Sesame Street Party - Fun with Oscar and Big Bird!

Sesame Street has been on TV for ever – a lot of young adults grew up with it and plenty of kids watch it now. A great educational and entertaining show, it is based around several recurring characters with particular types of personalities that teach children different things. A Sesame Street party is a great idea for a younger children’s fancy dress party since there are a lot of great characters to dress up as.

Invitation cards should not be a problem, with packs readily available at stationery or department stores. Food can also be varied and of your own choice, except that you should be sure to include cookies for the cookie monster and Ernie. As props, you can rent some puppets and costumes of Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird to use around the party room. You can make a cardboard cut out green street sign with Sesame Street written on it just like in the show. Put one in the foyer leading to the living room or just outside the door, or even both.

Find colored pictures of Sesame Street characters online and print them out. Cut these out and paste or hang them around the room and in the bathroom your guests will use. Add Sesame Street merchandise that is easily available in stores and games themed around the show. Kids will love and remember the great Sesame Street party especially if you can dress up as Big Bird and go around talking to or playing with them or handing around the food.

With a bit of creative flair, you can plan a Sesame Street party that your little ones and their friends will thoroughly enjoy. The variety of characters on Sesame Street means that the only limits are your budget and your imagination.

Spider Man Party - The New Web Walking Superhero

Spiderman is one of the world’s most popular superheroes. With the release of the third installment of the hugely popular movie series, Spidermania is here to stay. A favorite with people young and old, many have memories of reading the classic comic strip and wondering what Spidey would get up to next. On that note, a Spiderman theme makes for a fun party, and not just for the tiny tots. Spiderman theme parties can be hugely successful, whether for kids or as a Halloween theme for adults.

As a backdrop for a Spiderman party, you can make a “web” out of silk thread. As an alternative, ready-made artificial spiders’ web is readily available from costume shops; some even stock glow-in-the-dark webs. This makes for a great atmosphere and great photo opportunities.

Make sure that everything, including drinks, is in red and blue. This can be done by adding food color and for alcoholic drinks, blue Curacao. Another idea is to use cut outs of Spiderman around the house. There is plenty of Spiderman merchandise available at party shops and department stores, such as soap, candles, paper lanterns, etc. Use these to spice up your Spiderman party.

For a children’s party, a variety of games can be tweaked to suit the Spiderman party theme. Alternatively, coming up with a few of your own games – preferably active ones – isn’t too hard with a theme like Spiderman.

With a bit of flair, organizing a Spiderman party is a breeze. Use the ideas above and let your imagination run wild; your party guests will surely thank you.

Shark Tales Party Theme for a Kids Birthday at the Pool or Beach

The success of Shark Tale, the movie, starring greats like Robert DeNiro and Will Smith has made this flick a favorite for both adults and kids. Having a Shark Tales party is a great way to bring the theme to life.

Turn off all the lights and put in a blue lamp that makes the whole room look like its underwater. Bring in some planters with tall leafy plants in them. Beg, borrow, steal or simply use the ones in your garden. Surround these with sea pebbles or any smooth round stones. If you have any seashells, you can place them on tables and next to the bathroom sink. Add a fish bowl or two if you can get one.

For a Shark Tales party use a lot of seafood snacks (it’s a fish eat fish world out there) such as shrimp cocktails, fish hors d’oeuvres or simply fish fingers if it’s a kiddy party. Use a cookie cutter mold shaped like a fish for making cookies for the kids or the base for a hors d’oeuvre out of flour or bread slices. Bake or deep fry the base before adding the topping, which could be minced fish.

Invites are easily available at any department or stationery store. If it’s a fancy dress party, you can rent costumes to dress like a sea creature. If not, you can dress for the beach in a colorful shirt and shorts or skirt. Add a bubble machine at the front door to greet your guests as they come in. Hang up a pair of flippers just over the front or bathroom door and suspend a snorkeling mask from a hook or door frame. Go ahead and swim with the Sharks!

Teens and Kids Pajama Party - Secrets, Snacks and Sleepovers

You’re never too old for a pajama party! Giggling with the gang, snacking on chips, ice cream and junk food you’d never ordinarily top up on; good memories from a more innocent time. For any teen or adult who wants to have their friends over for a sleepover, it can be a great idea to plan for a successful night of fun.

One important aspect of any slumber party is choosing what to watch. Younger partygoers might like to watch movies, or a show they all like. For older partygoers, nothing is quite as much fun as watching the old sitcoms we all grew up with. They’re a great way to reminisce and bring back memories.

