New Years Eve Family Party

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A Family Style New Year’s Eve Celebration

Make New Year’s Eve feel like a celebration at home with your kids.  For us, it’s my husband and I and our three girls, but this would work great with extended family or friends too!  (My inspiration, along with printables, can be found here)

We surprised the girls around noon with a bin full of New Year’s Eve decorations and a collection of activity bags for them to open at specific times. This meant the entire afternoon and evening were planned out and they were surprised with an activity every hour or so.  It was a lot of fun for them and for us.  This can be adapted to be age-appropriate for your child(ren).

You will need:

  • Hats
  • Noisemakers
  • Champagne flutes
  • Champagne for you and other Adults, Sprite or Sparkling Cider for the kids
  • Table decorations
  • ‘Happy New Year’ Banner
  • Dinner prep ingredients or takeout phone number

And compile (as shown above) in a nice bin, box or bowl.

Next, come up with a schedule of activities for the evening, and plan a surprise bag for each:

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Create your graphics in Word or other program (or simply hand-write on card stock). The bags shown were purchased at Homesense.  I couldn’t find any cute paper bags this year, so I’ll be using brown paper bags from the dollar store.

Decide how you want your evening to flow:

What time do you want to begin your countdown bags?  How many activities do you want to plan & make activity bags for?  The items inside your countdown bags can be a related prize or gift, to the activity, or just a note outlining the activity for that bag.

Here is an example:

12 pm Decorate

Decorate the house with everything that was in the bin: banner, noisemakers, champagne flutes, hats, balloons, etc

2.00 pm Bake Cupcakes

I put sprinkles in the activity bag

3.00 pm Play Wii Just Dance

I printed an image of the Just Dance Wii game cover and placed it in the bag.  This was a huge hit for our family as all 5 of us enjoy playing Just Dance and we have plenty of versions of this game to chose from.  Any game would do, board games too!

4.00 pm Watch a Movie

I printed a mini movie poster of the Ice Age movie and placed it in the bag with some popcorn.

5.30 pm Order Chinese Food

I placed a fork, napkin and the Chinese food restaurant’s number in the bag.  This year we’ll be making dinner at home so there will be a hint as to what we’re having in the bag.

6.00 pm Write New Year’s Resoutions

There are fantastic templates all over Pinterest for this purpose. It was so much fun writing out our plans and hopes for the coming year and sharing them.  If your child is too young, you can do this with your spouse as a plan for your family for the year.

7.00 pm Video Interviews

Interview one-on-one with each child on video.  Sample questions below. (this one is so much fun when they’re little)

8.00 pm Get ready for Midnight!

We watch the New York ball drop at 9.00PM Pacific so the kids still get to bed just after 9pm. This activity includes finding the TV Channel with the countdown/ball-drop, pouring everyone a ‘champagne’ and getting hats & noisemakers ready. Confetti or bubbles can be placed in the bag.

Some other ideas:

  • Crafts
  • Board Games: Memory, Candyland, anything age-appropriate
  • Play Barbies or Lego (kid’s choice!)
  • Karaoke
  • Draw a picture of your favourite memories of 2013
  • Create a vision board/collage with magazines and posterboard for the New Year

Sample questions to ask during the interview:

  • What is your name?
  • What is your favourite colour?
  • How old are you?
  • What does your Mom/Dad do during the day?
  • What’s Mom/Dad’s name?
  • What is your favourite activity?
  • What is your favourite day of the week?
  • What do you want to be when you grow up?
  • You can ask anything, just don’t forget to video tape and keep year after year!

Happy New Year from Modern Mama!

Connie-Signature

 

 

 

 

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