20359

Sweet Swim Bash -16yr- Leukemia Fundraiser

August 2009

Susie in Greenville, IN 47124

Special Mention

For my daughters 16th birthday, she didn't want the typical dance party so I rented out the local park's depts. aquatic center for a big swim bash in the evening under the lights.

For INVITATIONS, I simply printed the info with curly font on hot pink paper with a sweet 16 clip art at the top. In the invitations, we asked that instead of gifts, for guests to bring a donation for Light the Night" to benefit Leukemia research as my daughter's 5 year old cousin was diagnosed last year. The invitations were then rolled up in a scroll and tied with silver curling ribbon to a Sweet 16 white chocolate lolly pop that I made with a mold found on ebay.My daughter passed out about 80 of these invites at school. Family was invited through email which is the norm in our family!

On the day of the party we had some surprises that my daughter did not know about. A week before the party I used a popular social website to contact her closest friends and invite them to a pre party. They all showed up at our house "unexpectedly" about 6 hours before the party. We then had a long white limo show up as a surprise and sent a group of 10 out to dinner and then to a local gocart/arcade place. All of the kids were so surprised. And this gave my husband and I time to get everything else together for the big party that night without "help" from the kids.

All of my daughters guest arrived for the big party at 6:30 which gave me time to set up the big entro of the limo guest 10 minutes later. When my daughter got out of the limo she was surrounded by all of her friends and completely attacked with silly string! All of the kids loved this along with my daughter! We then started the party with telling the guest they can either help themselves to pizza and drinks or start swimming and playing sand volleyball. There were diving boards along with big slides and we had music my daughter had selected playing over the sound system. Some guests started swimming while some started eating.

For PARTY SNACKSwe served pizza bought at the local $5 per large pizza place along with canned soft drinks.

For DECORATIONS I didn't have to do much. I had one table covered in a sliver table clothe placed in front of a flower garden at the aquatic center for the cake table.  This made a great back drop for pictures. Around the cake I had hot pink sweet 16 confetti sprinkled and I had hot pink plates and hot pink personalized sweet 16  napkins with silver foil writing that I ordered online.I had another table also covered with a silver table clothe set up for a guest book sign in where all of the kids wrote my daughter a note in her scrap book.

On this same table I had boxes wrapped in hot pink paper with slots in them. One was for the donations and 2 were for door prizes: teens and children. Along the back of both tables I had 5x7 picture black frames with labeled pics of each of my daughters first 15 birthdays with each of her cakes. I received so many comments about how nice these were and some people even got teary over them! I also had a few balloon boquets sitting around with black hot pink and silver laytex balloons with sweet 16 mylar balloons.

The CAKE was a three tiered topsy turvy hot pink black and silver master piece! It had silver fondant ribbons on top and on the sides with a silver fondant "16" on one side of it. It was beautiful! I reserved the best bakery in town 6 months ago to make sure I got a great cake. The flavors were chocolate chocolate chip and lemon-strawberry swirl yummy!

As mentioned before for ACTIVITIES the kids swam played on the water slides and diving boards and played sand volleyball. Because it was a swim party there were no COSTUMES however my daughter did buy a special sun dress for the party as a swim suit cover to look nice in pictures.

For GAMES we decided on drawing door prizes as sometimes games don't go over to well with teens. I used my reward points on my visa card to purchaase gift cards to clothing stores teens frequent…(that's also how I paid for the dinner for the kids in the limo). I taped the gift cards to $1 boxes of candy and we drew 5 names for the prizes. I also had a separate drawing for younger kids and gave away prizes bought at the local dollar store. The kids loved the door prizes and having there names called over the sound system.

After the party had been going for about 45 minutes we called all of the guest over to the cake where we sang happy birthday and blew out candles. We then announced that we had a special surprise for our daughter but she had to be blindfolded first. She was then led outside to where she had a nice used convertible with a big bow on it waiting for her she was so surprised!At the end of the party as guest were leaving my daughter handed out party

FAVORS: champagne glasses that I had bought 4 at a time from walmart for $5 all year long. We printed cards of on pink card stock and framed with black card stock that said "Thank you for celebrating with us!" and tied them to the glass stem with pink and silver curling ribbon and then filled the glasses with hershey kisses they were so pretty and the guest loved them! It was a great party my daughter and all of the guest seemed to have a great time I even had one teen who was one of the limo guest tell me it was the best day of her life so funny!

Last but definitly not least we raised over $400 for leukemia research!"

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