Friday night was a blast. Actually the entire day was a blast. It was my older daughter's 12th birthday party celebration. A Twilight Party -- because both she and I am into Twilight and love both the movie and the books. In fact she has read all four books and read them TWICE! I have only read them once. She is a fount of trivia about Twilight and quotes it constantly.
So we planned a party. I wish I had pictures but it was a choice of printing out pictures for the party (decorations, t-shirts) or taking pictures AT the party. I need a new memory card and can't figure out which one to get, so ink it was!
Invitation. I put a checker board across the front of the black paper invitation. We just cut out squares and put them in a checkerboard pattern. Then an apple, a piece of ribbon...and we were done. I pasted the actual printed paper of the invitation inside.
Decorations: I got two HUGE Twilight posters, and a calendar of Twilight. The calendar had all the characters of Twilight in it. Dollar store has streamers. (Black, red and white) We also bought red plates, and black napkins! In January there was a clearance at CVS of a HUGE stocking. It was originally 49.95 or something like that. It wound up being under 5 dollars and I paid for it in CVS bucks. So...free! It has about 60 dollar store type toys -- all different -- in it. From Rubber chickens to Chinese finger traps (5 in the package), to a golf set and a baseball, maze toys, anyway, I still have prizes left over! Balloons RED, BLACK and WHITE 1.19 each package at Walmart. I was going to get the Helium tank, but it was too expensive, so we blew up the balloons, hung some and left most of them covering the floor -- it looked cool!
Now the BEST part of the gift to the party goers were the t-shirts. (Ignoring copyright laws) I made Twilight T-shirts for each of the kids. Some, it didn't matter -- like the one where I took clip art of a lion and a lamb and quoted, "So the lion, fell in love with the lamb". Or the ones that said "TEAM EDWARD since 1918". One has a sparkly thing on it, and says "Team Edward, because Jacob doesn't sparkle" Another says TEAM JACOB, because everyone needs a happy-go-lucky puppy" and has the picture of a wolf on it. Others.... well lets just say if the Tshirt police ever catch up with me, I am in trouble.
I made a T-shirt with Alice on it, Moon in the background on a really cloudy night, and it says "Go ask Alice, She knows everything". Another that has a picture of Alice and says, TEAM ALICE Because seeing things before they happen ROCKS!. Different picture of Alice that says "
Rock, paper, scissors.”
Edward: “ Why don’t you just tell me who wins? ”
Alice: “I do. Excellent!”
Alice is a psychic. The best t-shirt (that most of the kids liked) was a picture of all four of the Twilight book covers. The t-shirt said "Twilight, it isn't just a time of day..." The one Katy liked best was a picture of the Cullens that said " Bite Me, PLEASE" (If you get bit, you turn into a vampire). There was one tshirt that had the 'bad guys' pictures on it, and says "The Nomads". Each of the kids got to choose which one of the T-shirts they wanted. The extra's are going to my daughter Katy.
The best part of this? Each of the shirts cost about 1.75 each! 1.00 for the shirt and about 75 cents for the transfer. I was able to get as many as four transfers on a page! Some had just two or three transfers, but it averaged out to less than 2 bucks each.
The party went like this: Kids arrived about 6:00 when they arrived, they put on makeup deep red lipstick -- almost a burgandy -- just to stain their lips, not a lot of it. and pale white concealer. Even though the Vampires in Twilight don't have fangs, we provided the kids with fangs. We also used them for the napkin rings. Where did we get Fangs in February you ask? Peter Piper Pizza! Cost us a heck of a lot of play time to get them, but now we had enough for THAT party and the NEXT party which will be playing the movie party after it comes out. We used a Peter Piper Pizza coupon for lunch and tokens so it was an 'okay' deal.
Next we ate pizza. I got 5 pizzas on the 5.55 deal. We had enough pizza for all the kids and left overs for the next 6 meals for everyone. LOL We still have pizza left despite eating it breakfast lunch and dinner for two days.
On the tables there was chips, with dip. The dip and salsa I put it in black salsa bowls, and on top of the dip I just put red food coloring. It looked like blood! There were three red bowls with chips. Hot cheetos (red), and taco chips. In red cups there were black and red licorice. The cake was the really cool part. There were flowers on the table and there was some of the red ribbon. The table looked good.
The cake was a dark chocolate cake, with strawberry filling. White icing. Red scallops on the bottom, Black scallops on the top. That part a bakery did. The rest I did. On the top of the cake were red and black poms at the bottom left and top right on the cake. The left side of the cake had a picture of Bella and Edward on it. At the top of the cake on the left was an apple. ON the bottom right side of the cake was a queen, and a pawn we only had glass chess pieces but they looked cool. There was a ribbon in the middle, and we had found an orchid that was a burgandy red and white that *looked* like a parrot tulip~!
Next we did the Treasure hunt with riddles for clues. I made sure they ran off their energy running indoors to outdoors, and all over the yard and house. Back and forth. They had to bring back the clues to the house and read the clue in front of everyone. The one who figured out the clue got to keep the envelope and clue, and they got more prizes.
After we did the treasure hunt we bobbing for apples. My daughter Tya ROCKED at this. She had 9 of the apples when we were done! We had two dish pans with apples in them. They raced to see who could get the most apples. Whoever won, played the next person. The person with the most apples at the end won the most prizes. (They got to choose from the treasure boxes, which were overflowing they were so full!).
After we bobbed for apples, I had the kids go in the backyard and play flashlight tag and flashlight hide and go seek. Each of the children had brought a flashlight, and I had extra's from our bobs. They had a blast running around with flashlights in the backyard. *snort* no real rules, but it was fun.
