Minute to Win It Fun

This birthday party was one of the most fun we've hosted in our 9 years of hosting birthday parties. It was pretty easy to do, and can be done on a limited budget using items around the house. Best of all, the kids had a blast!

Here's what we did...

All Access Passes

I created these invitations and all acccess passes in Publisher. I sent them to Staples to print because my color printer is on the fritz, but you could print at home. I had the passes laminated and added the lanyards that I bought on Amazon to make them all official. They turned out really cool.

The games were so much fun. I created this score board out of black foamboard and silver sharpie, and these trophies. I put together the trophies by gluing together plastic cups and then spray painting them gold, silver and bronze. I got the cups at the thrift store.

You can get the printable game descriptions with scoring here .

Cup stack

This is the classic cup stacking task. They had one minute to stack them into a pyramid. Most of them were able to do it, but it was challenging.

Cookie Face

i don't think anyone was able to complete this one in a minute. But they had a lot of fun trying.

Hour Glass

This was fun. Put marbles or gumballs inside empty 2 liter soda bottles and tape them together to create an hour glass. They were able to complete this one really fast. Next time I'll add a lot more marbles.

Chinese Takeout

This one was really fun. They had to transfer as many marshmallows as they could into the containers in one minute. I cheated a little by making the chopsticks into tweazers. I didn't think 9 year olds would be able to use them otherwise. If you were doing this game for older kids or adults you could use regular chopsticks though.

Anti-Gravity

This was harder than you would think. Keeping two balloons in the air for a full minute isn't easy. But it is really fun!

Junk In the Trunk

This one was crazy fun. I wish I had some better pictures of the girls in action. They strapped a tissue box filled with 10 ping pong balls to their backs and then had to empty it. They were doing backbends and handstands and everything they could think of to get them out. It was great!

Suck It Up

I couldn't help but imagine this is what the 80"s party scene looked like on a particularly crazy night (What? Not appropriate at a kid's birthday party?). What they were actually doing was using the straws to suck up smarties and move them to a plate. It was fun and no one passed out from sucking and blowing.

Clothespin Drop

Last but not least, a classic party game from my childhood. The clothespin drop. They dropped clothespins into a vintage milk bottle (although you could use a real milk bottle or other container if you don't have a mom who has all things vintage on hand). They averaged about 6 clothespins in a minute, so this was more challenging than I expected.

Food

We kept it simple with the food and served pizza, wings, veggies and dips. They didn't touch the veggies..what? :) I made the cupcakes because the birthday girl has food allergies and I wanted them to be safe for her. The clock toppers are oreos with sprinkles. This pinterest inspired project seemed like a good idea until I spent over an hour creating 24 mini clock faces. But they turned out good, don't you think? And as an added bonus, someone had to eat the other half of the cookies.

For decor I printed some vintage clock faces and glued them to old CDs, then hung them using fishing wire. They looked really cool spinning,

Hope you are inspired by this post to make the next birthday party an active one! See you soon!