Think you need to be rich to throw a great children’s party? Think again! A rich imagination is all you need to thrill kids with a party they will always remember.

For several years, Pam and Ed Dart of Spectacular Catering from Placentia, California have staged barbecues that corporations line up for. Want to know one of their secrets? Staging. This transforms a simple party into an event. Creating an atmosphere that sparks the imagination and enthusiasm of children is easy if you apply the following tricks of the trade.

Create Excitement Right From the Start

Your party starts with a great invitation. Planning a detective birthday party? Send a note with “Help me!” scrawled on the front of a torn piece of notepad paper. On the other side, write, “Celebrate my birthday. Find me at…” Include all the party particulars as part of a coded message.

Plan a Movie Set

The environment you create is central to the success of your party. Imagine being invited to a dinosaur party and arriving to find a steaming, foggy jungle at the entrance. This is easy to do.

1. Start with a few houseplants.

1. Add a silk tree or two.

1. Rent a fog machine.

If you can’t rent a fog machine, create the same effect using a bucket of water and a block of dry ice. Place the bucket behind a shrub and blow the icy mist with a small fan.

Search the Internet for dinosaur sound files and play them in the background. Your guests will be enthralled as they travel back in time to the age of the dinosaurs.

Keep Them Busy

Plan party activities around the party theme. A pirate party screams for a treasure hunt. Make a course the kids will remember.

1. Reverse engineer your route. Start at the end and make your way back home.

1. Add a “dead man’s bones” stop. Make this clue stop a screamer by wrapping a distressed pant leg around a clean, dry chicken leg bone. Bury the pants with just a bit of hem and the leg bone emerging from the soil.

1. Make the map part of the fun by creating intriguing clues, embellishing it with swirling fonts and pictorial hints. S. E. Overmyer, a graphic artist and owner of Kitty and Nevermore, suggests downloading free fonts from online sources to add a realistic charm to the map.
2. Stain the maps with a strong tea solution, slightly burn torn edges, and add a drop of cooking oil here and there for a truly authentic-looking treasure map.

Fun With the Food

Don’t serve burgers and beans on a paper plate at your party.

• Use old or disposable aluminum pie pans for plates and serve drinks in mason jars for a cowboy theme.

• Make a volcano cake with flowing lava frosting or a dinosaur-shaped layer cake.
• Move beyond JELL-O brains and spaghetti guts at your mad scientist party by serving real food in beakers and test tubes.

Your rich imagination can create party effects that will make unforgettable memories for the kids that attend. Choose a theme and let your creative juices flow.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3.

Jessy is a stay-at-home mom and family blogger for Dobovo, the family-friendly accommodation resource of Kiev apartments on a budget.

Today when my son Coty came home from school, he handed me an envelope he’d been given by one of his teachers. Coty and I sat on the front step as I began to read over the contents. I’d barely gotten into the first couple of paragraphs that read:

Yes, congratulations certainly are in order… because The USAA has been informed that Coty has been given the unusual honor of recognition as a national honor student.

Because only a relative handful of students anywhere in the United States qualify for this honor…

At that point my vision blurred with tears and a lump formed in my throat – I had to continue reading later.

I’ve ALWAYS been extremely proud of my boys, but as a twin mom, there are those times when one requires just a little bit more pride. A moment of De-ja-vu came over me as I recalled the day Trey was chosen to All Stars in Little League, and Coty was left behind.

Today, it was Coty’s turn to edge in on his larger dose of parent pride.

A teacher took their valuable time to nominate Coty for a national honor student recognition award. Students are nominated based on two of the following criteria:

• 3.0 minimum in a specific subject
• Academic Performance
• Personal motivation
• Cooperative classroom attitude
• Dependability
• Enthusiasm for education
• Leadership qualities
• Serious acceptance of responsibility

I know every parent is proud of their kids, but what makes this so extraordinary is how far Coty has come.

Coty was held back in 1st grade while his twin brother advanced. It was a painful decision, and a choice I never thought I’d be forgiven of.

Last Spring Coty worked with his school counselor, devising a plan that would advance him to graduate along with his twin, Trey.

Since switching schools for the 2010-2011 school years, both boys have made monumental advancements in their academic status.

