Birthday Un-Slumber Party

     As far as parties go, it's hard to beat a sleepover party.  My sister and I used to have friends over whenever possible growing up, and I have fond memories of those days (some of which you'll find at the end of this post).  Living in a one bedroom apartment with no couch, hosting an overnight party is out of the question.  However, there was nothing keeping me from offering the games, activities, and food of a slumber party during the day, and I decided to throw an un-slumber party.
     Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing the details of how I made the various crafts for this party.  For now, though, here's an overview of the decorations, activities, games, and food I had at my party, plus some memories of sleepovers past.

     While in years past I've thrown some elaborately decorated parties, this year I focused a lot more on the games and activities than I did on aesthetics.  As far as themes go, an un-slumber party doesn't have an obvious decorating scheme.  I chose a black and silver color scheme because that reminds me of stars in the nighttime sky.  I made this curtain of streamers to cover the entryway.

     Here are the plates, cups, utensils, etc.  All of the tableware came from Dollar Tree.  I bought plain black party supplies and then decorated the cups and utensils so that things weren't so dark.

     Here's the tablescape.  I bought a plain black tablecloth from Dollar Tree and scattered silver stars across it.  On the table you'll see two of our party activities.  One is a nail polish roulette game I made.  The other is coloring page photo frames which I designed, although you can't really see what's on the pages in this picture.  My plan was to have people color the photo frames and then send them home with the photo frames and a group photo to put in one of the frames as a souvenir.  However, we ended up spending a lot of time on the other activities, so I gave people plain pages to color at home.

     Brian made homemade pizza.  Pictured above are the pickle and cheese pizzas, but he also made Alfredo pizza (cheese pizza with Alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce) and his "heart attack pizza" (pizza loaded with hamburger and pepperoni).

     Playing nail polish roulette . . .

     . . . and the aftermath of our game.  Some of the colors kind of worked together, and some really didn't.

     Here we are taking a group photo with some of the photo booth props I made.  It's hard to see from this picture, but dad and I tried to give Katie bunny ears simultaneously.  Also, you can see Katie's lovely Stephen King book artwork on the fridge.

     For my cake this year, we I didn't do a lot of decorating.  I just made that Little Owl cake "topper."  Brian added some icing decorations.  I found the black candles with silver glitter at Party City.
     While eating cake and ice cream, we also played Mad Libs.  There is a free Mad Libs app that you can download for your phone or tablet.  It comes with a handful of free stories, but if you need more than what they offer, you can also buy whole Mad Libs books through the app.

     Aren't these slippers adorable?  They have the cutest little faces.  Brian got them for me for Christmas.  If you're throwing a party for a younger audience (I think the size I have is about the largest they offer) and you can afford to spend some money, these could make for great party favors.

     Dad always gives awesome birthday cards.

     It wouldn't be a Hathaway family function without an attempted murder!

     Failing to give dad bunny ears.  I always underestimate how high I'll have to lift my arm to make bunny ears visible.
     Well, that wraps up another birthday party.  What are your favorite sleepover activities?  Snacks?  Any favorite sleepover memories?  Here are some of the sleepovers that stick with me.  

     Katie, Becky, and I decided to camp out on Becky's porch swing.  We draped sleeping bags over the swing to seal it off from the bugs, but the bugs still got in and had a feast.  Plus it was really cold.
    Another time, we camped out in a tent in Becky's front yard.  Katie had seen one of those true crime shows in which a man cut a hole in the wall of a tent and abducted and murdered a little girl.  Katie was worried that someone was going to cut a hole in our tent and kidnap her, so I had to sleep near the wall of the tent.

     One final memory.  When my mom bought a shed for our house, Katie and I decided that before she started filling it up with boxes, we were going to have a sleepover in it.  She, Breanna, and I grabbed our bedding and junk food and camped out.  One of our neighbors heard about our plan and started banging on the shed.  We were sure we were about to be murdered.

     I can't remember if we barred the door before or after the knocking, but we were not letting any murderers in if we could help it!