parties

articles

• My 10 yr old’s pamper party- oolala!
• Scuba diving & pool parties plus Xmas carols
• My son’s Superstar Disco Party
• Sports party ideas plus Xmas markets and carols
• Creepy crawly, science parties, Xmas markets and a parenting expo
• Survivor and action parties plus sleepover holiday camps
• Kids cooking / baking parties plus shows this week
• Pamper and disco parties plus family events for this week.
• Fear factor and fantasy parties plus Halloween events
• Kids car & circus parties plus family events this week
• Our kiddies pizza party
• Hyperactivity and kids parties
• Kids parties – whats enough?
• How parents party at kids parties
• Party stress
• Party Time

by Merle Dieterich, passionate mom and businesswoman whose 2 beautiful children, Lerato and Marvin never cease to amaze and teach her about what counts. You’ll find her at  jozikids.co.za

My daughter recently turned 9 years old  and loves food, so the most obvious choice for a party was something we’d never tried before,  a pizza making party.  After checking out the extensive list of  companies which offer food related parties on Jozikids, we settled for A-Z Creative Entertainment and we were not disappointed.

An hour before the young guests arrived, Zelda arrived with her beautiful clay pizza oven plus tables, aprons, hats, boxes and fresh pizza dough!   By the time the friends arrived, everything was ready.

First, everyone stood in line to receive their chef’s hats and aprons.

Our garden was transformed into a sea of white hatted chefs rolling out dough.

Fresh tomato sauce and a variety of fillings were added.

My proud daughter was the first to pop her pizza in the oven

Each child received their own pizza box and the eating began

As if this wasn’t enough, and believe you me it was, Zelda had brought a long a Slush Puppy machine  to top it all off with.  Thank you Zelda for a fabulous,  memorable party.

by Angel Conradie ,  loves her  cellphone,  camera and  notebook. Has 8 tattoos, 5 cats and 2 dogs and an ADHD son,  believes she is married to the most wonderful man, bakes for a living  as The Cupcake Lady and blogs as Angel’s Mind

Up until my son was about 13 years old, I absolutely dreaded receiving invitations for him to attend a classmate’s birthday party.

Let’s face it, kids parties can be a veritable minefield of pseudo-politics and who-is-cooler-than-who. I was not much into mingling with people I didn’t already know though, so none of that worried me. What I worried about was leaving my ADHD son at a party, not so much as unsupervised as unprotected!

At one point after my son’s ADHD diagnosis and before we started medication we were trying a form of an exclusionary diet- no sugar, caffeine, colourants, trans-fats or preservatives, lots of green vegetables, lots of added vitamins and fish oils… Apart from the fact that my son was never a big eater and this diet made our lives miserable, it also meant that there was nothing he was “allowed” to eat if he went to a party. I eventually adopted the “everything in moderation” approach to food, but in that time often turned down invitations rather than have to lecture my son on what he could or couldn’t eat.

The thing is though, whilst the myth prevails that sugar makes kids hyperactive, countless studies have been done to show that this is in fact not the case. If there’s anything that can and does affect some children’s level of hyperactivity and attention it’s the artificial colourants and sweeteners! And the setting of a party with entertainment and noise laid on is going to give any child the impression is that- for the time being- excitement is not only okay but expected. Can you imagine little Johnny’s mom’s disappointment if the kids at her son’s party behaved the way they are expected to do in a classroom situation?!?

That aside, my son was painted with the naughty brush very early in his school career and I found- to my dismay- that he was being watched like a hawk, by parents and children alike, for the slightest sign of aberrant behaviour! Never mind the fact that he was at a kids party and surrounded by colour, noise, other excited children and all kinds of entertainment, he was not allowed to get excited or run or shout. If he did so, then he was hopped up on sugar and “obviously” hyperactive and out of control. It broke my heart that my son was the one expected to be calm and compliant no matter the surroundings.

I implore you and I challenge you as adults- whether you have children or not- that when you are next hosting or attending parties for children, you keep the setting in mind before you brand any child with the hyperactive label. When they’re at a party, you want them to be happy. You want them squealing with excitement at the petting zoo. You want them gasping at a magic act and volunteering to be disappeared. You want them laughing on a jumping castle.

A party just wouldn’t be the same without all the giggling and excitement now would it!?

By Jude Foulston, new mom, wife, entrepreneur,  friend and crafter who’s loving the challenge of trying to  keep it all together on a daily basis.  She works for TomorrowToday, is  the creator of Jamtin & recently started a blog Colour Giggles.

