Ultimate Beach Party -15yr- M&M Game

I live in Florida, about 45 minutes from the ocean. So when it was time for me to start planning my 15th birthday party, I decided, why not go to the ocean? Since me and all of the friends I invited are homeschooled, I called their parents and asked if they could take off one day of the week (Friday) to have my party. They all agreed, and this was good because the beach was pretty much empty since everyone else was either working or at school!

INVITES~~I invited 23 people, girls and guys, so I decided to make the invitations myself to save money (and plus I do computer graphics, so this was easy for me). I bought sky-blue paper and, using Microsoft Word Document, I typed: READY TO HAVE SOME FUN IN THE SUN? YOU'RE INVITED TO RAMIE'S 15TH BIRTHDAY PARTY AT THE BEACH! BRING YOUR SWIMSUIT BEACH TOWEL A CHANGE OF CLOTHES AND SUNSCREEN! AND BE READY TO HAVE SOME FUN!" Then I typed out all the  other details telling them to RSVP and when to meet at my house. I also asked them to bring their favorite kind of chips or their favorite soda with them. I attached some clipart of a beach ball a sun wearing sunglasses and a beach towel and then printed out the invites on the paper. I sent them out three weeks before the party.

THE PARTY~~The guests arrived at my house at 1:00PM. When everyone got there we played an icebreaker game since there were some people that hadn't met before. It was called the M&M Game. It's really simple and quick. There was a tray of M&M's passed around and without saying anything else everyone was told to take as many M&M's as they wanted. After everyone got some they were asked to tell one thing about them for every M&M they had. This was a great way to loosen everyone up and have fun.

As soon as we were done with that our ride arrived: a stretch hummer! So you're probably thinking Okay like I could do that! But we actually got a very good deal. We called up the car rental and asked them if we could rent the car minus the chaueffeur (my dad would play that role) and we got it for a MUCH smaller price (just the price of renting a regular car for a day)! So we all grabbed our stuff and piled into the hummer my parents playing the role of the chaueffeur. The deal was we couldn't have any food or drinks in the Hummer so we couldn't do that but we did have the radio blasting and we played games like Mafia Winker etc.

Once we got to the beach it was around 2:00 and it was practically empty! We all got out and the first thing we did was run and jump in the water (after chaning into our swimsuits of course). My parents set up a big tent with a bunch of chairs under it so the people who didn't want to swim could just hang out there. We also had a volleyball net set up with beach balls. Basically we just hung out swam played volleyball tanned etc. for the next three hours. There was a professional surfer there who tried to teach a few of us how to surf which was really fun.

By 5:30 we were all tired and hungry so my Dad set up the bonfire and we roasted hotdogs made s'mores ate the chips drank soda and just sat around the campfire talking. It was starting to get dark by 6:45 so we all played one last game of volleyball before piling back into the stretch Hummer and going home. When we got there we had cake and played a few more games (such as The Name Game Twister and Do You Love Your Neighbor?).

Next my parents surprised me by giving me one of my birthday presents early--Dance Dance Revolution with two dance mats! So we all had a DDR tournament until 10:00 when most everyone left. I had six girls stay the night and we played DDR watched lots of movies (we watched Jaws 1 & 2 She's The Man Transformers and Spiderman) ate more cake and just did girly stuff. In the morning we woke up at 11:00 and we gave each other makeovers (a totally Middle School thing but it was fun!) and then walked down to the local park to play tennis (and okay to look for cute guys ;).

When we got back my Dad had gotten all the pictures from the night before developed so we made the Thank You cards. We used some of the blue paper folded it like a card and while they chose a photo for each invitation I wrote a personalized thank-you on the inside of each one thanking them for coming. On the front my friends glued a picture and I wrote: BEACH BASH! All around the picture.

FAVORS~~I didn't do "favors" but I did give everyone a goody box type thing. I bought mini straw baskets and filled them with miniature Snickers bars Jolly ranchers and mini Baby Ruth's. I included a beach ball that I wrote "RAMIE'S 15th BEACH BASH" in permanent marker a $5 gift card for whatever store I thought the person would like best (Starbucks Best Buy Wal-Mart etc.) and a big goofy pair of sunglasses just for the effect.

OVERALL~~Overall this party was amazing! It wasn't too expensive (besides the Hummer and the favors we had everything else) and it was a breakaway from the usual teenage birthday thing. The only thing I would do differently was I would've brought a boombox along for music at the beach because I completely forgot about music. But everything worked out great after all! "