Archive for Archive for July, 2008
Baseball Season Gift Tip: Baseball Gloves for Kids
If you will remember, I talked about Sports Fanatics Parties and how a game watched over the television could excite and entertain several family members (and even neighbors) for the duration of the party. Now, I’m going to talk about what gift to bring when there’s a kiddie party at a neighbor’s house, and there just happened to be a baseball game on TV. Two wonderful reasons to throw a house party.
The best gift for a 12-year-old boy who is having his birthday during a baseball game is something that’s related to the game and will encourage dreams of being a baseball star someday, such as Baseball Gloves!
Specialty Kid Sports accessories stores such as this advertiser, Kid Sports Inc, offer ready-to-use kids’ baseball gloves that you can just purchase, wrap and give. However, regular leather gloves need proper breaking in before usage. You can spare the little leaguer the trouble of breaking in a tough leather glove by giving some extra gifts:
1. Glove oil - to be used sparingly, or applied in small amounts until the leather softens up.
2. Petroleum Jelly - to help maintain the look and feel of the glove
3. A Glove Care handbook - To create a sense of responsibility for a treasured possession
After the game and the party, friends and neighbors can play baseball and the celebrant can properly break in your gift further! Have fun!
The Last-Minute Client: The Cant-Avoid-Party Agenda
Everyone hits some rough spots in the money area every now and then, but party planners take the biggest hit when an unusual party request comes along; namely, the last minute party help request.
The scenario
Your phone rings in the middle of the night and you struggle to make your voice seem normal. A friend or a friend of a friend is on the other line asking if you could help with the party next week. You say, ’sure’ because you figure that helping means doing dishes or arranging the table. Then, the client says “We haven’t started on anything yet, and it’s for 150 people.” Your world just turned upside down.
Money Matters
Firstly, you’re broke so that means you can’t put down payments on other party needs like table arrangers or decorators. You’d rather spend what little you have on the caterer. Secondly, a last minute party thing could mean that you and the client won’t have time to sit down and talk about the financial side, and arrange a suitable down payment for your services and other supplies. Also, the topnotch freelance employees could be fully booked and can’t clear their schedule for you, and you can’t even make it worth their while to drop everything for your party. one fast solution of course, is availing of a payday loan to tide you over and handle the more pressing money needs.
Improvise!
You can cut corners on decorations by doing them yourself. One trick that I got from Rachel Ray is the creative use of old things as table accents. Once you have several ideas in place, these will have to set the theme for your party, and there’s no turning back. A little dash of creativity goes a long way, like this centerpiece created for Rachel by Project Runway’s Daniel V. It’s just crystal glasses filled with old jewelry. It costs nothing and it looks wonderfully fabulous!
Save Time and Effort: Bulk Party Supplies
There are certain errands that a smart party planner can cut when she plans ahead. One of these is the errand of going from one department store to another looking for supplies, checking and comparing prices and grabbing catalogs. Some prefer to do these errands only when the down payment is secured. Maybe it is wiser to spend the cash that the client has already put out rather than draining the meagerly filled coffer to buy supplies that you may not even need.
I am all for the opposite of that last bit. Saving time and effort will benefit your party planning business in the long run, and here’s why: when the going gets tough, and party season is on, you won’t have time to go to the groceries to buy your supplies. In fact, even if you do have time, it will soon be wasted on mile long check out lines during the holidays.
Plan 3 months ahead, buy supplies when the demand is low; and do not forget to ask your local store for free catalogs, and their website address so that you can shop online (allowing a few weeks for delivery). Of course, one thing that is of utmost importance is being aware of the occasions that are coming up in the next months and planning around these.
What about financial priority? Do you risk investing what meager cash you have at the moment on something that could or could not make you money in the future? Fortunately there is an option to avail of a cash advance from a local bank or an independent provider, and payday loans that one could pay for in the future.
Trivia Games for Birthdays and Bridal Showers
One particularly fun way to celebrate a birthday and a bridal shower is to be completely sentimental about the celebrant and the experiences she went through until she reached that age or that event in her life.
Besides speeches and last dances, birthday getting-to-know-you games bring out the mushiness in people, so that a party planner won’t even have to ask anyone for a speech or a short song for the celebrant, everyone will be jumping in to contribute their trips to memory lane.
Nostalgia works!
A simple sentence starting with “Do you remember the time…” will make the guests and the celebrants feel the occasion. A must-do during speech time is to choose the person in the group who knows the celebrant best. One way to do this is to survey the people using these questionnaires called It’s All About the Birthday Star. It asks the guests what they know about the birthday girl or bride-to-be and you and the celebrant can decide which guest should do the toast.
One can even do a trivia game based on the answers to the questionnaires.
