Party Ideas!

Sweet 16 X's 2 Party - Perfect for the family member or friend who is turning 32!

Airplane Birthday Party - For invitations, create a boarding pass. You can get scrapbooking paper for the right texture and color. Send to each person (not just family) as a boarding pass in their ticket jacket from "Insert Name's Travel Company". The boarding pass has a "boarding time" (start of party) "Terminal and Gate" (Street address) and number in party. You can download the bar code font and use the birthdate numbers make the barcode. Create a fantasy airline name "Insert Name Airlines" and had it on the return address. For decorations use sign outside or in the driveway stating "Loading Zone Only". Line the walk way with balloon stanchons. By the door label a sign "Baggage Check-in" where people can leave gifts. Cluster white and light blue balloons together and float them on the ceiling to look like clouds. You can also hang large styrofoam airplanes from the ceiling. Serve food on those sectioned plates to resemble airplane food. Suggested food ideas are sandwiches chips and fruit. You can even make family members "uniforms" i.e. t-shirts with "Insert Name" Airline logo that resembles flight wings using iron-on computer paper. The Birthday Person can be the pilot with other family members filling in as co-pilot, crew or stewardess.Give guests stick-on pilot wings. As a party favor, use white lunch bags and fold them to look like the "barf" bags. The kids had no idea but the adults got a kick out of it! Create nametags that looked like the electronic bag tags for your luggage. Instead of the 3 letter city code use THX for "thanks" and say thanks for flying with us. Fill each bag with assorted party favors. Kids and adults will enjoy the theme.

Adult Mardi Gras Party - Pick a date in advance so everyone has time to prepare. This is the kind of party you should/could do every year. Invite your family, friends and business associates to thank them for their business. If you choose to do the party anually, choose a different title/theme for each year just like real Mardi Gras. Always cook up a mess o' shrimp and boil a huge pot of crawfish. (Crawfish have different seasons so you have to find a seafood supply place that can provide them, or order them online from Louisiana.). Teach newcomers how to "pinch the tails and suck de heads" off the crawfish.
Decorate in the traditional purple, green and gold Mardi Gras colors. Give out beads to all guests as they arrive. Make or purchase a traditional King Cake with the plastic baby Jesus cooked inside. (The person who gets the baby Jesus is supposed to have the next party for everyone!) Encourage guests to dress in costume to get into the spirit of Mardi Gras.
Invite guests to participate in a cook-off . This will help provide conversation pieces. Cook-off ideas can be anything from best southern recipes to cajun to spiciest dish.. Give prizes for the best dish. Also have a contest for each table where the participants bring decorative items to turn their table into their best rendition of a Mardi Gras float. Party favors can include things like pecan pralines or other southern specialty candies or foods.

The Mardi Gras Bubba Party is given as a salute in the Southern Humorists style (Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy) to redneck relatives down south. This gives people the opportunity to just dress in jeans and black out a few teeth to be right in character. You can print out a southernese dictionary for fun. Make up name tags with new Bubba-like names like "Billy Joe Jim Bob". For decorations we use stuffed deer heads and put out an old couch for people to sit on. Hang an old clothes line with a bunch of gingham colored clothes and a big ole bra hanging on it. Decorate with several American flags. Use a children's swimming pool with ice to house cold drinks. The cook-off for the Bubba-party can be "Roadkill Surprise". Have each cook provide a story of how his/her roadkill died. Read the amusing stories during the party. For the cook-off prizes, give them an old concrete block to prop up a car in their own yard. Also give out Jack Daniels as "moonshine" made in "daddy's back yard."
Another version of the Bubba party theme can be Bubba on the Bayou. Plan to have a redneck wedding as a surprise. Have some friends dress up in wedding clothes, the bride will be pregnant, of course, and arrive in the midst of the party in the back of an old truck with angry father of the bride. Maybe Elvis will come back to give the wedding service and make the bride an "honorable woman!" Serve wedding cake for dessert. The cook-off can be anything that can be made with whiskey as a ingredient.

The Elvis Meets Bubba Mardi Gras Party is a huge hit. As guests arrive, have them pose with a stand up cut out of Elvis, and take pictures. Hang colored lights as decorations. Have a friend come dressed as Elvis with a few more friends as his entourage dressed in beaded prom dresses from the fifties. Have the Elvis entourage gather brave girls from the party to get up with them and dance as Elvis sings a song. Make the cook-off a favorite dish of Elvis-which could be just about anything! Decorate each table in a theme from an Elvis movie and people had to guess what movie it was. Give out Elvis prizes such as a coffee cup with his picture on it.

The 50's Sock Hop is a huge hit. For decorations: Hang black and hot pink streamers or turquoise and black streamers from the ceiling. You can make signs and banners with sayings like Nifty 50's, Mel's Diner and Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay. Use old records and neon lights as decorating accessories. You can get cardboard cutouts of 50's celebrities for photo ops. If you can find a table top jukebox, it would be perfect.
On the invitations, tell guests that 50's attire is requested, but not required. Mention that a best dressed contest will be going on. Poodle skirts are great, but there are many ways to dress from the 50's. Be creative! Assign everyone names like Flo, Fonz, Shirley, Annette, Frankie, Donna, Betty, Marilyn, Dean, Ronald, etc...to mke it more fun.
Host a hula hoop contest to see who can hula hoop the longest, a bubble blowing contest to see who can blow the biggest bubble without popping it and a twist dance contest. You can also have a lip synch contest to the Grease soundtrack. Make sure you have plenty of 50's music!
Have the host mom and dad dress up as diner employees. Make a menu using your computer for the snack choices. Snacks should include things from a 50's diner like Sock Hop Hamburgers, Fantastic Fries, Onion Rings, Hot Diggity Dogs, Poodle Skirt Pizza, Cool Birthday Cake, Best Banana Splits or Sundaes, What's Shakin' Shakes, Poppin' Popcorn, Wonderful Water and Perfect Soda-Pop.
Party Bags include photos taken with props, bazooka gum, sunglasses, cotton candy bags, for girls-red nail polish and scarves, for boys -black combs, dark shades. Key chains, travel games and cards for a drive in party.

Memories...

Memories are a way to hold on to the things that you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.