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This party was awesome fun, and is still talked about six months later! It involved a mix of physical activity, craft, free play and organised games, inside and outside.... but wasn't expensive. Games were tied to "The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe". Children were aged 5-6 (the birthday boy was the youngest).

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The children entered the house through the "wardrobe door", which was just the regular doors with large sheets of paper painted brown and then with Narnia stuff drawn on it like the movie. It looked dodgy, but my kids had fun doing the drawings, and the visitors "got it", so what else matters?

The room they went into was "Narnia in the snow", with cut-out snowflakes (the kids and I enjoyed making them all week!) suspended by pale blue crepe paper (found it in the back of a cupboard!) from walls, light, furniture etc. I hung white fabric/sheets/whatever over the furniture and shelves to make it look more snowy, and some of the snowflakes were stapled to that too. I hung a string of fairy lights around the room. The piece de resistance (and most $$$ thing at the party) was 200L of packing peanuts spread on the floor for snow... and of course snow fights!!! I made a lantern out of a cardboard roll with box stuck on the end, painted black, then with yellow paper stuck on for the light bits (hope that makes sense).

The kids played a chasing game where the person who was "in" was the witch with a wand. If you got caught you had to freeze - and you could only get unstuck when Aslan (child with lion puppet) breathed on you (the puppet that is). We just happened to have the wand and the puppet; this would have been quite doable without them.

The kids also played hide and seek - the covers I'd put on the furniture in the snow-room worked well here!

The children had a "quest", and each point on the quest had clues they had to follow to reach the next point. These included - killing the baddies at the war ground(trampoline on its side, pictures of Narnia baddies stuck to trampoline, throw water balloons), conquering the White Witch using swords (home made pinata of white witch, swords were sticks with a hilt fitted!), .... hmmm I forget what else!

The quest included the craft table, where they made crowns for the feast.

I'm aware that any party is likely to include a child who'd like some time out, and I've found a craft table kids can go to as the please (at its most basic, stuff for colouring, some stamps, stickers, glue, glitter, collage stuff) has meant I've never had to deal with an overloaded child - those who don't want to play the game take themselves off to do craft. Works a treat.

Lolly bags were brown paper bags with a crest designed for each child. I made the crests on the Walden website (producers of the movie).

The quest ended at the feast. Food was simple, and they didn't eat much, but DID include Turkish delight! The table etc was all red and gold, with lion pictures around it.

The cake - quite embarrassing really. My Narnia-addict son had collected all the Mcdonalds Narnia toys and after all the elaborate cakes I've made over the years, and my big plans for an Aslan cake.... he wanted one with the toys on it. Fine with me (and just as well really because I didn't appreciate how long the water balloons would take).

We didn't ask the children to dress up, because for some kids at this age (eg mine) this can be a bit overwhelming BEFORE the party.

This was NOT a big budget party. It took some time, but almost all of it was done with my children (apart from those water balloons!) and preparing together was a lot of fun.

Submitted by OnlySlightlyNuts