How to Throw the Most Awesome Kids Party Without Even Trying!
How to Throw the Most Awesome Kids Party Without Even Trying!
When it comes to throwing kids parties, I’m a huge fan of minimum effort for maximum impact. I don’t mind whipping up a special birthday cake, but I don’t want to spend hours on end cooking up party food, or decorating the house. And I know this is going to sound so incredibly lazy, (but whatevs) I’m not a big fan of organising party games either. I’d much rather hire an inflatable castle and send them all out to bounce on it and make their own fun. But of course, when you have a child with a winter birthday, that’s simply not an option (at least, not if you live in Melbourne).
But, I recently hit on the perfect solution – an Xbox themed slumber party. In fact, it went so well, that my other 2 children want the exact same party for their birthdays (which I am secretly pleased about as its way cheaper than hiring a jumping castle!) What’s more, apart from giving the house a quick clean, printing out some food labels and making a cake, the Xbox One took care of the entertainment so there really wasn’t much to be done.
The Xbox One controller cake. (Btw, I bought the kit from Cake2theRescue, so I didn’t have to go out hunting through the shops to find everything I needed. I just had to cook it and decorate it the night before.
I printed the Minecraft food labels out and mounted them on card. Such a simple but effective way to dress up the table. There was also hot food, but I wasn’t quick enough to photograph it before it all got snaffled up! Ha!
For the drinks I just bought bottled water, added cordial and stuck ‘Potion of healing’ and ‘Creeper Juice’ labels to them. The kids thought they were super cool.
Seriously, how cute are the mini TNT’s? I printed out TNT labels and then wrapped them around 3 red liquorice sticks! Voila!
Check out more Minecraft party ideas here
Foghorn’s 3 sleepover buddies arrived at 5pm and immediately took up camp in their teepees armed with an Xbox one controller. As I have mentioned previously, the Xbox One allows for four players to play Minecraft simultaneously. The screen was split into 4 so each child could play – and they had a ball!
I hired the teepees from a new local business, who came in and set them up with an assortment of goodies for the party kids. But, if you don’t have anything nearby like that, I strongly suggest checking out Kmart!
A & J Slumber Party Hire also brought this cute photo prop with them for us to use on the night – but if you had the time and inclination you could easily make something similar yourself.
Of course, given half a chance, most kids would keep playing Minecraft until they were so tired their eyeballs were hanging out of their heads. So although I didn’t really have to entertain the kids, I did still need to supervise and have some rules in place. For the first 2-3 hours the boys happily played the Xbox, snacked and scoffed cake. Then I filled up their popcorn buckets and the boys switched the Xbox console over to Netflix and found a movie to settle down and watch. All of the excited Minecraft commentary and banter that had been flying around previously stopped dead. All that could be heard was the sound of crunching popcorn coming from each little tepee. It was magic, and I don’t mind telling you that I was mentally high fiving myself on my stroke of utter genius…especially when they all fell asleep soundly without any fuss.
Seriously! It could not have gone any better. Okay…so maybe waking up at 5.30am with 6 kids in the house isn’t the best way to start a Sunday (haha!) but after getting some Cocopops into them, they were all back in their teepees watching a movie and I was able to climb back into bed to drink my cup of coffee!
It looks like the Xbox One S console is going to be getting quite a bit of party action this year. I highly recommend giving it a try. Minimum effort, maximum impact! Just the way I like it! Lol!
Disclosure: My family received an Xbox One S console for the purpose of an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.
Would this type of party work for your child? Personally I’d love to have a girls night in on the Xbox with these teepees! Can you imagine? Wine, cheese, chocolate and Netflix! Heaven!
Jolene
Jolene enjoys writing, sharing and connecting with other like-minded women online – it also gives her the perfect excuse to ignore Mount-Washmore until it threatens to bury her family in an avalanche of Skylander T-shirts and Frozen Pyjama pants. (No one ever knows where the matching top is!) Likes: Reading, cooking, sketching, dancing (preferably with a Sav Blanc in one hand), social media, and sitting down on a toilet seat that one of her children hasn’t dripped, splashed or sprayed on. Dislikes: Writing pretentious crap about herself in online bio’s and refereeing arguments amongst her offspring.
