Dancing Birthday

So this was from a little while ago but I still wanted to share. My daughter wanted to have a dance party for her eighth birthday. My husband was super helpful too and compiled a cd for us with a bunch of really fun upbeat (and kid appropriate) songs. We had to have some great music for our dance party!

She picked out the colors all by herself. Then I had a ball coming up with things to decorate with. We had red vines, cinnamon bears and sweedish fish to snack on while we danced our hearts out. I also had red musical notes and black footprints decorating the walls.


We came up with a lot of fun games with such a broad theme. A few:

• The kids had to do relay races like carry a cinnamon bear on a spoon from one side of the yard to the other BUT they had to do a whatever dance move the person shouted out and they had to be the quickest.
• I lined them all up in two rows and had them do over their shoulder and through their legs with a balloon. When it got to the end of the line the last person had to dance to the front of the line. The first team to have everyone dance was the winner. We actually did a few variations of this because the kids were having fun like, switching kids on teams, having to spin the balloon around their middles, etc.
• We had an entire living room packed full of red and black balloons. I filled up about 10 other colors of balloons and then made a chart that corresponded. For example blue=do the twist, yellow=sprinkler dance, green=disco. I played music and when I stopped it the kids all had to grab a colored (non red/black) balloon and do that move.
• Inside each of the (non red/black) balloons I had a small paper. On it was written an instruction. After we played the above game everyone chose a balloon and we went outside. The kids had to try to keep their balloon unpopped the longest. When theirs did pop they had to read the paper and do what it said. Ex: 'Do 4 cartwheels and say Happy Birthday each time.' or 'run touch the fence then find the birthday girl and say 'Dance baby dance!'

I usually always try to make Tarl draw something for the kids birthdays'. :) Usually we do pin the __ on the __ but this year he drew her a great personalized poster. (After the party we hung it up in her room and she loves it!) The morning of her actual birthday this was on the front door. I'd also made about two dozen signs (all having to do with the number 8) that we hung up all over the house for this milestone birthday.






I looked for a long time, trying to decide what exactly to put on the cake. I decorated the house in musical notes and dancing feet so I figured the cake would look good with disco dancers. I realized after the fact I should have outlined them but I was too tired so I just let it be. I think it still turned out ok though.