AboutWendy Legendre Expertise I can help you get your party off to a fun start with creative ideas, games, activities, decorations, and invitations that are perfect for girls' parties, baby and bridal showers, girls' night events, and get-togethers with friends. My Diva Girl Parties and Stuff website hosts a huge collection of my ideas and printables at diva-girl-parties-and-stuff.com and my Scavenger Hunt Fun website at http://www.scavenger-hunt-fun.com has scavenger hunts for numerous events and locations.
Experience I have hosted hundreds of community events, showers, parties, and camps over the last 25 years. I am the owner and creator of a successful girls' party site as well as a scavenger hunt site.
Education/Credentials Various classes in creative arts, sociology, decorating, and drama.
Question QUESTION: Hi there, my daughter is leaving for Denmark for a year on exchange and she is also turning 16 right after she leaves, so I am stuck on ideas for the party. I want it to be a surprise for her, I have relatives that are traveling 14 hours or more for the weekend. (July 4th weekend)(we are all Canadian though). So she will have a mixture of people here from very young to quite a bit older. Her friends from school will also be here so I don't want to make it to boring for them or to loud and outrageous for the older people. We are planning a barbecue of hamburgers and hotdogs as well as other foods but how do I make it fun for all without spending a fortune! There will be anywhere from 50 - 100 people attending, so I hope it doesn't rain. I really hope you are able to help.
If I haven't given you enough info please let me know and I will try to answer them so that hopefully you will be able to help me.
Thank you.
ANSWER: To clarify, are you looking for activities to keep the whole group entertained? And does this group include every age group from child to senior? Or will some be participating in activites and some just sitting around chatting?
Also, should I assume this event is being held during the day or is this a night time event with fireworks and a campfire, etc.?
It would also be helpful to know if your daughter is the sporty type, artsy type, girly type... or are there some things that she and her friends enjoy doing so I can better gauge what activities would work for them.
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QUESTION: This is to try to keep everyone entertained from age 7 up to seniors. Some will be sitting and chatting probably most of the seniors. The event will start at 4 PM and go until everyone is ready to leave. We will be having fireworks and a campfire as well. My daughter is artsy, girly and a little sporty. Her and her friends are into playing games, ball hockey, hanging out like most teens. They may end up leaving the party and going to the beach at some point so I don't want to do too much just a few things to make it fun for everyone.
I hope this has helped you think of a few things to do. I am thankful for any help that I can get.
Sincerely,
A mom looking to making an awesome party!
Answer I recently hosted an event with an age range of 13-90 and about 80 guests. This was an indoor sit down event, but I'm sure most of these ideas would work outdoors also.
First of all, I made paper money (you could always just buy it at the dollar store - whatever works for you). Guests were given a couple of dollars when they arrived and were free to beg, borrow, and barter their dollars throughout the event (we had a prize for the person with the most accumulated bucks at the end of the event). Guests could make extra bucks in a variety of ways throughout the event and they could challenge other teams or indivduals in an effort to win more bucks from them. (eg. One guest might challenge another to see who could do more push-ups in 30 seconds, one guest might challenge another to drink some hideous concoction,etc.) If someone called a challenge, wagers were even placed between other guests as to who they thought would win the challenge. The creativity and fun even among the seniors was awesome.
We had 10 tables of eight. In your case you could assign each team a color and tie a ribbon of that color on their wrist (or something similar).
These are some of the games we played to win more bucks, however, half of the fun was in the unplanned challenges guests came up with interspersed between.
Guest Bingo - Guests were given bingo cards with various scenarios like "has had a broken leg", "has travelled to China", "has 5 siblings" and had to have a different applicable person sign each square. Bucks were awarded for first bingo, four corners, and full card. It was a great way for everyone to get to know each other better and have fun.
Let's Make a Deal/Purse & Pocket Scavenger Hunt - Items were called out and given a dollar value (play dollars). Eg. 5 party bucks for the first person to bring me a marriage license, 1 party buck to anyone who brings me a photo of a loved one (the hilarious part of that was that the group was creative enough to start using their cell phones to take a pic of a loved one at the event - lol), 2 party bucks to anyone who brings me a keychain with a sports team logo on it. I called out about 10 of these things in a row and then interspersed more throughout the event.
Friendship Newlywed Game - Each table picked one person at the table most thought they knew well and we sent them out with someone to answer a list of newlywed style questions with a friendship twist instead. While they were out, their tables (teams) answered the same questions while they were gone. Eg. I would describe my teammates style as... A. Shabby chic B. Au Coutoure C. Sporty D. Que Sera Sera This game was hilariously fun. 5 bucks were awarded to each of the players on the winning team, 3 to each on the second place, and 1 to each on the third place team.
Paper Clip Game - We gave each team a box of paper clips and the first to make an unbroken chain of paperclips that wrapped around the entire team won bucks.
Right Left Game - For the game we gave each person and envelope with a different number of bucks in it. Most had one buck, but others had as many as 5. We read a right left story and teams passed their envelopes around the circle accordingly. When the story was done team members got to keep whatever bucks were in the enevelope they then had in their hand.
Friendship Pursuit - We ran out of time for this game, but in short we created a team Trivial Pursuit game based on info we collected about party attendees. It would take too long for me to explain here and since we didn't get to play it, I can't tell you how it went so I'll leave it at that.