The details below are from the honors website:

The United States Achievement Academy, located in Lexington, Ky, was founded in 1978; to recognize America’s outstanding students to provide scholarship opportunities for all participants.

USAA has awarded over $1,400,000 in educational cash grants.

More than 1 million educators from the United States and its territories have nominated students for the Academy’s honor programs.

Students, who have demonstrated outstanding achievement; marked improvement or a commitment to academic success; are nominated by the educator. Students become members of the Academy through teacher nominations or their school’s honor roll. All nominations are honored by USAA with the belief that educators know their students best.

I absolutely, positively, undeniably… could. not. be. more. proud.

I love. love. love my boys SO much! They have given me SO much to live for, so much to be thankful for and because of them, I always want to be a better person.

Lately I’ve been noticing a trend in picture tagging on the Facebook accounts of my kids. Granted my kids are technically “adults” at the ripe age of 18 but many of their friends are not.

The other day I was talking to my kids when a very unsavory picture appeared on the wall of one of my boys. A teen girl had been tagged in a photo that was extremely sexually explicit.

I can’t believe how stupid kids are today! Sure, I know our world has become so desensitized to such images – but somehow we have to make these kids realize that anything and everything they do online is going in a permanent archive that can be viewed by future employers, colleges, potential girlfriends/boyfriends, spouses and their families.

It all seems fun and cool right now, but what these kids aren’t realizing is passing on, tagging, sharing these kinds of photos could pose an even bigger problem.

Have they stopped to think the images could be illegal? Are the participants in the photos underage?

I would encourage ALL parents to check your kids Facebook account – set their image tagging options to require authorization before those images EVER make it to their wall.

This can easily be done using the following steps:

• Click Privacy Settings
• Check the CUSTOM Setting
• EDIT SETTINGS under the “How tags work” option
• There are FIVE options – Mine are set as — On, Off, Friends, Off and Off

Facebook provides a fun and FREE service. I could easily see this sort of behavior forcing the hands of Facebook to take their service to a paid service – an age restricted service that’s actually enforced and more.

As with anything – a few stupid kids making extremely poor choices is putting everyone else at risk of losing out on something enjoyable.

There’s got to be some way, some movement that people can join together in to help eliminate or at the very least, minimize this sort of activity.  But what?

Any ideas?

As adults, we need to teach YOUNG GIRLS the difference between:

A man who FLATTERS her and a man who COMPLIMENTS her

A man who SPENDS MONEY on her and a man who INVESTS in her

A man who views her as PROPERTY and a man who views her PROPERLY

A man who LUSTS after her and a man who LOVES her

A man who believes he is GOD’S GIFT to women and one who remembers WOMAN is GOD’S GIFT to MAN

And then we need to teach OUR YOUNG MEN to be that kind of MAN

I read a version of this on Facebook this morning – it was too good not to pass on

One of my BIGGEST pet peeves is having to look for ANYTHING!

I’m one of the most organized people ON the freaking planet! Everything has a place and in it’s place it is. That is UNTIL someone else in the house needs something.

Prime example – we have this issue with iPod headphones. Everyone else in the house seems to misplace theirs or lose them. Rather than looking for their own – they grab mine! My PINK headphones, I purposely purchased thinking the inhabitants of Lake Testosterone would not use them because they are pink.

Wrong!

Now, I don’t use them every single day like everyone else – so days may go by before I realize they are missing. By then, whoever ‘borrowed them WITHOUT permission’ has:

1. forgotten they borrowed them
2. forgotten where they put them

That’s when I find myself fuming with rage, turning the house upside down looking for MY headphones that were placed in their PROPER place – right where I (and obviously everyone else) know where to find them.

I finally got smart and found a pretty snazzy hiding place for my iPod and headphones.

Today, it’s my black marker – the one I keep in the kitchen because I might just need it sometime – Like RIGHT effing now for instance!

I swear – when they move out – I will get even. I’m keeping note of everything they do that pisses me off and I’ll turn right around and do it back.

• muddy shoes across the carpet
• loud noises in the middle of the night (especially when they have young kids. that should be fun)
• globs of toothpaste on, in and all around the bathroom sink
• sweating glass of drink setting on their coffee table taking special care to leave a ring
• being very noisy and disruptive when they’re trying to watch something important

And that’s just to name a few… The list does go on and is a constant work in progress.