NYC Baby! - New York City themed Party for Adults & Children

Last week I hosted a different type of party to usual - my 40th!🎈🎉

I wanted Ollie & Phoebe to be able to celebrate with me so the party started nice & early at 6pm so that they could come along, plus my friends could then bring their children for the earlier part of the do.

My amazing husband & parents surprised me with a trip to NYC - it's been top of my bucket list since I was a child & I still can't believe I'm going! - so I decided to theme my party around the trip. As well as theming the buffet & decorations I wanted to do something that would keep the children entertained without needing adult participation so that we could all have a fun evening with our friends!

Activities

I made two games that could go on the lawn outside if dry (and we were in luck, after a showery morning we had a beautiful sunny evening for the party😅) or the dance floor if wet - skittles and hoopla.

The skittles were made out of recycling - cardboard packaging & drinks bottles half-filled with water to weigh them down. The only thing I needed to buy was a pack of tennis balls from the pound shop. I had twelve pieces of cardboard the same size and made six skittles by folding two pieces of cardboard into a cuboid shape. Using my hot glue gun I stuck a bottle inside one of the pieces and then stuck the other piece around it. 

I hand drew the decorations (there's a lot of entries in my Google history which start 'Easy drawing of....') but you could print out images & stick them on if drawing isn't your thing & the skittles could obviously be decorated to fit with any party theme.

The Lady Liberty hoopla game was also made from cardboard. The base was a banana box which I covered in light green paper & drew the headband of the Liberty crown on the front. For the spikes of the crown, I rolled cone shapes out of thin cardboard & then covered them with the green paper. Cutting the bottom of the cones into strips I then fanned these out & glued them to the box base so it was fastened securely all around. The game survived the majority of the party, it was only towards the end that children started appearing with 'unicorn horns'😳😆 (just to note that adults were outside with them but weren't interfering with their games!) but if it was used for a supervised children's activity it would certainly have been sturdy enough to still be in one piece at the end (we had lots of fun testing it beforehand!).

The doughnut hoops were cut from thick cardboard with a circle cutter (£2 from The Works, a great addition to a craft box, I use mine a lot) and then I just drew sprinkles & icing on them, nice & quick! These were being used as frisbees as well as for hoopla, the children had lots of fun with them!

Inside, I made a play area highlighted by bunting (thanks Damian!😘). This personalised bunting kit was 99p from Home Bargains & comes with loads of letter stickers & flags, a really good buy.

Annoyingly I didn't get a photo of the whole play area but you can see from the after photo of one of the colouring tables (themed with Spider-Man, Iron Man & The Secret Life of Pets colouring sheets of course😉) that it was enjoyed!

I also set up a tuff tray & stand in this area with Lego Duplo blocks, cars & figures in it. This was well enjoyed by the youngest of the children, as well as the older kids later on in the evening when it got cold outside.

The last activity was for the adult guests as well as the children - a photo booth!

These are so much fun for everyone & the photos definitely got sillier as the night progressed! I bought an inflatable photo frame for £2.50 on Amazon & the photo booth kit was on offer for £2 at a local Max Spielmann shop.

I left most of the props as they were but turned 7 of them into NYC themed ones. I added to two of the existing props - glueing 'The Big Apple' to a mask & a hot dog to some glasses - & another 5 I removed altogether & glued my own creations from thin cardboard to their sticks - a couple of speech bubbles, a slice of pizza, a NYPD hat & a Statue of Liberty crown.

Decorations

Decorations don't have to be expensive or showy, they just need to set the scene. I made these buildings by wrapping cardboard boxes in paper & drawing on them with a black marker pen. They looked great on the windowsill with Edd's drawing of the Brooklyn Bridge behind them.

This homemade poster was a family affair - my Dad drew the outline, Ollie & Phoebe drew the windows on the buildings & I painted it.

Collages are an easy & effective way to add to your theme - I glued these onto large pieces of cardboard. Just remember to take a photo once you've laid them out, otherwise you can lose track of what went where when you move them to glue them!

We printed a couple of sheets of cartoon taxi cabs, cut them up & stuck a cardboard flap on the back to make them stand. These were primarily for labelling the food but the leftovers were dotted around the room, along with a few sets of fairy lights from the Christmas box & some Googled shots of New York at night.

Party Food

I wanted to be able to set the buffet up & leave it, so it was primarily cold finger food, but we did order some large pizzas to be delivered to the venue which were a big hit!

As I haven't actually been to New York yet I asked for advice on a NYC Tips Facebook group & they kindly gave me lots of ideas including black & white cookies. I hadn't heard of these before but lots of people mentioned them so my wonderful mum googled the recipe & baked some. 

We also had cream cheese bagels, pastrami on rye, gherkins & pretzels.

Bowls of veggie sticks were decorated with a larger print of the cartoon taxi cab.

It was a dessert-heavy buffet! As well as the cookies we also had mocha slices, fairy cakes with NYC toppers, Oreos, mini ring doughnuts, blueberries & chocolate pretzels.

And of course birthday cake! 😉🎉🎂