Toy Story 4th Birthday Party

Date: June 4, 2011
Location: Mississauga, ON
Guests: 17 children (age range 1-8) plus about 30 adults
Budget: $40 (not including food)

*To protect privacy, no photos of guests are included in this post. 

This party was intended to be held outdoors in Erindale Park. Major thunderstorms forced a last minute change of plans-party was held at the client's house. While not ideal, I did manage to salvage most of the party plans. It cleared up in the afternoon, I was able to take the kids outside for a few games.

Concept: Woody's Round-Up.
Four stations with various activities, at each station the children received a prize.

Upon arrival, each guest received a cowboy party hat and a sheriff badge. 

I put out crayons and colouring sheets for the kids to do while we waited for all the guests to arrive.

Free download from the Disney website, you can find it here


Station #1: Mr. Potato Head

 
For this station, I cut out a potato shape from brown cardstock for each child and provided them with a variety of features to choose from, including shoes, hat, arms, noses, mouths etc to glue onto the background shape with a gluestick. Obviously,  younger children might need help with this activity. Each guest can take home their creation at the end of the party.
Variation: Print out the shapes onto sticker paper.
I didn't do this since the adhesive paper is quite expensive.

The link to download the features can be found here
Template for the body can be found here I found the body to be too large for the features so I reduced it on the photocopier to 70% before cutting out the template.
It could have been a bit smaller.

 Image source: http://twilightsummer.deviantart.com/art/ToyStory-Woody-110822912

Station #2: Woody's Shoot-out
Knock down a pyramid of plastic cups with a water pistol. This activity should be done outside, we played this game on the front lawn. It was little too difficult for the younger children. The older boys had a great time, they asked to do it again and again.I was so involved with running the games, I forgot to take pictures.
You'll have to use your imagination.

Image source: http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Toy-Story-Buzz-Lightyear-Posters_i5239758_.htm

Station #3: Space Ranger's Training

The hunt for moon rocks.

Sort of looks like a rock, you get the idea. The moon rocks were hidden throughout the front and side yards for the children to hunt down. Sort of a space themed easter egg hunt, if you will.
Prizes inside were small toys like parachute army men, bouncy balls, toy story note pads and silly bands.

Image source: http://www.thetoyshop.com

Station #4: Jesse's Lasso Challenge
This game involved "lassoing" a toy cow. I thought using rope might be a tad dangerous with small children around (think choking) so we used frisbees with holes in them, sort of like ring toss.

Decorations:
In addition to the usual streamers and balloons, I made this centrepiece from a box, paper and templates from the Disney website. Lots of free templates, crafts, etc can be found there, with all sorts of characters.

 

The aliens are easy to put together, Woody and Buzz are more challenging. Prepare yourself for lots of cutting and gluing. Since this is paper, it's not exactly the most kid friendly thing. All the kids wanted to play with it. Looks cool though. And since it's just paper and glue, it's practically free. Woody is technically a marionette, but I cheated by mounting him on a skewer instead of hanging him. I covered the box with blue paper and cut out white clouds that sort of look like the wallpaper in Andy's room. Each little character has toothpicks taped to the inside. I drilled holes in the box with my cordless drill and inserted the toothpicks. As I said before-toothpicks are not appropriate for young children. This was meant purely for decoration-but of course all the kids wanted to play with it. I had to explain over and over that it was only made of paper!

This party was not without it's challenges-rain, last minute change of venue, wet grass and mud, and a small space. I must admit-I was exhausted after this party! 

 

Baby Shower Activity

I love this idea, courtesy of Real Simple. As I've mentioned before, Baby Shower games can be horrifying for both guests and the mom-to-be. That's why I love this idea-ask guests to bring a photo of themselves as a infant and sting them up around the room on a clothesline. Have the guests guess who is in each photo.
Sure to be a great hit!

Image source: http://www.realsimple.com

 After the game is over, take down the pictures and hang up cute baby items such as onesies and socks, as the gifts are unwrapped.

 Image source: http://factorydirectcraft.com

If you like, decorate the clothespins to match your theme or colour scheme with strips of decorative paper, japanese decorative tape, paint or stickers.

I love this idea, I'll be sure to try this one out.

Valentine's Day Bingo

Image: http://karenswhimsy.com

I decided we need a little cheering up around the office this month. I wanted to play a game-something easy, cheap, fast and fun. I decided to organize Valentine's Day themed bingo. I found a site that already had the templates for the cards, and a call list. Here is the link. There are 8 unique cards, and I printed a few of each. I am hoping to sell about 25-30 ( but hopefully more).

Easy for me, all I had to do was print out the cards onto card stock. I couldn't find red or pink card stock anywhere in the usual stores. I didn't want to invest too much time or money and I had some cream coloured stock on hand, so I used that. Two cards print out per page. I cut them apart with a paper cutter.

I decided to sell the cards for $2, and donate the proceeds to the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation. To make it a bit more challenging, I shaded a pattern onto each card that (sort of) forms a heart shape, rather than the traditional straight line pattern.

How it works: I am selling the bingo cards this week. Starting February 7th, I will email out the call words to those who purchased a card. They circle the shaded words, and the first one to collect all their words sends me an email with the subject line bingo. This way it is easy for me to track who was first. I have a small prize for the winner. I just starting selling the cards, and am getting a good response so far. Most people have purchased more than one.

Of course, you can use the cards to have a traditional bingo game if you happen to be hosting or going to a Valentine's Day event.

Minute to Win It

For those of you who have not heard of the game show Minute to Win it, I highly recommend it.
The concept-teams of 2 players complete challenges using everyday household items. The challenges must be completed in under one minute-thus the title of the show. As the difficult of the challenges increase, they win increasing amounts of cash.

Last Friday night, we got together with friends and played it ourselves. We had a blast. I love this idea for parties and get together's because a) use household items you already have or can get easily and cheaply and b) the challenges last only a minute so you never get bored!

NBC has all the instructions for free on their website-even better. Here is the link.

Our favourites of the night:

1. Bromski-basically ski ball, created with 3 sizes of garbage bins, a broom stick and tennis balls. We played it in a long hallway. The idea is to get one tennis ball in each of the bins in one minute.

2. Ping Tac Toe-using nine plastic cups, create a tic tac toe grid. Bounce ping pong balls into the cups, to create a three in a row pattern. You need two colours of balls for this.

We played many more, with varying degrees of success.

It seems the key supplies are ping pong balls, marbles, tennis balls and plastic cups as well as other things commonly found around the house such as string, paper clips, hangers etc.

We had a blast with these games, it would be great for teen parties, family reunions and other group gatherings.

Try it, you won't be disappointed.

Check out the game show on NBC on Wednesday nights at 8 pm.