The last big party?

Next week Mia turns six and she's very excited about her soft play party. It will be our fourth party at this particular soft play venue (our first one was Harry's fifth birthday!), because once you've found something that works why change it! It's a good sized soft play which you can hire exclusively so you don't need to worry about it being too busy, it's supervised, and there's only one exit, so you can keep an eye out for escaping children. We know exactly what we are doing now and it's not too much work.

I'm pretty sure that this will be our last big party. Hopefully from now on we can get away with something a bit smaller, or at least something that can be hosted at home like Harry's Minecraft party. This week I've been working on the party bags. In the past we've quite often ended up with a few extra children as people bring siblings along. This time I've specifically invited siblings so I'm pretty sure on my numbers, but I always make up a few extra party bags just in case anyone unexpected turns up. 

I remember how excited I was to be making up party bags for the first time - below are the ones we used for Harry's first big party! I must admit that the novelty hasn't worn off, I love making up the party bags, choosing what to put inside, and actually putting the bits into the bags.

There will be the traditional balloon and cake inside, as well as some sweets and a little chocolate bar. Then a few other bits and pieces - some bendy pencils, a little notebook and so on. I was particularly pleased with one thing that I bought - some little soft emoji keyrings which are quite sweet. I don't have many spares though so I'll have to use them all - I'm just hoping that no-one will be offended by finding a poo emoji keyring in the bag - hopefully they will just find it funny!

I'm also using up leftovers from previous parties, which I hope doesn't break any rules of etiquette. The contents of the bags are pretty much identical, but there will be a few bags with slightly different bits as I didn't want to over order. In particular the actual party bags themselves are the leftovers from four different themes - I'm hoping that no-one will notice or care! I've never done separate bags for boys and girls although I do have both pirate and princess bags, perhaps I'll have to let them choose which bag they want from the pile!

I'll be quite sad as it feels like the end of an era, but I won't miss big parties!