A Bowling Birthday Party

We’ve never really done ‘package parties’ for any of the girls birthdays, always preferring to organise our own because a/ they usually work out a little bit cheaper and b/ even though I’m an introvert I do really enjoy playing at being the hostess on the odd occasion!

Birthday parties that we’ve arranged in previous years have included a cupcake-decorating party, a pamper party with a best friend, a trip to the cinema with a couple of mates, and one where we hired a hall, invited the whole class and had music and party games. They’ve all been super-fun in very different ways.

We have two Winter birthdays and a Spring one, so I usually start thinking about what to do for their parties a couple of months before the big day to give me enough time to get everything sorted and send out invitations with plenty of notice. I enjoy the planning process enormously, though I freely admit I’m definitely not one to spend hours on Pinterest creating specially themed boards. I wish I was – I’d love to be able to achieve the kind of parties you see on there! I hugely admire a blogging friend of mine, Capture By Lucy, who designs the most astonishingly detailed birthday parties for her two boys and her niece. You can have a look at a couple of examples here and here – they’re amazing! It’s incredibly inspiring and one day I hope I too might be able to pull off something like that… maybe 😉

Mimi turns eight next week and we’ve been having a few challenges with her recently so I wanted to make it something special for her. We went backwards and forwards with ideas for a while and originally she wanted a disco party, but then I think nerves got the better of her – she really doesn’t like performing in front of people so the thought of being on the dancefloor in front of all her friends was a bit much I think. Then she came up with the idea of a bowling party and she was so excited about it that we knew it had to be that!

So we invited five of her school friends and booked a standard birthday package at TenPin on a Friday afternoon after school from 4.30 to 6.30pm. For £9.49 per person you get two games of bowling, a hot meal (the usual burger/chicken nuggets/fish fingers/veggie fingers with chips options), juice and balloons. It was a brilliant time of day to do it because we had the place to ourselves when we first got there, which meant that everyone could run off some excess energy in the arcade (without annoying anyone!) before we started our first game of bowling. We got to choose when we had the meal, so we had it halfway through the party, and then by the time we’d started the second game there were loads more people there and a bit more of an atmosphere. Mimi, her sisters and her friends all had a brilliant time and I think I’d consider it as an option again as it made everything much easier and less stressful knowing that all I had to organise was a cake and some party bags!

Here are some photos from the evening. Her actual birthday is next week, so watch this space for another blog (with more photos) coming soon…