Make sure there are plenty of snacks for midnight kitchen raids. You know you are going to get those hunger pangs so it’s a good idea to plan ahead and have some great party snacks ready. Make up platters of snacks with chips and dip and chocolate cake. These are absolute favorites for any pajama party guest.

Pick out a pretty set of pajamas for yourself so you don’t look like a mismatched mess. And don’t forget the beauty products so you and your guests can enjoy a night of pampering each other.

A pajama party is a great way to have fun and catch up on all the gossip with friends. More importantly, you can relax, enjoy the company of your friends and reminisce about your younger days.

Murder Mystery Party - Hosting a Frightfully Good Night

Murder mysteries are one of the highest selling genres of books in the market. The thrill of suspense and partial knowledge entraps many teens and adults. Agatha Christie is the world’s highest selling novelists on the strength of her numerous murder mysteries in print. The most famous detective is known the world over – Sherlock Holmes, of course. Turning this classic genre into a murder mystery party is sure to be popular with both teenagers and adults.

The atmosphere and decorations for the murder mystery party depend on the location of the murder. Ideas include a cruise ship, casino, jungle or castle. Simple effects with lighting, props, streamers and artificial cobwebs can really contribute to the atmosphere.

Any good murder mystery party needs good characters. With the party invitations, send out a character description for each guest. This way they can organize a costume, and act the part when they arrive. The role of ‘murderer’ also has to be assigned once guests arrive, preferably in a discrete but random manner (for example finding a sticker on the back of their place-card). The ‘murder’ has to take place early on in the evening; the victim can be a murder mystery party guest, or even a blow-up doll with fake blood-stains!!

Games played during the night should revolve around gathering clues to solve the murder. ’20 Questions’ and ‘Never Ever’ both work well. Other games can be tweaked to fit the theme.

Executed well, a murder mystery party can be loads of fun for both teenagers and adults. The ideas above are just a start. Being creative with characters and setting will only add to the success of your party.

Free Baby Shower Games

Finding decent free baby shower games to use at your next baby shower is can be difficult to do. The first thing you should do is look back at the last baby shower you attended and take ideas from that. The next step is to use the internet to find more games that you can use. Many people simply use Google or some other search engine and type in "free baby shower games" and see what comes up. While this can be a good resource another great resource it to search in some of the social book marking sites such as del.icio.us or technorati.com and see what comes up.

Since these social book marking sites are posted to by average internet users these usually are great ways to find games that many other people are sharing with others. Look for those items that have been book marked by multiple people and given good ratings. Those should be the first ones you look at since many have recommended them to you. If it does not look like the first one that comes up is right for you or your guests go on to the next. It will take a little work and some time, but in the end you should be able to find a few sites that have some great free games.

Once you have found a site with some free baby shower games you have to make sure you read through them very well and print them out if you can as well. Many of the free games online are of very low quality and either look really bad or are nor usable at all. Too many times I have seen people just searching for the games and putting them together without checking them and being embarrassed in front of the crowd.

If you are short on time and need to get some great baby shower games I would suggest looking into some of the low cost packages you can find online. While they are not free they are usually guaranteed to be high quality and usable right away.

Baby Shower Clipart

When you throw a baby shower, it's really great to get a nice theme going. I find the easiest way to do this is to find some baby shower clipart that looks great, but isn't too complicated.

I take the clipart and then print it out in various sizes for how I want to use it. I can drop it off at the cake decorator's so that she can make me a cake with that pattern. Then, I email a copy to my husband's work so that he can print out a few copies in a larger format. These become cut outs that I place on the walls... almost like a logo.

There are so many ways to use it... print on a brown paper and you can wrap coffee cups, print on regular or colored paper and then use scrapbooking die cuts to fancy up the edges for a doily effect, or, resize the clipart to small, convert it to a gray and print a repeating pattern on the paper which can even be used to wrap small presents, or as placemats, even origami!

Some people might shy away from clipart because they don't think of it, or they think it's too much work. If you find the clipart in a clipart book that will be too much work and it won't look good because you'll have to use a photocopier to resize it and then the quality degrades.

The type of clipart that I use is important for all of the different effects that I'm creating. It needs to be a vector drawing for sure, as non-vector drawings are bitmaps that don't resize nicely... they'll just get all bumpy and not look good. Also, I'm drawn to simply line art because if it's too complex sometimes it doesn't look as good in the different sizes. It's also good if it's a single color, usually black, because then I can change it to whatever I want quite easily just using simple graphics software. Just remember, simple is better, is cleaner, and usually creates a more sophisicated look.

Baby shower clipart is easy to find and use. Just be creative!