Girls’ Camping Birthday Party

My oldest turned eight years old this past weekend, and we celebrated by having her first slumber party with some of her very best friends.  The theme?  Camping!

I purchased the most adorable camping party printables from Lillian Hope Designs.  The party kit came with a custom invite, custom signs, banners, tags, printed paper… the works!  I’ve done the whole theme-decoration-thing from a party store before, and I think this is the way to go every time.  I love that it’s customized and that I can print it at home, rather than having the same old thing that every one else has and having to find a store with every item you want in stock.

I set up a simple sweets tablescape in our dining area.  (See the cute banner?!)  With such a small group of girls, I didn’t see the need to go overboard so I kept it simple with some trail mix, chocolate-dipped marshmallows, and some color-coordinated Sixlets.

The trail mix was made by mixing chex mix with some M-n-Ms (I got lucky by finding Easter M-n-Ms at the store since the colors matched perfectly) – the mix was spooned into canisters as party favors. The little jar canisters were found at Hobby Lobby during a 50% off glass sale so this was super-cheap.  I attached the printable Thank You tags with pink Divine Twine that I had in my stash, and called it done!

Of course, we also had a pretty cool cake, courtesy of this idea from Hostess with the Mostest.

The girls were fascinated with the fact that it was entirely edible except for the sign…

After cake, it was time for a little camping craft time: the girls made S’mores necklace charms from polymer clay.  This was a surprisingly easy craft activity – I led the girls step-by-step while my sister helped them keep the charms to scale (these are tiny).  I attached the jewelry hardware after baking, placed the charms on a necklace cord, and put them in their goody bags for the next morning.

They turned out really cute, and the girls had fun making them.  It was also a nice introduction to the evening’s final activity: outdoor movie and real S’mores!

We hung a white sheet from our outdoor pergola and borrowed a movie projector for this fun event.  The pergola is by our outdoor fireplace, so the girls snuggled up together on a couch around the fire, sang a little “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, and ate S’mores to their hearts’ content.

Following all of this fun was about two and a half hours of the girls talking, switching sleeping spots, and waking me up until they finally fell asleep a little after 1 am.  Oy.  It took a loooooot of coffee the next morning to make me a little bit more pleasant after the exhaustion from the night before.

By 10:30 the next morning the girls had all been picked up, most of the house had been picked up, and we were all ready to curl up for a little nap (okay, maybe just me, but whatever).  It was all worth it to hear “This was the BEST PARTY EVER mom!” from this sweet girl…

She followed that quickly with “I want the same kind of party next year too!” – Of course she does.

Have you guys hosted a slumber party yet?  Any tips for making them sleep?!