Once a year we do a little celebrating in my Bright Lights Bible study group before slowing down for the summer. Last year was a tea party which was a very sweet afternoon with 24 girls. This year we had an ice cream and pie social! Even though it wasn't really different from last year like the other things I was considering - like a father daughter dinner. But these kind of feminine parties is what I do best, and I threw myself into thoroughly enjoying the preparation for this party too!
~The Decorations~
My favorite part of planning any party is the pretty little details, though neither did I want to over spend on a 1 1/2 hr. party. But when these lovely paper ice cream bowls and wooden spoons were found on sale at JoAnn's, I had to pick them up! Every ice cream social needs wooden spoons, right!?
The berry boxes I have an over abundance of from another party. The striped napkins are from Target. And the gumball machine I got for free as a white elephant gift!
These happy little ice creams were printed for free from OhHappyDay.
I was so excited to begin to incorporate these giant balloons into parties too! They are so fun and festive and instantly made the place look like a party! They were also an exciting item for two of the girls to win for one of the games! The best priced place I've found to buy them is at BloomDesignsOnline. It looks like they also have a lot of other great party items on there.
~The Food~
The girls were very generous in bringing pies to share, so that we had eight pies - enough that each girl could have had half a pie to themselves! :) The day before I was busy making homemade vanilla ice cream, then all the important toppings were sitting out for the girls to put on as they pleased:
Whip Cream
Sprinkles
Chocolate Sauce
Strawberries
Peanuts
Banana
~The Plan~
So many times have a tried to have an outdoor party, and only half of those times have worked out! Sadly this was one of the times, but no other plans had to be changes, it rained while we were inside eating our ice cream and it abated for our outdoor games - I was very thankful! Thinking up creative games is actually not my strong suite (it's more my mom's department) so I didn't have a very strong plan B!
I started the party out by reading a little on the history of ice cream then we went straight into our main game. This was a game that we had played with other friends before, and I had excitedly been planning to play it with my Bright Lights girls for a while now.
It was a Bible Scavenger Hunt, with 17 different Bible verses that, like clues, led them all over our property. For example, one of the verses they had to look up was
James 3:3 "Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body."
That led them to the tack room, then maybe in there they found
Acts 15:23 "And they wrote letters by them after this manner; The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia."
That led them to the mailbox.
After that, just as the rain began to fall, we all enjoyed the ice cream and pie. Then we made sure to get our big group picture and quick fit in one more game. I needed a game that would end up with two winners, now that I had two big balloons to give away. So I made paper ice cream cones, and like the egg toss game, they tossed ping pongs to their team mate to catch in their ice cream cone, and whatever team won got to take the balloons home.
So over all it was a great day, to me at least and hopefully for the girls too! And if you need an ice cream social planned, just ask me! ;-)
~Next Time On The Blog~
Anyone able to recognize this family? They're up on the blog next time!
