Gracie’s Hunger Games Party A Rousing Success

Recently we celebrated Gracie’s 12^th birthday because she has been sick for so long we wanted to celebrate her health and her birthday in a big way. With that, I did something very different than our usual cookout party for her. We had that, but we also had a week a later a Hunger Games sleepover party. She wanted just a few of her closest friends to come to the party. Sadly out of the seven girls that we invited only two showed up. It made me sad for Gracie but then as the night wore on it made me happy. I ended up telling Maddie and Mikaela that they could invite some friends over to help eat the pizza that we had paid for and just to hang out. All that attended had a great time and I don’t think I heard Gracie laugh as much as did that night. It was such a beautiful thing to hear and to see her smile was a genuinely happy smile brought tears to my eyes. Anyone that has had a child that has been sick you knows what I am talking about, that moment when you realize that your child is actually happy after all they have been through is just a blessing.

But onto the party. I did the Hunger Games theme in a very inexpensive way.

First I made paper chains from a book. I tore all of the pages out of a book than using a paper cutter; a cut them into strips. I loved making these as a child, and I thought wow this is such an easy project that won’t cost me anything to make. I made the chains by stapling each ring onto each other. With the help of Lex, Maddie’s boyfriend, and Maddie we attached them to the ceiling using pushpins. The great thing about making these paper chains I can reuse them for Maddie’s Graduation Party and then they will find their permanent home at my friend’s house in her classroom, since she homeschools.

Another thing that I did was make a tablecloth out of book pages as well. This was very straightforward and easy and frugal to make. First take a book and tear out all the pages, but don’t cut them up. Then take some wrapping paper and using mod podge glue the pages down onto the wrapping paper and making sure to put the glue on top as well, so the pages can overlap. It makes such a statement for your table. I loved the way that it turned it that I plan on doing runners for the picnic tables at Maddie’s Graduation Party.  So this has a dual purpose as well.

Now onto the Hunger Games themes, I found some awesome printables here. These allowed me to customize the food for our party. For the food we had

• Finnick’s fishes, which were whales from the dollar tree
• Doodles Straight From The Capitol- A bag of Cheese Doodles I grabbed at the Dollar Tree
• Cheese Bread from Mellark Bakery- Little Caesar’s Pizza
• Katniss’ Wild Strawberries- Strawberries from Odom Farming Company, which were delicious

• Gracie’s Hunger Games Cake –A wonderful Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting from a new bakery I found Bake My Day.

Of course, before we ate we had to make sure we used some Tracker Jacker AntiVenom AKA Hand Sanitizer.

The sponsor gifts aka Goody Bags were mason jars that I filled with candy, hand sanitizers, boogie wipes and flower hair clips.

This party was by far the best that we had and the one that was less stressful for me to prepare for, now as far as the guest situation it started out stressful but as you can tell by the pictures a very good time was had by all.

The kids had so much fun skateboarding, hanging out, riding bikes, eating, doing partner pushups and just, in general, enjoying each others company.

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