This indoor camping themed party will have your guests feeling like they’ve spent the night in the forest, without ever taking a step outside! 

Can I just say that I love summer?  I may not be saying this tomorrow, but today, having my kids home all day, all the time is so FUN! We’ve been following a pretty relaxed schedule. There’s been swimming, and having friends over to play, going to the library, hanging at the zoo, and.. partying!

How to host an Indoor Camping Themed Party

We planned this slumber party for my girls, to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer. Both girls LOVE camping, so sharing some of the things that we like to do with six of their nearest and dearest made planning this party easy and the actual event a huge hit with the under ten crowd.

INVITATIONS

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We started things off by making and sending out these super cute invites in the shape of a tent. If you’d like to make your own, the pattern is available to my subscribers and can be found on my Get the Goodies page.

DECORATIONS

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Decorating was a cinch – just think camping! I put together this super cute banner at the last minute using Get the Goodies, tissue paper, a glue gun and a bit of Get the Goodies.
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Mini cooler decor camping party
The camp name is a combination of both girls names – Kyla and Bekah and is also a name we used to tell them stories when they were little. Princesses Kybekah and Byla were always up to some mischief!
For the dessert table, again, think camping – I used a lantern, a mini cooler, a vase of blue spruce branches, decorative pine cones, gingham paper napkins and fabric, a red dutch oven and various tin dishes and wicker baskets. For dinner plates, we used aluminum cake pans.
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                                                                  FOOD

Food couldn’t be easier for a camping party – anything goes! We served:
  • Grilled hot dogs
  • Mac and cheese fruit tray, and various other crackers and snacks.
  • Cut Fruit
  • Various other crackers and snacks

Dessert was cupcakes, s’mores, and various other treats, as well as a make-your-own popcorn/trail mix bar.  The popcorn trail mix bar included craisins, raisins, peanuts and almonds, pretzels, peanut butter and regular m&ms, mini marshmallows, granola and honey nut cheerios. They could also add “fishing bait,” otherwise known as Swedish fish and gummy worms.

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Later in the evening, we served oven s’mores!
Camping Party Smore Snacks
HOW TO MAKE OVEN S’MORES 
  1. Preheat your broiler.
  2. Assemble your s’mores on a cookie sheet – graham cracker, chocolate piece, and marshmallow.
  3. Place the cookie sheet under the broiler.
  4. Watch your s’mores carefully. The marshmallows will puff and brown quickly!
  5. When the chocolate is melty, and the marshmallow browned, remove the sheet from the oven.
  6. Place a second graham cracker on the stack, pressing down slightly.
  7. Cool before eating.
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 The following morning each guest made a personal lumberjack foil packet, our favorite camping breakfast. My girls LOVE doing this and look for every opportunity to make their entire meal in a foil pack! Everyone had a great time choosing their ingredients, and the best part? No dishes!
Camping party sleepover breakfast ideas

ACTIVITIES

To kick off the party, we started the night with an ice-breaker scavenger hunt. Our girls are only a year apart but go to different schools. As a result, their friends rarely mix, so, this was an opportunity to have everyone together.

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After finding everything on the list, everyone met to share their treasures and to introduce ourselves. I had each girl tell us their name, their favorite color, and their favorite food. It was a simple activity, but they all had a good giggle, they found some commonalities! I adapted the scavenger hunt I found here, printed off the list of items to find, along with the labels, and attached both to a paper lunch bag. Easy, cheap, within the theme, and so cute!

For an easy craft, we had the girls select and decorate a flashlight using letter stickers, that they were able to take home the next day.
The biggest hit, though, was a competitive game of Minute to Win It! We divided the girls into two teams. Once divided, each team came up with a name and competed against the opposite team and each other.
The three top scores received a prize – the latest Bop magazine.You’d have thought we’d given them a gold bar.

Minute to Win It Games for Camping Party

There were five opportunities to earn points:
  • Face the Cookie: Using only the face, move cookies from the forehead to the mouth.
  • Breakfast Scramble:  Prep for the game by cutting a cereal box front into sixteen equal pieces. Be the first to put the pieces into order to recreate the cereal box front.
  • Separation Anxiety:   Sort a pile of 25 multi-colored candies into piles by color. We used Laffy taffy. 
  • Tweeze Me: Have players use chopsticks to move 10 Tic Tacs from the table to a bowl.
  • Bucket Head:  Catch three balls in a bucket on top of your head

Who knew watching a cookie roll down one’s face could be so challenging and funny? For game instructions and more game ideas, you can visit the NBC Website.

Late night entertainment was a movie. Here is a list of tween appropriate movies. Many of these are available in the $5 bin at Walmart. All of the movies are rated PG.

  1.  Aquamarine
  2. Monte Carlo
  3. Another Cinderella Story
  4. A Cinderella Story
  5.  Journey to the Center of the Earth
  6.  Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
  7.  What a girl wants
  8.  Oz the Great and Powerful – new, but a great movie!
  9. Mirror, mirror
  10. Legally Blond

    MUSIC

Our playlist is made of old campfire favorites and new hits.

Cup Song – Anna Kendrick
Uptown Funk feat. Bruno Mars – Mark Ronson
Happy Trails – Van Halen
Honey, I’m Good – Andy Grammer
American Pie – Don Maclean
Kick the Dust Up – Luke Bryan
Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond
Mandolin Rain – Bruce Hornsby
Time of Your Life(Good Riddance) – Green Day
If I had $1,000,000 – Bare Naked Ladies
Every Rose has its Thorns – Poison
Wonderwall – Oasis
River Bank – Brad Paisley
Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
Best Day of My Life – American Authors
Free Falling – Tom Petty
Rather Be feat. Jess Glynne – Clean Bandit
Stand By Me – Ben E King

 

FAVORS

To thank our guests for coming, the girls handed out party bags simple paper lunch sacks containing the following:

 

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camping theme party - 9

We had a great time, and the girls got to spend some quality time with friends they were missing. I hope everyone will have fond memories of this one for a long time!

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Posted in CELEBRATIONS, PARTIES, PARTY THEMES and tagged

3 Comments

  1. Cathy Compeau on July 2, 2013 at 4:42 am

    Thanks so much for sharing at A Peek Into My Paradise TGIF Link Party! I can't wait to see what you link up next week! I hope to see you at the (Not SO) Wordless Wednesday Blog Hop! http://apeekintomyparadise.blogspot.com/
    Have a terrific week!
    Hugs, Cathy

    Reply
    • Kim Young on July 7, 2013 at 5:54 am

      Thank, Cathy! And, thanks so much for hosting! Cheers!

      Reply
  2. Emily Morgenstern on July 16, 2013 at 5:14 pm

    Oh my goodness, what a cute party idea!! I featured it today in my party round-up:http://www.52mantels.com/2013/07/party-ideas-inspiration.html

    Reply

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