Pictures of Wonderland

If you followed my blog at all last week, you knew that our oldest daughter was planning her 16th birthday party this last Saturday. She had it a week early due to so many of her friends leaving for summer camp or just having things planned this weekend.

What were we thinking? We gave her all kinds of options for a party, but then came across an idea on the internet for an Alice in Wonderland themed party! She fell in love with it since it is her favorite Disney movie.

We changed the title to Caitlyn in Wonderland and designed two party rooms. One decorated all in playing cards, red, white and black streamers, and a huge 10 foot banner than we all painted for 5 hours one night for the game room. This is the room where we hosted all the games.

As you can tell, there I am in black with blond hair reading the instructions for the Amazing Race challenge game that all the teens loved. We divided them into two teams, team red and team black. We created 10 tasks for each team to complete. They were sealed in envelopes with clues to what task they might be faced with. We even had roadblocks and detours. Everyone on the team had to participate and they couldn't have the same person complete tasks until everyone else had gone.


The first task was that they were guess the flavored jelly belly's blind folded after you successfully found 2 green, 2 yellow, 2 white, 2 red and 2 speckled pink jelly beans with the help of one of your team mates. They got points for each correct color found and bonus points for the flavors. Not many got the flavors correct.

Then we had them designate two people from their team that had not participated in the jelly bean game and one was blind folded and the other stood at the top of the stairs and tossed filled balloons to the blind folded person below. I think we had more laughs from this one because the first team caught none and the other team caught 2.

Then we had them blind fold one of their team mates and scoop up cotton balls with a serving spoon and drop them into a bowl.



They actually did this one pretty good because we timed it. They got points for every cotton ball they received.

Then they had to paint white silk roses red with marker. We awarded the team who colored all their petals, points for each petal painted.

As you can tell, this one was almost completely red. I mean what would the queen say?

We also had them scrabble tiles over and spell "Caitlyn in Wonderland." Here my youngest, Kailee was even able to participate!

Then we also had them sort Roman Numeral Letters in order from the highest to the lowest. As you can see here. The only thing we would tell them is how many they had in the correct order, not which ones were correct.

There were more challenges and if you want you can email me and I can send you all 10 tasks and the clues we used if you want to do this for your party.

We completed her party with her cake, which we did at Costco because I didn't want to try and master a fondant Alice in Wonderland cake like the one pictured below. I know I could do it, but the costs to complete this would have been more than I wanted.

So I opted for a Costco cake with roses and we added the colored hearts to it. Caitlyn loved it and said it was her best birthday ever.

After the cake was finished the kids played Catch Phrase which they all loved. Great game that is passed around much like password. Definitely a teen game. Then because we had a 110 degree day, they all went outside at 8:30pm and played Hide and Seek until everyone had to go home.

Before our guest left, they all signed her banner with well wishes and comments. We also gave them a treat bag filled with "Eat Me" cookies and a tea bag wishing them all, " A Merry Unbirthday!" Thanks Samm for the bags and cookies.

One key detail I left out was when each of Cait's party guests arrived they had to pop a balloon with a task inside. For example, each time you hear the word "Caitlyn" you must yell, "Happy Birthday!" We had a grand total of 14 of these going on with phrases like "Off With Her Head!", "Long Live the Queen!", "Has Anyone Seen the White Rabbit?", "I'm Painting the Roses Red! and "It's My Unbirthday Too!"

When I asked Caitlyn what her favorite part was, she said either the Amazing Race Game or the Catch Phrase game. Go figure, teens love games!