Penny and Me Party!

The little 5 year old girl I nanny for is a fan of HANSON!!

She loves dogs and has a huge collection of stuffed ones. She also has a real dog but I think she favors her stuffed ones, they let her do whatever she wants to them and they don't run away from her ;) Her absolute FAVORITE is a little dalmatian puppy named Penny.

 

I found this picture online and this is essentially the same one she has....hers is a bit more worn from receiving so much love from her owner ;) The dog has a little pink collar that actually says Penny on it.

 

Being the good Hanson fan I am I obviously had to play the song "Penny and Me" for her and her Penny. Needless to say, she was hooked! In fact, her parents bought the song off itunes for her she was so obsessed with it, haha. Last summer I thought it would be fun to throw a little "Penny and Me" themed party. And it turned out SO CUTE!

 

I made this fun little invite for the party, just because. It made it seem more "official."

 

That blank space in the middle I had a picture of my little girl holding her Penny dog....for privacy reasons I removed it. Also, if you can't read what it says it reads: "Turn the Radio Up..." And come party with "Penny & Me tonight!" Tuesday, July 29th at 10:00 am The party will be held at Jessie's house! So "push the pedal to the ground" and come ROCK with us!

 

 Here are some pictures of the set up/decorations:

 

 

 

 

 

The quality of my pics aren't the greatest....but here was my current Hanson CD collection (I've since added "Snowed In" and "MMFH")

 

 

 

 

 

These are pictures of the boys from the Penny and Me music video :)

 

 

 

I had 4 of my younger siblings come participate with the party (they were GREAT sports about it). I had "Penny and Me" playing in the background as everyone came into the party room and looked at all of my decorations (I sort of forced them too, I worked hard on it). We started the party off with a couple dog stories ("....with another good BOOK to read"). Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of my book sign. After story time, we moved on to our first game. We played "Penny, Penny, Who's Got the Penny?" It's been YEARS since I had last played that game so it took us a few tries to remember all the rules and exactly how it worked. Basically, one person leaves the room while the rest of the people sit in a circle and start passing a penny around with closed hands. The person who left comes back in and has three tries to guess who has the penny. I don't think my little girl ever really caught on too well, but it was still fun.

 

Next, we had craft time. I was so proud of the craft (considering I came up with it myself, no Pinterest help necessary ;) Here's a picture:

 

 

 

It's a picture of a car with the window cut out and a little Penny glued to a stick. Across the top of the picture it reads: "Penny and Me like to roll the windows down." SO CUTE!! You can stick Penny inside the car with the window rolled down! I love it! I also found a coloring page of cute little Penny that she could take home and color. So fun!

 

After craft time, we played the "Hot & Cold, Hide & Seek game." Basically, one person leaves the room while everyone else hides an object for the seeker to find (for our party we used Penny). When the seeker comes back in you tell them if they're hot or cold (hot meaning they're close and cold meaning they're far away). For our version we would play a song ("LOST Without Each Other" by HANSON.....get it? Because Penny is "lost" so to speak? Haha). The louder the music was the closer you were while vice-versa, the further away you were the quieter the music got. It was a lot of fun! The music is high-energy and every time Penny was found we would have a little dance party! Haha.

 

Then it was time for a snack break. All of the food was "P" related things: Popcorn, Penny Pops (dum-dum suckers), Pretzels and Goldfish (not a "P" food but it's Penny's "favorite food" so it was included). And of course we had to have LEMONADE to drink ("....Penny likes to get away, and drown her pain in lemonade"). I LOVED the set up for the lemonade, it looked so good!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After snacks, we played our final game "Pin the Penny on Hanson!" Haha! LOVED this idea that I came up with! So proud ;) I found a funny picture of Hanson where ZAC (my little girls favorite Hanson brother at the time) was holding a little puppy that kind of looked like Penny. The gist of the game, obviously, was to try to be the closest player to pin your Penny dog on top of the dog Zac was holding. Everyone tried, including myself. It's a lot harder than you think!

 

I forgot to take a picture of it set-up before we all "Penny-fied" it :( But here's what it looked like after the game:

 

 

Our final activity was the "MMM-BOP" dance. We all danced to the song "MMMBop" and whenever it said "BOP" we all "bopped" our balloons in the air! Clever and so fun!

 

All-in-all, this party was a SUCCESS! My little girl LOVED it! I had so much fun planning this party, it makes me want to keep doing more Hanson-themed parties in the future :) Stay tuned...... 

 

 

 

*This post was made for a forum discussion I was participating on at H.net :)