[sunnysandiegan]

My DD is turning 10 and requested a spa birthday party. We made cute slipper-shaped invitations (from items we already owned) and have a head count of 7 girls, including the birthday girl.

DD has some great ideas:

~ memory game (basket of spa/girl items shown for a minute, then they write down the items from memory)

~ ice-breaker games (talking game she found in a book and a game we have called Whoonu?)

~ matching game (complicated game with spa items in bags and the girls walk around asking each other questions with the goal to end up with matching pairs of items...I'm not crazy about this particular game and would like to offer something easier/less complicated, but am drawing a blank)

~ lotion sampler activity (have a tray or basket filled with various lotions and let the girls choose whatever they want to use)

I suggested and DD loves:

~ hand scrub activity for each girl while at the party (not sure how to implement it, but I have plenty of supplies already) -- would do this before the lotion sampler activity

~ making each girl a custom "perfume" (I have essential oils and would let the girls choose their favorite scent(s). I haven't figured out the logistics, though.)

The party is three hours in the afternoon. Is this enough to fill that time? There will be snacks and cake, but not a meal to fill time. DD would LOVE me to paint everyone's fingernails, but I don't think there is adequate time especially with drying time and all the activities involving their hands. Pedicures would be better, but seven girls and one adult??? How could I make that work?

Any other ideas?

A friend suggested slices of cucumbers on their eyes. In isolation, that seems odd. With a face mask, it'd be fun. No one has any allergies and all the moms are okay with whatever I want to do. They all know me well. What kind of face mask would be good for this age range? It'd just be for fun, but I would only want to use food items.

Thanks for any tips or suggestions!

 

[Seawen]

My daughter and I did a similar party last summer and we added in some spa crafts to take home (milk bath with dry milk and essential oils, sugar scrub exfoliant, epsom salts bath crystals). Wasn't that expensive and only offered a few scent choices (most mixed them all and they pretty much stank but the girls had fun.

I also BEGGED my SIL to come and help and together we did do pedicures for everyone. Half did crafts while half got their feet done then we switched.

My daughter loved it!

 

[MusicianDad]

For the matching game, making it cards with a picture or word relating to a day at the spa might make it less complicated than a bag with an item in it.

 

[sunnysandiegan]

Thank you both!

Seawen - What kind of containers did you use for the "concoctions"? At this point, I have nearly everything I need -- except individual containers....

 

[urbangoddess2]

It might be too much for a 3 hour long party, so if you plan the more complicated stuff for later, you might not even get around to it. I threw a spa party for my 11y/o DSD last year (6 girls in total) and we only got around to doing the masks, nails and lotion in that amount of time. I gave them each a spa gift bag to take home including chocolate face masks (non-edible), flavoured lip gloss, toe separators, nail polish and a file. The thing I noticed with my girl is that the older they got, the less interested they were in doing lots of activities and more interested in chatting, snacking and doing their nails and makeup.

Edit: Rereading your post, if it's just you and 7 girls and you're quite adept at painting nails, it shouldn't take more than an hour to paint everyone's nails and let them dry. Alternately, you can have them paint each others nails or their own.

 

[sunnysandiegan]

The party was today and it went fabulously!!! We had an itinerary (no times listed, but the exact order for easier transitions) and everything miraculously worked PERFECTLY! The girls were just finishing trading items from their pamper packs (favors) when the parents started arriving. They had time to chat during the spa experiences and during some of the games and at snack time. Some games were more structured. (I had planned to adjust the details along the way, if needed. I wondered if the girls would prefer more unstructured "chat" time and gave them some here and there, but they had a harder time with that than with structured time.) They also got a little alone time to relax at the beginning (hand scrub by myself or my friend) and again about two hours into the party when we removed each girls' face mask one by one.

I had a friend come help me and my DH helped. They were both very key! The three of us were dressed in black with name tags. Each room on our main level was renamed with a more "spa" name and had a sign with our spa logo. (DH created it and we used it on everything! So fun!)

We played "musical pedicures" in order to get their toes painted. LOL Very funny and fun game! They all have crazy colors on their toes now. Most of them loved it. Two were not so excited about that. I told them upfront it was just for fun and they could take the polish off as soon as they got home if they didn't like it. No one complained and they were smiling.

We skipped the matching game altogether in the planning stage, substituting the above game. I did do face masks. Plain cream top yogurt mixed with freshly ground oatmeal (bulk bin rolled oats). Sliced cucumbers over the eyes. The pictures were worth it, but this was a LOT more complicated than I ever imagined it would be. LOL My friend and I were laughing so hard at some of the comments the girls made as we slathered it on. As soon we got it on all of them, my DH snapped some photos (we had them on the floor in the living room while we applied it all) and we started removing it all one by one at the sink. It was the most work out of every single thing we did, but it was also the most talked about. We did foot soaks, too. I borrowed as many foot baths as we had guests and while I had the girls in the "lounge" playing games, DH and my friend got the foot baths ready in the "foot therapy area". Then, my friend got the girls into their foot soaks while I took their ice cream float orders (mostly root beer floats) and DH videotaped. This was a favorite activity...sipping floats while soaking their feet in fancy tubs...chatting away!

I didn't do prizes for the games for several reasons, but mostly because these girls all take "school" so seriously and I just wanted the games to be fun for them. We did some taste-testing (three varieties of apples and five "spa" waters) and they wanted to take notes!!! We already had the paper and pencils out for the ice breaker game immediately following, so I let them. Oh my! So funny!!! One girl (child of two educators, I might add) wrote an entire page on the taste-testing experience. I think they were all SHOCKED when I let them check their own answers for the memory game... (I had a small tray with 15 items on it and we gave them one minute to look at the tray and then 2 minutes to write everything they remembered down) I just brought the tray back in and plunked it down in their midst and let them look it over and chat about it all. They had the classic "deer in headlights" look over that.

All in all, they had a great time and my daughter is happy.

 

[Doodlebugsmom]

Sounds like a great party that my dd would love! She had a very small (2 friends) spa party for her 8th birthday. They made some bubble bath and lotion, I think. We did masks with just plain mashed avocado. It makes a nice, safe mask for kids. Looks pretty cool when it's on their face, too!

 

[Emma Mcvicker]

I'm no adult but I'm a 10 year old girl. I know how to crochet so i made a sheet 30 stiches wide and tall. to make one of these bath bags you will need about 10 feet of yarn, crochet hook, and a crochet needle. make a sheet of 900 stiches or 30 by 30. once your done with the sheet fold it in half and get the crochet needle and feed the yarn through the sheet leave the top open. then cut 6 inches of yarn seperetly and tie this string to the top.

you can also do this with sheer fabric as long as you know how to sew. this craft is fun easy and you can put soap,lotion,really anything and there great for parties i love mine.

 

[mtiger]

Next year (or the year after), your daughter may enjoy a scrapbooking party. I did that for my daughter's 12th, and everyone had a great time. I bought small scrapbooks for each girl, as well as stickers, etc. Asked each girl to bring photos, scrap paper, etc. They each made a page for the birthday girl, and got to take her own scrapbook home. It was also a sleepover, and the girls stayed busy from 6pm until around 2am. Only break was to make pizza. It was the BEST party we ever had.