tents and a big bag of ball pit balls! You can get all of that for under $50 and it is a great thing to keep put away and pull out on rainy days, get togethers, ect.You can even rent these I have just discovered. (I am in the process of planning DS's 3rd B'day party)

If it is a nice day - a bouncer is a great idea for outside.

OK - I have been on this all night trying to figure out my little man's party and alot of this is stuff I have come accross on the web tonight. Must go to bed now! lol

Have Fun at the party!!!!

[redbonec]

IF it is come and go, I think bubbles and sidewalk chalk are great. Another idea if inside is make sugar cookies ahead of time (just cut out with a glass to make a circle is great) and each can decorate one or two with food safe markers (some are at a party store here). If you make the cookies with sticks, the stick cookies the kids thought were so fun when I made them recently.
If it is come and go, and inside, proably the kids playing and maybe an activity out is great.

Have fun!

Journey--K's party is tomorrow! I have been planning too, and hopefully it will come together tomorrow!

[srusse24]

We went to a bday party recently where the mom bought a bunch of buckets that came with shovels (about $1 at any dollar store). She put out foam stickers and the kids could find the letters to spell their names or put other fun stickers on them.

[mommamarci]

Well, I have a ton of construction paper left from my daycare days so I bought a thing of foam stickers. I will have that out (inside or outside!). Then I have bubbles and sidewalk chalk for outside also. Hopefully that is enough.

Truthfully, the open house is for 2 hours, but I kind of hope eveyrone does not stay the whole time. I am afraid it will be too overwhelming if all the people are there the whole time. So, I don't want to have too much planned. Yet, I think most people will bring gifts, so I also don't want them to feel they should drop a gift and run! Is that terrible that I hope they don't stay too long?????