Flashback Friday: Candyland, By Request

Once upon a time I said I was going to post events that happened before the blog on Fridays but then with trying to keep up with just the stuff that is current, I never managed to squeeze it in. A couple weeks ago my sister asked me why she couldn't find my Candyland party on the blog and I had to remind her that it took place in the year 2008 BB (before blogging). Her friend was thinking of a Candyland themed party and wanted to have a look at it, so I have decided to use my poor neglected Flashback Friday to revisit it.

This was one of my favorite birthday parties to put together because the possibilities are endless. You could go really big if you wanted to with people dressed like the characters and a life-sized version of the game (which I almost did) or you could keep it pretty simple (which I did) and it would still be a huge hit because it is all about CANDY!!!

This was actually the least expensive birthday party I have done so yay for that too.

I would probably ideally do this theme for a 4-5 year old but Alyssa wanted Jo Jo's Circus for her 4th birthday and since 5 is an odd number, we did not have a party that year so even though she was a little old for it at 6 and suggested a rock star party instead, I had ideas for Candyland and as I shared my ideas with her she consented to let me choose the theme. In the end, she was more than happy with the way it turned out and thankfully none of her friends thought it was baby-ish, or if they did they kept their mouths shut and came anyway because again, CANDY!!!

Before I planned anything I bought some cardboard, paint and cellophane and made some cute decorations, including giant lollipops to line the walkway and lots and lots of candy peppermints to hang from my ceiling. There were lots of them and it looked way cuter in real life than my hurried pictures show.

Then all I did is looked at the game board and came up with an activity to go with each character. We used the game board as a map to King Kandy's castle and as we passed a character we had to stop and do the activity before we could continue our journey. There have been many variations of the board game over the years but the one I have included the following characters.

Stop 1: Gingerbread man
The kids decorated gingerbread man goody bags with markers, glitter, candy, whatever. They then carried them to each station and received a new treat with each activity. I bought the bags at 6 for $1 at Dollar Tree and traced the gingerbread man with a cookie cutter on brown construction paper.

Stop 2: Mr. Mint
I could not think of anything mint related so I put Seth in charge of this one. He painted a kids golf club like a candy cane and whoever hit the ball closest to the peppermint disc on a stick won. Sadly we had not mowed the lawn and it was hard to hit the ball very far but it made the kids laugh and it was still fun. The winner got a giant candy cane and the rest of the kids got peppermint discs for their bags.

Stop 3: Gumdrop Pass
I got a plastic container at Hobby Lobby and filled it with Dots. They guessed how many gumdrops were in it and the winner kept the whole thing. The runners up got a few boxes of Dots.

Stop 4: Lord Licorice
When we got stuck at Lord Licorice he would not let us pass until we made licorice necklaces with licorice rope, cereal and gummy lifesavers. No prize for this one but they did get to put their creations in a Ziploc and add them to their bags.

Stop 5: Grandma Nutt (AKA dirty peanut)
When Alyssa was little (3 or 4?) she made everyone play Candlyland with her 182 times a day and if anyone landed on Grandma Nutt she always said, "oh no, not the dirty peanut." We don't know why she didn't like her but Mrs. Nutt has ever after been referred to as dirty peanut. When we landed on dirty peanut we stopped for lunch. Grandma Nutt was nice enough to prepare Uncrustables for us and we had some punch and chips to go with it. Cheapest, easiest birthday food ever!

Stop 6: Princess Lollipop
I was going to make a lollipop tree for this one but we had so many things going on that I just kept it simple. The kids pulled a lollipop out of this bucket of gumballs. They kept the lollipop and if they got one of the two that was marked on the bottom, they also took one of those cool light up suckers.

Stop 7: Queen Frostine
Oh everyone's favorite, queen frostine way up there at the top of the board! For queen frostine we played a relay version of pin the ice cream on the cone. Each kid grabbed a scoop of ice cream (which I just freehanded out of construction paper) and put their name on it. Then they were put in to teams and the goal was to build their teams cone the fastest but they had to crawl, or hop on one foot, or whatever their particular color of ice cream was assigned to do. The team that finished first got candy ice cream sundae kits and the rest got those candy ice cream cones with the marshmallow tops.

Stop 8: Gloppy the Pudding Guy (is that his name or did I make it up?)
Okay so he is actually off to the side of the board and not on the little colored game squares, but I had to let him play. I covered my garage door in white poster boards and made a giant bowl of pudding. We dressed the kids in trash bags and let them fingerpaint. Awesomely messy! And there was no winner, so they all got to put a pudding cup in their goody bag.

At this point we stopped to open presents and then we were off to our final destination.

Stop 9: King Kandy's Castle!!!

I went with the obvious and made a castle cake. Seth and I did the cake together and it was our first ever attempt at cake decorating. Seth made all the parents come in and look at it when they dropped their kids off because he wanted to make sure it was properly admired before it was cut.

Did you notice that Seth spelled Alyssa's name in orange M&M's?

I know the kids had enough candy at this point but I also had a candy bar, with jars of licorice, ring pops, gumballs, etc. that they were also allowed to stop at to fill up their bags and then when they arrived at the castle they were also rewarded with a candy lei which Alex is wearing backwards so it was actually longer than it looks in this picture but isn't he so cute? I am so glad that he hasn't lost any teeth and still looks mostly like that same squishy faced little boy.

And pretty Miss Alyssa who was having way more fun than this picture suggests.

And since Chloe was not featured in any of those pictures, here are some from later that same night.

I just want to chew on that cute chubby face.

My sweet 6 year old baby who was almost too big for a Candyland party but still little enough to wear Barbie jammies and cuddle her baby sisters dolly.

Such good memories!!!