Graffiti Party

Just before school begins each year, Bunny has her closest friends over for an end-of-summer party. These are friends she has known since pre-school, and I find that getting them together before the new term starts helps reacquaint everyone and calms the back-to-school jitters they’re all feeling.

This year we had a Graffiti Party. We planned to have the party in Bunny’s playhouse

Here it is before the party, with its pale pink interior (I plan to take over this playhouse when the girls have outgrown it!)

Within minutes of arriving, the girls were out in the garden having a water battle. Water guns, water bottles...even a drinking cup was used as a weapon!

Then five drenched 10-year-olds gathered outside the playhouse, reading the special sign Bunny posted

Welcome to the Graffiti Party!!!

Inside, we had lined the walls with a roll of art paper...

...and put out a little table with five plain white T-shirts, fabric pens, and an assortment of markers, pencils, crayons and stamps.

First, the girls changed into the T-shirts, and I hung out their other tops to dry in the sunshine. They proceeded to giggle and chatter their way through the next few hours scribbling all over the walls and all over each other’s T-shirts!

Ah, do you remember being 10? All the little pictures and words they doodled are in-jokes for this fun gang, and I love to celebrate their friendship. We’ll keep these graffiti walls for a long while, I’m sure!

Then it was time for some snacks. In addition to the usual party munchies, I made some chocolate cut-out cookies with the ‘speech bubble’ cartoon cookie cutters I bought from Lakeland.

I iced them with royal icing, then did my own graffiti of the girls’ silly nicknames for each other.

I used these brilliant food writing pens I found online...

I gave the girls a batch of the cookies to decorate for themselves. Again, more nonsense and fun, this time in the form of edible graffiti...  

It’s nice to find a party theme for this often tricky age group – too cool for princesses or most themes now, but still young enough to giggle and scream during water battles!

And here I give due credit to my mother, who threw me a Graffiti Party when I was a girl. I can still remember the white sheets hung all over the room, and how my friends and I couldn’t believe we were going to be able to draw on the walls without getting in trouble! I carry these memories with me still, and that what inspires me to do the same with my children. Happy times!

Chrissie x