Childrens Birthday Party - questions & ideas (merged)

inkie

what about a swimming party - you usually can hire your local pool for an hour or two for exclusive use - thelast we did this for our DDs it was £40 - and didn't hae the hastle of having loads of kids in the house!

What about a spa/beauty therapy thing. Why not hire a nail technician/make up artistist/beauty therapist to come and give the young ladies a 'treatment'. Not sure how much this would be, but if you can get hold of someone who is in training (sufficiently experienced to do a good job, but will not rip you off) this will work out cheaper - ?pay a visit to your local college - some of the girls there would be gratful for earning a bit of extra cash on the side.

Hire a lane at the bowling alley or why not go to the local country park, provide them with a great picnic and a treasure hunt?

Becles

We run a mobile disco company. Grown up disco's are really popular for teeangers, with night club tunes. They like to pretend they are like older siblings who go clubbing! Flourescent glo-sticks always go down well too.

It makes it bit more expensive though as you'll have to pay for both the disco and the hire of a suitable room. Shop around though. I hired an OAP's community room for £10 for the afternoon for my youngest son's party. The room stands empty all weekend as the old people mainly use it weekdays.

Edinburghlass_2

It was either my daughter's 12th or 13th birthday were we did a combination of inkie's ideas. Took three friends to a swimming pool, then back for tea and I made up party bags with face packs, nail varnish and some eye shadow etc and they spent the evening doing the face packs while watching DVD's and had a sleep over.

Tea was make your pizza and chocolate fondue for afters and the girls had to prepare the fruit for the fondue so was very little work for me in fact:)

I also put bubbles in the party bags and next morning they were outside enjoying the bubbles after breakfast.

*Sparkle*_3

i was also thinking of the beauty make over evening perhaps even having a sleep over? get daughters fav films, icecream snacks and party foods.

homersimpson_3

depends on interests, what is local and how many children are attending- swimming is a good one- ice skating- most girls though not all like make up, platting/braiding hair, nail varnish etc- goodie bag with things they can put in hair/make themselves up with etc.- sleep over- mcdonalds is still popular- cinema-is there a children's youth club/disco etc they could go to? - weekend away???- amusement parks win every time. could you use tescos clubcard vouchers to pay for entrance fees etc?

black-saturn

I have the 12 year old party coming up in september for my DD1. She's a bit of a tom boy and would hate a make up party. I don't know if her friends swim or not and I also wouldnt like to be responsible for it if anything went wrong during the party. She likes animals but her sister had her party at the local zoo this year and I wasnt very impressed with what we got for the amount I paid. I think I'll explore the animal route a bit more.

homersimpson_3

I have the 12 year old party coming up in september for my DD1. She likes animals but her sister had her party at the local zoo this year and I wasnt very impressed with what we got for the amount I paid. I think I'll explore the animal route a bit more.

what about using money to adopt an animal for DD1? Redwings (horses), seal santuary etc? would she like that? visit to local animal farm etc?

black-saturn

Redwings isnt too far from here but it's far if you havn't got any transport. Most of her friends parents don't have transport as far as I know (and neither do I) and there arn't any buses to it. Thanks anyway.

LizD_2

Black Saturn
how about seeing if she could spend a day 'shadowing' someone at a farm park or zoo? or would that be too much like work experience? Maybe pony-trekking? you can buy falconry experiences through red letter days and similar companies.

Don't know what sort of budget you're on, though.

savingpennies

For DD2's birthday we invited her friends over for a sleepover. I made HM pizzas, bought in loads of lemonade and different squashes for cocktails and hired a few DVDs. They all arrived at about 7.30 and they were all collected at 10am. Goody bags consisted of little bottles of shampoo/shower gel (courtesy of all the hotels DH stays in), some hair bobbles/slides from a local market stall and other bits and bobs I'd got as freebies. It was a great success for little outlay.