I have a confession…. I used to be one of those people who mocked, yes, mocked the mom’s who went to great lengths for their children’s birthday parties. You know the ones that I’m talking about – with ponies, jumping castles, designer party packs and cakes on a par with what you would see at a wedding.  I was especially amazed when these parties were for the early birthdays, when really, the little mites wouldn’t be any the wiser, and as long as you had the ‘obligatory photo’ (you know, the one with said birthday child shoving his face full of cake) all would be good.

That was until I became a Mom…. Or more specifically – 5 weeks before my little one’s FIRST birthday. All of a sudden the birthday party started consuming my thoughts, daydreaming of being one of those super moms who makes handmade  bunting for decorations, graphic designed invitations, with designer party packs, and entertainment for the kids that fills the air with squeals of laughter.

After initially feeling guilty for starting to think of ‘over-the-top’ ways to celebrate my monkey’s birthday (especially since I’ve openly admitted to mocking mom’s previously), I’ve accepted that I DO want to celebrate this first year we’ve both survived, and been blessed with an amazing daughter.

I now get why people go to the ends of the world, often blowing their monthly budget on these events . We intrinsically want the best for our children and we want to shout to the world that we love our children and will do anything for them. If it takes ponies, jumping castles and tiered cupcakes, well then so be it. We’ve earned it, we’ve had enough sleepless nights, butternut mushed into our favourite jerseys and stolen Sunday afternoon naps, to do whatever we want to express our love for our babies and the achievement we’ve accomplished.

So…  I will be going overboard for Layla’s birthday party – this does not mean that there will be ponies in the garden, nor will there be jumping castles. There are plenty more birthdays for that! I will however be making an effort with my invitations, I will be going overboard with the decorations and have an unreasonable ratio of balloons to children. I will decorate the cake beautifully and spend far too much time on it – I know Layla won’t know it’s beautiful, but that’s ok – one day she will.  I’m going to give party packs to all the kids and I’m going to love every minute of this special day celebrating the day I gave birth to this little miracle that has brought us so much joy for the last 365 days.

This may not seem overboard to you at all and that’s fine. For me, it is… this is my overboard.

I probably won’t have people lining up for an invitation to the 2nd birthday party because of any of it – I don’t care. The people that love our family and the special little person’s life that we are celebrating will be there. Not because of the decorations or party packs, but because it’s a celebration

by Tanya Kovarsky, the editor of Living & Loving magazine, mom to Max, and a fan of running, baking, reading and iPads. Find her on Twitter (@TanyaKovarsky) or her blog.

My son Max recently started playschool, and the other day the best thing happened. He got his first invite ever to a birthday party. I don’t even know the mom or the child who’s birthday it is, and I assume every kid in the class was invited, but boy was I proud. My son made the cut! Which means I made the cut too, since I’m assuming I’m invited because I can’t exactly drop Max off and leave him. Or can I? What are the rules? And can I even go if I haven’t met the parents? And what present do I get – how much should one spend for these things? What happens if I have an awkward high-school moment and am left out of conversation, or no one likes me? And worse – what if my son is “that” child – the clingy/destructive/icing-licker-before- the-cake-is-cut dude?

We’ve been to parties before – friends and family, but this is the first real school event, and despite the nerves, I’m hoping that it will be like riding a bike – the first time might be a little tricky and there might be some hurts, but that afterwards it will be all fun, balloons and party packs.

But with motherhood   one anxiety always leads to another, and with Max’s impending second birthday in September, I’m loosely thinking about what to do. Do I have the whole she bang with venue, entertainment and catering, or do I keep it simple because let’s face it, Max isn’t really going to know, and will probably still be more fascinated with the Flings and wrapping paper and boxes than clowns, ponies or themed decor?

But parties are often for the parents, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re proud, we’re celebrating the growth of our little ones, and we love putting in effort. Which is why I think I might veer to the latter. I want to make invites, I want to shop for party packs, and I want to buy Chardonnay for when my nerves set in (on that note, is Chardonnay acceptable for the adults at parties?) Plus I want to order a kick-ass cake, show it off, and eat gum sweets at the kiddies’ table. And take pics and post them on Instagram (an awesome iPhone photo-sharing app). It’s all about the pictures, and party packs, and precious moments. I’m off to plan, and pick out an outfit for our first school party next week…=

by Pippa  Rix, mother of 2 (Kayla, 15 and Keaton, 9), avid reader, enthusiastic baker, hopeless perfectionist &  passionate freelance writer specializing in online content pertaining to kids, pregnancy, lifestyle & business start-ups. Visit her website .

Parties are supposed to be fun, aren’t they?  That’s the point of them… I’m sure of it!

