For my daughter's 5th Birthday I struggled with the fact that her friends ranged in ages 2 to 8.
I needed something good for everyone so we had a "Wild and Wacky Ice-cream Party". For the invitations I found some clip art of dancing ice-cream cone sundaes and peanuts. The front read It's a Wild and Wacky Ice-cream Party.... and inside I wrote Let's All Go Nuts! The party was mostly outside so decorations were simple. I decorated by finding a plastic table cloth in my daughter's favorite color. I taped pretty pieces of curling ribbon on it to make it fancy. I also placed helium balloons around the party area. TO make it look more like a ice-cream parlor I got a refrigerator box cut one side off and a square out of the opposite side. this way it stood upright. I painted it solid white then painted polka dots and triangles all over to look festive. One top I wrote The Wild and Wacky Ice-cream Parlor. During the party I had each child stand behind it and took their pic to include in the Thank You cards. The activities during the party was a create your own wild parlor hat ( I found plain white ice-cream parlor hats at a local Restaurant supply store ), Water Gun "Freeze" Tag, Whip Cream Hot Potato ( whoever was left with the whip cream pie got to stick it in someone's face), and a ice-cream themed water balloon relay ( each team ran down one at a time named a ice-cream flavor or topping so they could pop a water balloon. When all the water balloons were popped the team ran down and had to fill a sundae bowl with the popped balloons to win.) For prizes I found toy ice-cream poppers at the party store. For the adults I made a questionnaire from ice-cream trivia I found on ask jeeves web site and the winners received and ice-cream soda cup with crazy straw. Everyone had a blast! The best part was the ice-cream sundae making at the end. Instead of buying a cake I made brownies and all the fixings for sundaes. Each child got a sundae bowl, which I found at Wal-Mart 4 for a dollar, that I printed their name on. After they ate their sundaes I washed out the sundae cups and filled it with candy to take home. This party was a blast. The kids liked getting Wild and Wacky and I saved money by having it at home and using few decorations and lots of wacky ideas!