Winter One-derland Party

Love the play on words! If your little one is soon to turn one and it is cold and wintry outside, a perfect theme for your party may be a fabulous “Winter One-derland!” If it is December, January, or February and you are sure to be throwing an indoor party, here are some ideas to pull this theme together. It will work well if you are having older kids attending the party…otherwise, if you want to host a winter wonderland party, just drop the play on the words and you have a great plan for many ages!

For the invitation, cut out an array of mittens, snowballs, scarves, snowflakes in your party colors and place all of the pertinent information on the cut outs.

Another idea is to paint styrofoam balls with your party color, for snowballs, and attach a tag with the party details. These will need to be hand-delivered. For the decorations, use white as one color, for snow of course, and another color you would like to use as well.

Balloons and streamers in these colors can decorate the party room. Also, hang snowflakes from your ceiling at different lengths. You can decorate the party walls with big snow people that you cut out from large cardboard and other wintry items, i.e. mittens, hats, scarves, etc. Cover you furniture with white sheets, place styrofoam packing peanuts all over the party room for the snow, and create the look of a frozen lake by placing clear plastic bags on the floor.

Place a sign stating, “Danger: Thin Ice!” Hang twinkly lights all over the party room. Make snowmen out of balloons…taping three different sizes of balloons together and decorating their faces with markers. The kids can do this as a party activity as well.

For Crafts:

Make Snowmen: 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt, 1 cup water, 2 Tbs. Veg. Oil, 1 Tbs. Cream of tartar, 1/3 cup silver glitter, 1/4 cup white powdered tempera paint. Mix all ingredients together. Cook over medium heat, stirring until ball is formed. Knead dough until cool. Provide bowls with bits of cloth, paper, beads, pipe cleaners, felt, etc. Have the guests sculpt their own snowdough snowman and decorate it.

Make Snow Globes: Use baby food jars. Fill the jar almost to the top with water and stir in a few drops of glycerin and 1/2 a teaspoon of glitter and star and moon confetti. What the glycerin does is increases the density of the water and causes the glitter to fall much slower. This is a great party goody for the kids to take home!

For Activities:

Hopefully, you will have snow and you can make snow angels, build real snow people, go sledding, go on a winter nature hike, and simply play in the winter one-derland!

Have a Race to the Pole…set up different stations in the party room and have the kids complete a different task at several “places” as they make their way to the North Pole.

As example, go to Klondike, where the kids wrap up yarn into a coil, which they take to Greenland, where they dress in heavy winter clothes, to go to the Arctic Circle, where they map their progress by drawing a circle with a compass, and finally reaching the North Pole. Play “Hot Snow Ball” as you would “Hot Potato.”

Have a Blizzard: Blow up a large amount of white balloons, i.e the snow, and provide small fans to the two teams. The purpose is to fan as many of the balloons to their designated goal areas in the room. First team to get the majority wins! Hide icicles of various lengths all over the party area. Have the two teams hunt for as many as many as possible and then, as a team, piece them together. Whichever team forms the longest icicle wins!

For the Menu:

Make Snowman Pizza, using cheese, olives, and other veggies for the toppings! Make different sizes of pancakes and have the kids make snowmen out of them and chocolate chips to decorate! Pigs in a Blanket, to keep the piggies warm!

Ice Chips: Any type of chip with a dip Snowman Crackers, using cream cheese and veggies to decorate Make a batch of sugar cookies cut out into different winter shapes and have the kids decorate with sprinkles, candy, and frosting.

Serve mud and snow, hot chocolate with whipped cream Serve little donuts rolled in powdered sugar, mini snowballs.

Serve a Polar Ice Cap - Prepared Blue Kool-Aid, ginger ale, vanilla ice cream, clear glasses and straws.

Refrigerate the Kool-Aid and ginger ale. Fill a glass almost halfway with the blue Kool-Aid. Add ginger ale almost to the top of the glass.

Drop in one big snowball (scoop of vanilla ice cream), and enjoy with a straw!

Send home the Snow Globes as the favor!

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