Singing Happy Birthday, then Cake. (I didn't do icecream, I figured the cake and all the other junk food was enough).
We did presents, then that was the end of party one. RIght on TIME! WOO HOO! 8:00 -- the party was from 6-8.
THEN
Came the sleepover party.
We started with stories. Lots of stories about each other. Just talking. It wasn't planned, it was spontanious. Each of the kids talked about things they had done that embarrassed them, or things their siblings had done. Ricky (my son) had a LOT of stories about him told. He had gotten in trouble earlier in the day for 'bopping' someone on the head with an empty two liter bottle at school. His friend got mad and then pushed him. Both of them wound up suspended for a day. Ricky spent the night with the boy (his best friend) last night. LOL So much for 'fights'. Anyway, lots of stories were told, and we spent about an hour laughing and talking.
What we were supposed to do during this time, was play Rock, Paper, Scissors. However, it was so fun talking that I forgot and we didn't have time. Next party!
Then, movie time. We watched Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events. Some of the kids hadn't seen it, but they fell asleep part way through. I was in my room playing neopets! The kids who were awake at the end of the movie were told it was bedtime.
MY BAD
In the invitation for the sleep over, I had done, I wrote "You are invited to Katy's 12th Birthday Party" THEN I wrote, "A Twilight Sleep-never" I put the time from 6:pm Friday to the next day at 10. LOL. They stayed awake ALL NIGHT telling ghost stories and dozing now and then. They woke me up at 2,3,4, 5, and finally at 6 I got up and gave up.
The kids had donuts and a fruit tray for breakfast. Milk and juice. I got the donuts on clearance, but it didn't seem to matter, they still tasted good. I got the fruit reduced, already cut. It was reduced from 18$ for the tray to 8 dollars for the tray, it was a really big tray of fruit and filled all of the girls. Easy for me, I had planned on French toast and fruit, but decided I would be too tired. I was right!
That morning, I went on Neopets and one of the girls showed me another kids play area she went on. Webkins? Anyway she was telling me her pets EXPIRE after a while and disappear. Hello? That is no fair! You have to buy the pets to be able to access the web site too. NO FAIR! I love neopets so I introduced her to my pets (on all five accounts) and made her an account (after getting an okay from her Mom).
The rest of the morning the kids helped clean up, got their gear packed up, and put on another movie for a little while. Parents came at 10 to pick the kids up and that was the end of a very fun party.
That was the GOOD, this is the bad and the ugly:
Every party has to have things that don't go exactly as planned.
First, we had invited a girl who was new to Girls Activity Day at our church. I had met her once. She called the day of the party, when I was really busy with other things, and asked if she could 'bring her sister to the party'. I asked how old the sister was and she said "9", I told her, that wasn't really a good idea since all the other kids were older. However, she came anyway! Not only THAT but she stayed the NIGHT! Hello? Then I heard the mother SCREAMING at the girls as they were hanging up the phone about not giving me her name and things like that. What kind of parents are those? Not just that, but I never met the parents, they got picked up and dropped off by another parent.
The only problems I had that night were with these two kids. "I hurt my hand, can I have some ice". "I fell in a hole and heard a 'pop' in my ankle, can I have some ice?", (Nothing was bruised, sore or hurting after about half a minute of ice!) "my stomach hurts" (this was said after she had eaten about 5 pieces of pizza and drank a liter of soda, ate more than her fair share of licorice and red hots, and had two BIG pieces of cake. Hello? Of course it hurts! (This was all the same girl, the older of the two). Then, the other one, threw up the next morning, after eating (I was told) 6 donuts! After she threw up, I told her not to eat any more, but caught her with another donut in one hand, and then a few minutes later she was eating fruit. Apparently both girls are well on their way to eating disorders.
Another small problem we had was there was no stopper for the ice chest. URgh. We didn't find out until the next morning when one of the girls (soaking wet) said her pillow and sleeping bag was all wet. We popped them in the dryer and cleaned up the mess.
OTHER than those problems, we had no fights, no arguments, no problems, everything went smoothly.
I spent a lot of money on the party. More than I could afford really. I used Katy's birthday money and this was her present from me. It cost me about 8 dollars just for the vampire teeth (not a good move on my part). Cake was 18 dollars. However I am terrible at making cakes. They always turn out lopsided and with flakes of cake in the icing. Better for someone else to do that. I HAD been trading some children's books for a cake, but the lady flaked out on me and never returned my calls or emails after she agreed to do the cake in trade for about 100 dollars worth of children's books (three BIG BOXES).
The t-shirts were my best 'wow' of the evening. Inexpensive (I got 6 t-shirts for 6 dollars, so 12 for 12. I used a 5$ Target gift card for those, and only paid about 7.50 with tax..) Then I went to Walmart for the other things. I spent a total of 35 dollars at Walmart for everything, and then paid with a 20 dollar gift card that Katy had gotten, and a 15 dollar Master Card gift card I had gotten from an Oil of Olay rebate (I had gotten the Oil of Olay FREE with coupons at CVS!). Cash out of pocket was almost nothing (a little tax). My big expenses were the 34 dollars with tip pizza, and the cake (18). The dollar store also cost me about 10 dollars. All in all it was a LOT Of things for a little cash outlay. I got the apples free.
Much of the decorations we will use for a second party in about two weeks when the movie comes out. I have about 30 packets of popcorn that HAVE to get used up, and we will invite kids over to have popcorn and juice and watch the movie. I have the bowls to use again (three big red bowls), and I have a red table cloth I bought at Christmas for 1.25 that I will wash and reuse. I am leaving the party decorations up for the next two weeks, so we have a twilight house for a while. LOL
Anyway, that is the Twilight party
It was fun.
4 Comments
Recommended Comments