17480

Chocolate Party Sweet 16 & Slide Show

February 2008

KATHY in SEATTLE, WA  USA

Special Mention

Sweet 16 and chocolate party:  I decided to do a surprise party for my daughter's 16th birthday.  I only had a month by the time I decided so I started asking her friends if a certain date was good for them.  Once I picked the date, I started on a theme which was a sweet 16 and  chocolate party.

I made the invitations look like a candy wrapper.  The outside said shhhh.. It's a surprise party and the inside had all the details.  (When you send these allow extra postage) I wrapped them around a Hershey bar and sent them out. I invited her friends but also our family no matter the age. 

The colors I chose (one of my daughter's favorite colors is purple) was light and dark purple with some white for the balloons and tableware.  One table had a brown cover for the gifts. The rest were light purple with brown plates and dark purple cups and plastic ware. 

I started on a slide show that represented 4 parts of her life.  Part one was baby until about 2 years and I chose the song Music of my heart by Gloria Estefan and N'Sync. Part 2 was her friends (all her friends growing up with her) I chose You've got a friend in me. Randy Newman from Toy Story.  Part 3 was family  her grandparents, aunts, uncles and parents and I chose I'll Be by Reba McEntire and the last part was of her through the years from 2yrs to current.  I chose The times of your life by The Crew.  All the music was great but timing was important on the slide show so music matched the pictures. 

I had a chocolate fountain with everything you could think of to put chocolate on. Cookies, marshmallows,creme puffs, strawberries, kiwi, bananas. Everyone enjoyed that. I also had a small fondue with white chocolate in it.  I ordered pizza for the food.  We watched the slide show while we ate.

Then we played some games. Everyone was given a ticket with a candy bar name on it for drawings throughout the party; I had young guest draw tickets to help them feel involved.  The prizes consisted of chocolate items, gift cards to chocolate stores or beanie babies with the Hershey kiss on them. There was a candy jar to guess how many candies were in the jar (the winner won the jar of candy) and unscramble the candy bar names where everyone was given 3 minutes to unscramble the candy. The winner got to pick a prize. And the last game was a chocolate trivia game. I took party hats and cut them down to look like candy kisses and wrapped them in pretty foils. There were 5 colors of foil. They had a white ribbon coming out of the top with Hershey's written on it to look like a real candy kiss. Inside was a chocolate trivia question. Two of the kisses had an instant prize in them in which the guest did not have to answer a trivia question but still had to do a dare to get the prize. 

I placed the kisses all over the room for decoration and the game. The first person to volunteer could choose any candy kiss. When they unwrapped the kiss they had to read the chocolate trivia question and had  to answer correctly or the person had to draw from a bowl of funny dares.(one dare was stuff a marshmallow or two in your mouth and whistle happy birthday to the birthday girl.  It was so funny I credit this guest for setting the tone for the game and making it a huge success, all the others tried to out do the previous guest and did an excellent job in singing or dancing or doing motions to YMCA etc.  It was a lot of fun. 

There was a cheesecake and a white cake for the birthday- can't have a birthday without a cake and candles and singing. We ate cake while she opened gifts.   I save one candy kiss for my daughter to open as her last gift.  When she answered the question wrong her dare was to get all the guests to go outside where a cute little Saturn car was waiting.  The party was great even without the car, but she needed to start drivers training and we found a great car at a great price so included it in the party. 

The parting gifts were baskets wrapped in purple cellophane (I bought ½ off after Christmas) filled with a brown notebook and chocolate lip gloss (all teens love to write and love lip gloss, there was chocolate recipes and a chocolate candle for the adults.  My daughter just stood in the doorway crying for a moment when we surprised her.  It was well worth all the effort and was the best party I ever gave her. 

When guest left they all commented on the slide show or that party was well done or it was a great party.  I couldn't have asked for anything better than that!  It was a party to remember for a long time.  I rented a banquet room at a local hotel for $100, made my own invitations and decorations.  Total cost not including the car was about $300-350.

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