night owls sleepover

what was it, two years ago that i first talked about the “night owls” sleepover party?
okay, so it was a year and a half ago…not too shabby. but believe me when i tell you that my girls did NOT forget about either the party details i talked about, or my off-the-cuff promise that we would do our own night owl party.
 
not only did they not forget, but in that year and a half that elapsed i managed to have another daughter grow to the age that she wanted in on the action, too.

even when i tried to convince them that owls are passé--foxes are the new owl--they wouldn’t bite. and as a last ditch effort i even threw out that maybe, just maybe they were too old for stuffed animals now? nope. it was night owl sleepover or bust.

all this to explain why i found myself on a saturday night a couple of weeks ago with 13—THIRTEEN—girls, ranging from 15 months (elliot) to 12 years, piled in my family room. and why for the three days prior i found myself attached to my sewing machine into the wee hours churning out stuffed owl after stuffed owl.

oh look, a pile ‘o owls.

party wise i really kept it fairly simple (besides all those dang owls). walmart had owl-themed paper goods (SCORE!) for 98 cents a pack. i had the girls make a banner from some scrapbook paper and owl stickers. i threw a yard of fabric down on the table as a runner.



if it was owl-y and under $2 then into the cart it went.
they made their own pizza, and i threw out some grapes and chips for snacking.



the fat little hanging owl lanterns were a pinterest find—$1 store paper lanterns + scrapbook paper wings, eyes & beak.




the cupcakes—another pinterest item—were easy. oreos split in half and topped with chocolate chips made eyes, an orange gumdrop cut in half made a beak. they were a hit.

there are an obscene number of owls in this one small photo.

i bought just about every “glow-in-the-dark” and/or light-up item i could find. between the party store, $1 store and walmart we had bracelets, necklaces, straws, and even glow in the dark balloons.
the only game i planned on was glow-in-the-dark freeze dance. but they were having so much fun just dancing that it ended up basically being a dark dance club.

which sounds kind of creepy now that i read it, like we hosted some sort of preschool rave. and then we 
played beer pong and did keg stands. oops.



but they couldn’t get enough of dancing to top 20 pop hits in the dark. even elliot wanted in.



then they all got their owls. i didn’t take a picture of this, of course. but i put each owl in a bag with a tag hanging that had a small clue as to the “personality” of the owl inside. my thinking being that i had such a range of ages—if it was random owl assigning i didn’t want a 12 year old to get a “princess” owl, while a 3 year old got the ipod wearing “music” owl. so they couldn’t see the actual owl, but had a clue as to what it was.



again—$1 store owl bags. SCORE. i collected all the bags after they got their owls and threw in a little notebook, some crayons and a pencil and some candy for them to take home.
to round out the night we got jammies on and snuggled in with popcorn to watch a movie on the big screen.



supervised by daddy ;)



gigi with her besties. of course we had to explain that sleepovers are only for girls, and her other bestie—uncle dan—couldn’t come. ;)

i put these three little girls in the bedroom to sleep, and left everyone over the age of 7 in the family room. then i spent the next hour and a half bouncing back and forth between the two trying to keep everyone settled and quiet. it may sound like i’m mean, but the next day was sunday. there were a couple of sleeping girlies in our congregation that day ;)

the next morning i made an easy breakfast casserole and some pancakes. they filled their bellies and then i threw out a little craft kit i got on clearance for them to play with as they got picked up one by one.
all in all it seemed like everyone had a blast. fortunately my girls are surrounded by lots of other sweet girls from good families, which makes doing things like this a joy.

as for those stuffed owls? well, you haven’t seen the last of them. tomorrow you can expect a nice big post with all the details on those guys. i’m sure you just can’t wait. ;)