survivor

So we recently hosted a Survivor themed birthday party for Abby's little chums. It was great fun and I highly recommend it as a party theme. I think this is one of those big childhood memories Abby's is going to take with her into adulthood. We did take lots of pictures, but they include kids other than my own and since some folks ain't down with publishing their lives on the internet, I've got none to share with you, but trust me they are awesome and if you're lucky enough to be in my facebook posse then you've already seen them.

So how did we pull off a Survivor Party?

Here's how....

ML had the genius idea of picking up "buffs" for the teams. She showed up here on party day with orange and blue banadanas. We had divided the kids into teams with some input from the birthday girl. So ML labeled each one and helped the kids put them on.

As the guests arrived Abby handed out plastic leis I had picked up at the dollar store to serve as immunity necklaces, that way no one could get voted out of the party. Once the kids were outfitted in their buffs and immunity necklaces the kids got together with their tribe to come up with a tribe name and cheer. Then we started the challenges.

The challenges were fun, some we came up with ahead of time, others came to us on the fly. We did coconut bowling, which the kids loved so much we ended up making it a best two out of three event. I picked up bottles of bubbles at the dollar store to serve as pins.... also the kids got to take a bottle home with them afterward. At the grocery store I grabbed two coconuts to serve as the ball. Each tribe member got to "roll" two coconuts the length of our deck to knock over as many pins as they could. Mike and I did our best to pick out coconuts that were far from round, just to make it fun. That game got high marks from the tribes.

To be fair I think that one was our most survivor-esque challenge, the rest were typical games you'd see at a family reunion. We did a bean bag toss, threw a frisbee at a target, had a water relay race where they had to get water from one bucket to another... and the buckets were at opposite sides of the yard... and they only had a small cup.... and the cup had a hole in it. That was fun. We did an egg in spoon race an different variations of balloon races, one they had to hold the balloon between their knees, another race they had to hold it between two tribe members.

We broke the games up with two breaks, one for lunch about an hour in (it was a three hour party) and one for cupcakes about an hour later. I made volcano cupcakes, which was way easier than it sounds. I baked and iced cupcakes and then topped them with an upside down sugar cone I had cut the pointy end off about a quarter of the way down. I tinted a bit of icing orange and then warmed it for 30 seconds in the microwave so I could drizzle it down the sides of the sugar cone just like flowing lava.

After the second break we had about 30 minutes or so left in the party, so we made it "free play" time. We had them play freeze tag, but they played as their tribes. So one tribe member from each team was it and they could only tag the opposite team. We played a few rounds of that, then we threw in some wax museum, duck duck goose and hot potato.

It was a very simple party to throw and it didn't break the bank either. I think I spent $40 at the dollar store for supplies and than included "loot bags" which weren't actually loot bags. I picked up artist canvases that came with acrylic paints and brushes and the best part... they had a jungle scene already printed on them. So it was kind of like a coloring page, but on a canvas stretched over a frame. The kids took home a painting, a bottle of bubbles from bowling and some of my famous chocolate chip cookies.

I could definitely see having another Survivor party next year since we had ideas for games we didn't use, like puzzle building races (25 piece puzzles in a brown paper bag, no picture to work from), bug or worm eating contest using gummy worms/bugs, scavenger hunt and an obstacle course. I'll have to pay close attention to the challenges on the next season of survivor to see if there is anything we can use.

Abby was thrilled with the entire event, declaring it the best party ever! I had such fun with the whole thing, ML was awesome as our very own Jeff Probst of the party. It was just the best.