She had eight girls spend the night a couple weekends ago. We had talked and decided that we would go with a theme this year just to see what that process was like. After brainstorming with Tracy (who is becoming addicted to planning parties) we decided on M&Ms. Fun colors to work with and hello?? "M"adison "M"urphy. These were the invites sent to friends:
Tracy found some very cute little M&M tins at Michael's that we purchased for the girls to take home and we started brainstorming other ideas from there.
I have to say...I was pretty excited about the actual decorated ledge we came up with. I really didn't want anyone to touch anything on here...it was too fun looking!
First off was the games. We tried to come up with things that involved the colors or actual M&Ms. The first game involved guessing how many M&Ms were in the beautiful glass. Unexpectedly two girls guessed the exact same number and ended up being the winners. Unfortunately we didn't foresee that to have prizes on the side. So, one girl ended up with the actual prize and the other girl ended up with all the M&Ms. I think both were satisfied.
Next Tracy came over to help us out. For a project we decided to make t-shirts. These turned out SUPER cute and SO easy to do. Each girl traced her initial (pre-printed and cut out) onto iron-on interfacing. They picked out which color t-shirt they wanted (all choices were, of course, M&M colors). Tracy and I took turns ironing on the actual initials as the girls finished up their tracing and cutting. I do have an afterward picture that is so cute of them all, but I hate to post that on the Internet when I didn't ask their parents for permission. Throughout these posts you'll see a couple shirts that will give you the general idea.
Next up was balloon popping. Initially these balloons were going to be filled with a piece of paper that had an M&M color written on it and the first team to pop balloons and collect all six colors won. However, I found out the night before that I was going to be attending a memorial service the day of the party and we ran out of time. Instead the teams had to just pop 10 balloons. They had such a blast (ha!) doing this! The rules were they could use their butt, back or bellies to pop the balloons, but that was it. A few of the girls were going to town, and a couple (Maddie's team) could barely get any popped. Afterward Elizabeth and Maddie even hopped up and down on a couple balloons and still couldn't get them to pop.
The last game involved each girl receiving one package of M&Ms and they had to come up with a picture using only what they were given inside the package. I was actually quite impressed with how serious they all were and the very creative images they all came up with. The winner was voted on by the girls.
The cake was super easy...hard to go wrong with a circle. Tracy and Stacey suggested using M&Ms in between the cake layers which was a fun surprise. Note though: M&Ms almost seem to get soggy or stale tasting when placed inside frosting in a cake. 
The only other bad part about this cake was the creepy smile everyone was left with. No dentist would have been proud of this...
After all that they decided to swim. It was about 70 degrees (if!) outside. I thought they were crazy. After 45 minutes they finally decided to be done. Thank goodness because I was about to have icicles hanging off my nose from sitting outside in the cool weather and crazy wind.Afterward was movie watching and normal slumber party stuff. I was left with what I assume to be "normal slumber party stuff" for the parents.
Mike and I thought it was odd that they were heading to bed at 12:30am, but we were happy about that. Until 4am when I heard a noise downstairs. Being that I had just woken up from a nightmare I made Mike go downstairs because I wasn't going down there alone. He came back up saying the girls were wide awake and he wasn't going down to scare them. I headed down at 4:15am and there they were...playing Pictionary on the drawing wall we have. WIDE awake. I suggested they actually go to sleep and thankfully they did. I got back upstairs and as I was trying to drift off Mike said, "There is just NOTHING good about slumber parties."
I think in the end we ended up having tons of fun with this theme and coming up with ideas; especially the games. This was the first year we've ever tried something like this. If we do it again I think a goal will be to plan things a little earlier along than that last week.
And I'll be sure we all take naps several days prior to the event so we are more prepared for the crazy hours.
3 comments:
Sounds like it was a blast. Maddie looked excited. Have fun being 10 you are only that once. Love ya.
This had to be the coolest party ever! Love all your creative ideas.
Very cute, good ideas!
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