To be clear, the theme was Girl Detective, not Nancy Drew (she had never heard of Nancy Drew before, but now just a few days later is totally into it). She said girl detectives would wear pink and green (pink to be girly and green because it's like camouflage, lol).
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| The most important part she said was finding her a "detective dress". It had to look like a shirt and have pink and green. She didn't make life easy, but I found this dress at Gymboree on sale for about $12 and she loved it :) |
I made the banner on my cricut using the Birthday Bash cartridge (I love how this cartridge has different shapes for banners and the holes are cut out on the cricut eliminating the need to try to hole punch through layers of cardstock).
You can't really see it well in the photo, but the green is embossed with my Big Kick.
On the table I had gift bags for each girl, a secret message for them and several slips of paper turned upside down.
We started the party by having the girls sit down They each chose two of the pink/green papers and turned them over. The words they got formed their detective name. (There were plenty of extra so if they didn't like their words they could choose new ones). This was a HUGE hit. I was Rigatoni Ribbons. Some of the other names were Diamond Dolphin, Ruby Kansas, and Cupcake Sparkles. I don't think they even know my husbands real name, they just called him Macaroni Mittens all night.
In their gift bag I had a pair of dark sunglasses and a pack of fake mustaches. I had them put these on then stand in front of the wall where I took their picture. (I cut off the end of the pink table cloth and hung it on the wall as a backdrop).
Once I had all of the girls pictures I printed them off on the computer (using windows I chose the thumbnail size to print). I cut those out and had each girl attach their picture to a Detective ID badge I had made up on the computer beforehand.
Then came the mystery. They had to follow a path of top secret clues to lead them to a prize (a basket with the Nany Drew movie, some chips and some candy for them all to share).
When the girls opened this envelope there were seven slips of paper that appeared blank. I told them it was a mystery and they had to figure it out. Surprisingly one girl figured it out and yelled "It's invisible ink!" The girls ran upstairs to my daughters room where I had put a black light. This revealed the writing on the clues.
The way I made the code was probably too complicated, but they did enjoy it (some more than others). I wrote out the code on a large sheet of paper in highlighter and hung it on the wall (A=F, B=G, C=L, D=I etc;) Each girl got one slip of the paper from the envelope and had to decode her part of the clue. Each paper had a number on the back, so once each section was decoded they lined up in order and read the clue out loud piece by piece which led them to the next envelope and they decoded that clue.
This is the black light bulb I got:
And these were the invisible ink markers:
Word of caution...if your kids draw all over their entire body with these while you aren't watching you won't realize it, lol. My kids had a little rash on their faces and arms and I couldn't figure out what was happening. Later that night I was in my daughter's room with her and she started glowing bright pink - she had totally colored her face in and I didn't even know it!
The party was a huge success, the girls had a ton of fun!
