Aiden's All-Star Sports Party

I love my sister's in-laws. They are just an awesome, super-nice group of people that have become friends of ours over the years. We go up to their lake cottage for an extended weekend every August, and have come to know not only my sister's mother and father-in-law, but also all the others in family, including brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews.

So I was very excited to plan my sister's nephew Aiden's 3rd birthday party for some of his neighborhood friends. A true boy's boy, Aiden likes anything to do with sports, especially basketball. We decided to give him an "All-Star Sports" theme to incorporate all the different sports that he likes to watch and play.

Because the weather in Michigan is tricky, especially in October, it was an indoor event. As each child arrived, we had them get a sports-themed temporary tattoo. A crafts table was set up for the children to decorate a felt pennant with markers and basketball, baseball and football felt stickers. It was a quick and mess-free craft for the kids to do while waiting for the party to start. For activities, we had a Baseball beanbag toss game set up. Instead of the usual red and blue bean bags, I bought soft squishy baseballs for the kids to use. There was also a game that had the children throwing colored ping pong balls into red buckets lined up at various distances (ever played the Bozo bucket game at Chuck E. Cheese?)

The favorite game was the obstacle course. I set up cones to weave through, pillows to jump over, a tunnel to crawl through and a kids basketball hoop to make a basket. The kids did it again and again, asking to be timed to see who went through the fastest.

We decided to do a candy buffet and simple snacks for the children. The buffet had chocolate sports balls, gumballs, Big League Chew and baseball and football suckers. Drinks were adorable baseball and basketball shaped bottles filled with red and blue sports drinks - a great grocery store find.

I created the Big League Chew basket and Pinball Game/gumball tube platform using different shaped boxes. I stuffed plastic bags inside the platform so that the tubes would not fall down into the box. After measuring and cutting out circles with a box cutter, I wrapped it in artificial grass carpeting found at any home improvement store and secured a ribbon and tag around it.

For the table, I used fake grass placemats to simulate "turf." I found coordinating paper goods with different sports balls. Each child found their seat by looking at the trophy placecard holders. Each plate held a soccer ball whistle and decorated straw.







Thank you to Stephanie Wagenborg for taking the photos. I will link up Steph's website once I make sure of the correct web address.

The best part of hosting this party for me was setting up and having Aiden get so excited every time I pulled something new out. His gasps and squeals of excitement were so precious. I think he had a good time.



To see all the photos from this party, go to my Facebook page - Search: Princess Prettys or go directly to this link: Aiden's Sports Party . What do you think?