This being the case, I have to wonder why it took me 11 years of life-shortening panic to realise that I was allowing a child’s birthday party to turn me inside out from sheer stress.

Without even knowing it, my usually placid demeanour  would, during the days leading up to the big bash, morph into a mood that She Hulk would be proud of. Clenched teeth, pulsing neck veins, disturbing green colour, angry guttural growl – that kind of thing.

And so it was that I found myself at 1:30 on the morning of Kayla’s 11th birthday, making personalised party packs (not just any party packs… no, no, these were being watercoloured by my own very tired and irritable hand).

The Picasso-esque party packs were taking much longer than I had planned, but seeing as I had to stay up for another hour so that I could take the toadstool-shaped meringues out of the oven – well, I should be productive during the wait, not so? Besides, I still had to ice the cake, wrap the birthday gifts, design the thank-you cards, decorate the garage, fill the profiteroles…

I burst into tears.  Which added (not in a favourable way, I’ll tell you that for free) a whole new dimension to the watercolour effect. Paint ran in, patience ran out, blood pressure ran up and tears ran down.

I was a mess. The whole situation was a mess. And that’s when I realised:

This.

Is.

Ridiculous.

And it is.

Why do we do these things to ourselves? Don’t we realise that the birthday girl and her guests – no matter how spoilt, jaded or sassy – simply do not care if the cake is homemade, or that the wooden party favours are hand-carved, or that (shoo, wow, incredible!) the goodie boxes are hand-painted?

There and then, I decided that I would take it easy from the next party forward – take the pressure off myself, take time to enjoy the party and (what a concept!) take hundreds of photos of my happy, smiling daughter enjoying this never-to-be-repeated, special day.

The sad fact is, we bend over backwards to be the perfect party hostess. And for whom? Usually, not for our child, but rather for the other children’s parents.  We want to be Bree van der Kamp – clutching a basket of homemade muffins with manicured hands – so that other parents­ think we’re Wonder Woman.  Well, out with that notion, and in with:

-          Keeping food, décor and accessories simple

-          Not leaving everything to the last minute

-          Hiring someone if you have the budget (a party planner is a godsend)

-          Asking friends and relatives for help (make sure you’re in some of the photos too)

-          Enjoying the day on the day, and not just in retrospect

After all, it’s meant to be a Happy Birthday.

by Sally Cameron, midwife, mother of 2 and co-owner of www.earthbabies.co.za . I am  passionate, creative, trying to be Green unschooling single mom.  It’s a journey.

I love organizing my kid’s parties I have huge ideas and usually take on way more than I can actually cope with but that is just the way I am.

For my sons first birthday I made papier-mâché dinosaur eggs for the party bags and knitted each child a dinosaur! This year Rachel was turning 5 and wanted a mermaid theme. It was the first party I had to do all on my own since splitting up with my husband. He was not going to be around for the big day and so it was all up to me. I had to make the day not only memorable but also to make up for her dad not being there. In his defense he works on an oil rig in the north sea so it was not from lack of wanting to be there that he missed her birthday.

We made the theme under the sea so that the boys did not feel obliged to be mermaids. Being a greener mom I wanted to try make sure that things I did for the party incorporated some of the eco R’s ( reduce, reuse, recycle) I made the party bags from cut off milk bottles which I punched around the top and put gift ribbon through to decorate them. I also did not want to give the kids typical party bag toys which are expensive and often break or get lost with the first few minutes of being home. So I got each kid a T-shirt and got a friend to embroider a sea theme picture on each one.

While I was tempted to go all natural with the food, I thought it is a party after all and kids still have to be kids and eating less healthy stuff now and again is okay. All things in moderation seemed sensible. What I did realize is that kids eat way less at a party than you expect, I could have done half the food and still been okay.

Planning and doing the party on my own was actually a whole lot easier than I thought. Parties would always mean stress and fighting in our house before. I would get into trouble for how much it all cost and I would get stressed about my ex not helping as much as I thought he should. It was almost always a case of each of us having different ideas and pulling in 2 different directions. The stress levels were always high and lots of fighting happened. This time it was just me, I knew I had to do it all and it was actually easier. I knew what I had to do and I just to got on with it. My budget was much smaller being a single mom but my parents helped out and we manage really well in the end.

Rachel had a good time and I guess that is the most important thing. I think in a way it was part of the healing process for me too. I learnt I can do it all on my own even when it is hard work it is actually more peaceful and calm and we could all enjoy it more. There are going to be many firsts for me and the kids where we do stuff we have never done before on our own, and I know we will survive and we will have fun and we will grow.