She’s turning 13 … I CAN’T believe it!!

I wanted to make this year extra special for the milestone, so we combined our normal family/friends party with an over the top slumber party for the girls afterward.  It was an absolute blast!!

I must say that this party was equally the most challenging and most satisfying theme to do.  In true Melissa fashion, it had to be other the top … which meant I had to make absolutely EVERYTHING glow!

It’s also getting trickier to find age appropriate “games” for all of these teenagers that they actually find fun and engaging, so this year I designed a full escape room on the mail floor of the house with 8 complex puzzles to solve in order to deactivate a bomb (with a live timer).  So much fun!!  They had an hour to disarm the bomb, and they did it with almost 10 minutes to spare.

Take a look for yourself and tell me, did I do the “glow” theme justice?

The kids’ favours were these custom neon signs that I made using EL wire.  Super cool stuff!!

I really wanted the food and drinks to be super fun for this party.  Though a bunch of trial and error and testing, I was able to make every single item glow (and taste good).  A piece of advice, if you research how to make drinks/food glow on the internet the number one answer you will come across is to add tonic water to it.  Warning, it tastes like trash.  No matter how little you add, or how much you try to mask it with sugar, it still tastes awful.  Don’t waste your time or money on tonic water.

For the food, my answer was neon luster dust added to every recipe.  And for the drinks my answer was led light up coasters under the drink canisters, bottled water and individual cups.  Everyone could customize their light up cup colour, it was super fun!

After the bomb was deactivated, the cake was served and the presents were opened, all of the adults and boys left, and then the second party began which was set up in the basement.  I had kept the setup as a total surprise to Aylah until the reveal … it was pretty epic!

I prepped some fun activities for the girls including: glow twister, glow giant kerplunk, glow jenga, decorating their custom initial cups with neon stickers, glow nailpolish and body glitter, and glow friendship bracelet making.  There was also a full snack spread and a movie setup, but they ended up having so much fun with all of the other activities the tv never even turned on.  I consider that a success. 🙂

After a modest night’s sleep (they tell me they went to sleep at about 1:30am), I woke them at 8am with our bouncing licky puppy for a deluxe breakfast spread. 

I’m proud of every extravagant themed party I’ve put together, but this one was especially fun for some reason.  It really brought out the kid in me.

It was also icing on the cake when they asked me a couple of different times to hang out with them at the sleepover.  I guess I’m a #funmom.
My heart is full!

Happy 13th Birthday Aylah!!