OK OK I think this might qualify for a double themed party, but it’s just how it worked out.. Sutton really wanted to have a sleepover this year, but there were several reasons I was against this… #1- I think he’s too young. #2- Most of his friends are girls. #3-I am not sure it would actually “work”. #4- I am a little selfish with my own sleep. #5- No need to start something I may never be able to stop :). Instead of having the sleepover, we had an “almost” sleepover. Basically this meant we invited the kids to wear their PJ’s and bring their sleeping bags. We made “breakfast” for dinner -as if we had just woken up from a “TERRIFIC” night of rest, and of course we watched a little movie. Here is how the evening unfolded…
5:30: Our 12 Guests arrived all cozy in their PJ’s. We played with some MONSTER beach balls (they just had monster faces on them) in the front yard while we waited for everyone to arrive.
** I then split the guests up into 3 groups of 4 kiddos. I had set up three little craft stations to go with our themes. Each group of four worked at their station for about 10 minutes prior to switching to the next station.. I didn’t actually time how long they were at the stations, but rather just watched to see how they were doing… It kept the party moving and the kids were super engaged. I didn’t have any crazy running around, broken lamps or limbs… It really was pretty calm… Here are our stations:
PILLOWCASE DECORATING: I used my silhouette machine to cut out each of our guest’s names in heat transfer paper and then ironed the names onto blank white pillowcases. The kids used fabric markers to decorate their pillowcases at this station! I think that we could have spent our entire party time decorating pillowcases. Our guests might be wanting to finish these at home!
GLOW IN THE DARK MONSTER PAINTINGS: I used a sharpie marker before party time to draw out some quick monsters. I tried to make all 12 of them different, but there is only so much you can do… I purchased some glow in the dark paints at Michaels and let the artists do their work from there! They were pretty funny about choosing their monsters as well as about choosing the colors for their monsters. I wonder if any of them hung them in their rooms to see if they would actually glow!
When they were done with their paintings I hung them on the wall under these little individualized monster bulletin board pieces I found… Our house looked pretty cute after all 12 monsters were hanging on the walls…
DOODLY MONSTERS: The last station was not super creative, but they loved it. I printed out some doodle monsters for them to color using smelly markers… They had lots of fun sniffing and coloring- our house smelled very fruity after this activity :).
The friends worked up quite an appetite after all these projects… My handsome hubby “Chef Ben” whipped up some homemade pancakes with whip cream & syrup, sausage, and watermelon for our young guests… There could not have been an empty tummy in the house- they were all so quiet while eating!
Of Course then it was movie time…
…and then cake and cake pops… I had never even attempted cake pops before and I’m really not sure I’ll attempt them again :). My neighbor back in Minnesota was a cake pop artist and I am even more in awe of this now that I’ve tried them myself…. Either way, the kiddos thought they were great and that’s all that matters!
I know Sutton had an awesome time at his party and it was really fun for Ben and I to get to know some of his school friends a little better! Thank you to all of you who came, it was a MONSTROUS good time!
mommyapolis 
Leave a comment