Party in the Park

my daughter's 4th birthday bash

I wanted to go simple and I believe I succeeded.  The first glitch came about a month ahead of time when Annabel's teacher decided to use my idea for an end of school year party.  She had no idea that I had planned the same thing for my daughters birthday but I worried for a brief moment that this would ruin things.  Another mom told me not to worry, she'd come-her kids love the park with the water spout.  18 kids later it was obviously still a good idea!

The plan was the county park where there is a water spray play area.  It cost $1 a person to get in, and without offering to pay that back I still got 18 kids, roughly 10 families.  There are picnic tables at this spot in the park and I got there around 30 minutes early to pick my tables. 

We spent some time putting down purple table cloth, a line of finger foods, the cake and 2 princess beach pails filled with flower foam to hold my chocolate dipped marshmallows on a stick (awesome).

I had out these cheap little frisbees, a water gun and a box full of water balloons-the kids had a blast.

 my husband and another father filling water balloons.

The party favors were simple as well.  An idea I pulled of another website, possibly Martha Stewart-simple brown bags with a personalized clip for closure-girls got butterflies and boys got fish.  I added the personalized tag.  Simply scanned in my daughter's signature and added a few lines of text from there.  I used photoshop, but one could easily use MS Word or any word/graphics program.

these were stuffed with pencils, paper, stickers, erasers, tattoos-a vacuum's dream.  

Each kid took home a water gun and frisbee as well.

We spent less than $100 on finger food, all in total the party probably cost $150.  My daughter had a blast, friends stayed late-a good time was had by all.  It's a party I'll probably repeat again until she complains.