8: RUN SHEET
If this is the kind of party where you’re having games or activities, this one will take a little more thought – but even if not, you might have speeches or other items, and it’s worth just sketching out a super quick order-of-events for your own peace of mind.
A nice, general rule of thumb is activity – eat – activity – cake cutting – activity – dessert – closing activity. (Having the cake cutting BEFORE dessert exponentially increases the likelihood of people actually eating the cake – though I did this with the pirate treasure party AND made a super tiny cake AND still ended up with nearly 3/4 of it left over!)
This rule-of-thumb guide often averages out to about half an hour per item, giving a three-hour party – usually a good length. If activities are your focus area you may wish to include more, but keep an eye on how it will impact your time.
Also keep an eye on props that you will need for your activities – you’ll add them to the timeline soon 🙂
For the Toy Story party, the run sheet looked like this:
Pass-the-parcel
Main food
Pin the eyes on the aliens
Cake cutting
Mr Potato-Head cupcake decorating
Dessert
And of course, it was at the local park, so there was play equipment around as well.
For the pirate treasure party, the run sheet was:
Coconut bowling
Main food
Treasure hunt
Cake cutting
Pinata
Dessert
Opening of presents
In addition to this, we had the paddling pool, the trampoline (which we scored free from the neighbours, who were moving out, on the morning of the party!), and the sandpit out for the kids to play with at any time.
9: BEFORE THE DAY
You need two lists here. List one is for food, along with who is going to be responsible for buying or making it, and when they need to buy or make it. The second list is for props (for decorations or activities), again with who is responsible and when it needs to be bought/made. Don’t forget to include the cake 🙂
When thinking about when things need to be done, it helps to break down each item into its components. For example, making the cake includes:
Shopping
Baking the cake
Shaping, possibly filling, and icing the cake
Decorating the cake
You could do each of these on a different day if you needed to (and I frequently do with big cakes such as for weddings!), or you could combine steps on days where you have more time (for example, I did everything but shop and bake the treasure chest cake on the Saturday afternoon before the party).
Do the same for food: how far out can you make things? What can you freeze and reheat on the day? Make sure to consider your timetable in the weeks leading up to the party: what days are you already booked out with other things? What days do you have a lot of time? Your aim is to spread the food and decoration making back as far as possible, so you have as little to do in the direct lead-up to the party – and definitely as little as possible to do on the day.
So, make your list of everything that needs to be made or bought, figure out how far ahead you can do it, and diarise it. Trust me: this is THE step that makes planning amazing parties without dying even possible.
10: ON THE DAY
By now, everything is just about done. You’ll need to actually put up the decorations (if you didn’t do that yesterday, or even last week if you have things that will last without getting destroyed – remember, we’re all about not dying here, so if the party decorations go up a week early to preserve your chill, GOOD ON YOU. Do what you have to do!), and there will probably be some food prep involved (at the very least you might have to actually place that takeaway order, or something), but everything that can possible be done already will have been, so you’ll be going into Party Day with a pretty clear idea of what you need to do. To help you on the day, you could make a list of everything you’ll need to do, and prioritise (and delegate!): what needs to be done first? How long will it take? When can you reasonably start working on things? How many people do you have to help out, and what can you get them to do?
Make that list, and also a list of anything else you need to remember on the day (there may or may not be anything), while you’re doing your planning. That way, on the day, all you need to do is follow your last list, then sit back, relax, and enjoy the party!
Just remember that like any good battle, no plan survives first contact with the enemy: if something’s not working on the day, don’t fight it. That’s a guaranteed way to lose your chill and end up dead. Instead, adapt. You have a whole Pinterest board of ideas; you know what the important focus of the party is; you know what your idea kernel is. Nothing else matters. Roll with it. And remember, the ‘partee’ will probably have a fabulous time anyway (and they’ll have a better time with you chill and not dead than they will if you’re dead of stress and terror).
Case in point: In 2016, kiddo had a Frozen party, because he was totally obsessed with the movie. Cakes are my thing, right? So I had this fantastic cake planned, with pale blue toffee shards, and blue icing, and a topper of Elsa and Anna that one of the grandparents was going to provide.
On the day, the toffee shards went cloudy, the cake was crumbly and the crumbs kept getting in the icing because I hadn’t allowed myself time to do a crumb coat before icing it properly, and the cake topper went missing. I, the one for whom cakes are The Focus, served up a cake bearing icing speckled with crumbs, weird-looking suspicious toffee shards, and a topper cut out of a themed paper plate. And you know what?
Kiddo loved it. It was perfect. There were Elsa and Anna in their ice castle, and his imagination filled in the rest. And because I’d consciously decided to Not Die, I was able to laugh at my ridiculous, imperfect cake even while I was making a mess of it – and a grand time was had by all 🙂 (Plus I had a great reminder about the need to plan adequate cake-decorating time! :D)
CONCLUSION
So there you have it: ten easy steps to planning an amazing, Pinterest-worthy party without dying or losing your chill. I’ve been using these steps for a few years now, refining them each time, and when I made the planning sheets so I could use them for the latest party in early 2018, WOW did that make a difference. I think it literally took an hour to plan the entire party (although as aforementioned, some of that changed when I raided my sister’s props cupboard).
If your party doesn’t come together quite the way you wanted the first time, that’s okay! First of all, it was probably awesome anyway, even if it was a bit different to how you planned. And secondly, like anything, the more you practise something, the better you get at it. Keep practising, and before you know it, you’ll have people asking YOU how on earth you manage to plan such amazing parties without losing your chill – or even ending up dead. 🙂