Before making any plans, I got her opinion on what she wanted for her party, and it was a party at the roller rink with all the girls sleeping over. I then made reservations at the roller rink in town. I sent all of her girl friends special party invitations. It wasn’t nearly as expensive as I thought it would be. Refreshments, pizza and hot dogs were also part of the package, and didn’t cost very much at all. I got the house prepared for the party that was to continue after skating. I decorated the house with birthday accessories,laid out snacks and put my sweet 16 cookies, I made, on the tables.

When I was searching the web for birthday ideas, I ordered a few other things besides the cookie cutters. Since I saved money on the roller rink deal, I decided it would be nice to get the girls a few sweet sixteen favors. Each of the girls got a disposable camera to take pictures of this evenings event and a pink photo album to store them in. Everyone got a camera before we went to the roller rink party, but no one got an album until later that evening. I’m glad they only took a few pictures at the skating rink, so they would be able to take pictures of the sleepover too.

Another party favor was a cosmetic bag with their first initial printed on the front. With the cosmetic bags I bought manicure sets and little purse mirrors to go with it. I bought festive little favor boxes and filled them with candies for each of the girls. At home, her sweet sixteen party favor and presents awaited, and we took care of that as soon as we got there. We picked up movies on the way home for the girls and I made sure they had plenty of snacks and drinks, so they were all set for the night. They turned on some of their music and danced around for a while, then they took out their manicure sets and started to work on nails, and give make overs to each other. From all the noise and laughing you knew they were having the time of their lives.

When the noise starting dwindling down they got out the bowls of popcorn and started watching their movies. I tried to stay out of their way as much as possible and just let them have a good time, but they asked me if I wanted to watch a movie with them. It made me feel good that they wanted to include me. They actually made it through the first two movies before they started nodded off, one by one. Soon, the only ones awake were me and my daughter, but she didn’t last much longer. With her eyes almost closed, she told me how much she loved her birthday party and thanked me.

The next morning the girls were up before I was and had already had their breakfast and cleaned up from last nights festivities. It was really sweet of the girls to do that. They hung around with my daughter for a couple of hours, then the kids started heading for home. They told me they had a super time and they thought the sweet sixteen ideas were really cool. I like that my daughter and her friends now consider me to be a cool mom.