50th Birthday Party Games

by Karen
(Biglerville, Pa.)

I had a 50th Birthday party for my husband. I was stressed, as I've never really planned anything for like 40 guests! I wanted to keep everyone entertained. We had teens, up to people in their 70's, so I wanted the games to be fun for all of these age groups.

I wanted to do a trivia game about my husband, so I interviewed him, but realized that obviously close family would have a big advantage over say some of his racing buddies, so I decided every other question would be trivia on the year he was born, such as who was the president...gas prices...etc. Everyone seemed to enjoy this one. I had a prize table set up and the winner could just go pick whatever they wanted. Most were dollar store items. I tried to get a variety for men & women. I also picked up two watermelons for prizes.

I did the layer game where I wrapped the prize...about 11 times! This was A LOT of wrapping, but was well worth it! The guests really loved it. Especially the women. Each layer had instructions on where to pass to next. The instructions rhymed. I found a poem for it online, but I wanted to write my own and it was so much fun. I did one for the women and one for the men.

I bought raffle tickets at the Dollar store and raffled prizes throughout the party.

The only theme I really had was black & white. The party was at a park in a pavilion. I wanted lots of black & white balloons, but since a huge part of my budget went for the food, I didn't want the expense of filling them with helium, so I decided to blow them up & hang them upside down with fishing line from the rafters. Since it had been a little breezy, I found a tip about placing a coin in each balloon for a little weight. I thought a penny was a little light for outside, so I placed a quarter in each one. I save change so I had enough for all the balloons. They were a little tough getting into the balloons at first, but I blew each balloon up a little and let out the air and stretched the neck a few times, this helped.( I did this the night before the party and blew them up at the park.) While I was putting the quarters in, I thought I could make this a game! I went through my husbands coins he brought back from Germany and found a gold colored coin with a 50 on it. It was the same size as a quarter, just slightly heavier. Perfect! I put that coin in one of the balloons.

I had 3 helpers hanging the balloons. They did not know about the game I had planned, just that the coins were for weight. We cut the fishing line at random lengths. It looked like they were just floating. We spread out 3 balloons on each rafter. We did black, white, black on the first, then white ,black, white...following that pattern.

After the cake and gifts, I announced that I needed some help popping all these balloons. I gave everyone a ticket and explained that when their ticket is drawn, they can pick any balloon to pop and that I was looking for a coin with a 50 on it. I was hoping this would go on for awhile ( there were 39 balloons ) My sister popped the winning balloon on the 3rd ticket!

The party went well and I think these games were great for all the age groups.