My Birthday Party Essentials

We had a small birthday party for Henry this past weekend, and since this month has been crazy busy, I didn't have a lot of time to plan -- I didn't even send out an invitation. Not even Paperless Post. Not even an Evite. He picked his seven guests and I sent their parents a quick email. While I was thinking about what we were going to do with these 7 kids, I broke things down into our tried and true party hits. Here is my very own Essentials Guide to throwing a party for a 7-yr-old boy with not a lot of time and without breaking the bank. If you do these 3 things well, your guests and the birthday boy are sure to be happy.

1. THE CAKE

I usually just make a cake because I like baking when I can. But this year, Henry was begging for a Basketball Cake from Publix, so since we weren't doing a whole lot of other things for the party, I got him one.



And he loved it.



So did she:



2. THE PINATA

A tried and true crowd-pleaser, this will get any party guest excited.





A few more years, and M will have the whole pinata thing down.

They also played a lot of Basketball, and we set up a couple water balloon relays, which they loved.

3. THE FAVORS

There's nothing like a good favor to send your party guests away happy.



Want to take a peek inside?



I found the small packages of Mighty Beanz at Target on clearance for $0.75, added some sports pencils, sour patch kids and whistles that Weez picked up at Richard's Variety store for $0.99. We had a scavenger hunt at the end of the party where the last clue led them to their favors. Kids this age love scavenger hunts, and it was especially exciting for them when they reached the end and there was a little package waiting for each of them.

And lastly, an essential for the party planner, an adult beverage once all the guests have gone home:



Weez came rolling into town with this bottle of SkinnyGirl Margaritas, so after the kid party was over, the adult party began!

UPDATE: This post was a casualty of all the blogger craziness yesterday, so it published in Google Reader, but disappeared from the actual blog. Bizarro!