A Warm Party For A Cold Day

There's nothing like a warm party on a cold day to keep your mind off of the freezing temperatures. So for my daughter Emily's eighth birthday, we had a Hawaiian celebration. Known to my family as the queen of bargain shopping, I even managed to get most of the trinkets and accessories very inexpensively. Of course this called for clipping coupons for Hobby Lobby where I got mini umbrellas for the beach bear cupcakes and a pack of beach themed cut outs. It also called for several weeks of scavenging at my local Wal-mart for prizes.






















Speaking of scavenging, the first game I came up with for the children was a scavenger hunt where they all had to work together to find clues that lead to the treasure box full of prizes. To make it even more interesting and to ensure all was fair, when the children found the treasure box they weren't allowed to open it and pick prizes until they had all drawn a number. Early last fall I found felt fish and seahorse stickers on clearance at JoAnn Fabric's and I wrote numbers on the backs. Each child drew a number and then they took turns choosing a prize according to the number they had drawn.



We also played hot potato with a flip flop using and a Hawaiian music mix I made on the New My Space. Next came a memory game where I filled a box with ten items from sunglasses to a lei and each child had five seconds to look at what was in the box. Then they each had the opportunity to write down everything they remembered that was in the box and the child who remembered the most items won.



No party would be complete without great food, so we had a large assortment of that as well. We had party punch made with fruit punch, Sierra Mist, and raspberry sherbert. We had a large fruit tray (which I filled twice)  full of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, tangerines, and bananas. We had a large veggie tray, hot dogs, meatballs, and chips. And of course those yummy cupcakes pictured above. Then after the gift giving the children spent two happy hours playing in the front room with all of  Emily's newly aquired goods.



You too can warm up your winter with a totally hot Hawaiian party and all it takes is a little imagination. And if you don't have any winter birthdays in your near future, just throw one for the heck of it!



So ends another episode of Kids Korner with me, Children's Author Aileen Stewart. Join me next week for another exciting episode same krazy time, same krazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal blog Aileen's Thoughts any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, and life in general.


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