Back To School Bonfire Party - Backyard Treehouse

For most kids (including me) going back to (high)school can be a very sad time, but instead of just moping around for the last few days or summer vacation, my best friend and I decided to go out with a bang, and have an awesome backyard back to school bonfire party! This was great way to relive the best moments of our summer, catch up with friends and just have a great time overall.

INVITATIONS: Since we're teens we used social media sites like Facebook and twitter to get the word out, we also texted, e-mailed and called our friends to tell them about the party. Since its August the weather was really nice, and it doesn’t get dark for a while so the party was from 6-12! The invitations were self-explanatory. We invited about 60 of our school-mates assuming that about 80% would show up.

LOCATION: We decided to have the party in my backyard because it was fairly close to most of our friends houses and its pretty big.

DECORATIONS: For decorations we got some streamers and balloons, in the colours blue, and white! We strung the streamers along the fences and put clusters of balloons all around the yard. We also made giant arrows with blue construction paper. We taped them at the front of my house and made them point towards the backyard.  We had paper lanterns strung from the trees and fences that were also blue and white and they looked great!

There’s also a great tree house in my backyard, so we decided to make it a V.I.P. section. The tree house was filled with balloons and white Christmas lights were strung around it and around the tree to really make it shine . There were white lawn chairs all around the yard, along with small stools to put plates and cups on.  Citronella candles were placed around the yard too, since its mosquito season!

FOOD: For snacks we had typical things like chips (3 kinds), chocolate chip cookies, and we even made candy skewers. There was also a lot of fruit and roasted vegetables kabobs. For drinks there was a cooler (nothing alcoholic) filled with water, coke, sprite, root beer, cream soda and lemonade.  

For teenagers nothings better than fast and greasy food, so there was a buffet style table set on one side of the fence. We ordered two pizza`s one cheese, and one Hawaiian, nachos and the guests could also choose from bbq chicken, sausages, and burgers. We made sure to include soy and veggie burgers for people that don’t eat meat.

Luckily my aunts a baker so she brought amazing blue and white cupcakes, and baked a red velvet cake that everyone loved, and you can’t forget the s’mores (after all it is a bonfire!) . We used white paper plates, blue plastic cups and we also had blue and white Chinese takeout boxes for them to put snacks in or to take home.  

ENTERTAINMENT: On the side of the house we put up a huge white sheet and but a projector, the sheet acted as our projector screen, and we set up some video games (like Justdance& racing games), music videos, karaoke, and towards the end of the night we played movies. Around 8pm the party started picking up. Since one of our friends’ brothers is a D.J. he volunteered to be the disk jockey of the night for a small fee ($75).

The DJ was awesome so dancing was the main activity of the night, there were some dance contests and we even played some rounds of musical chairs. People that didn’t dance mingled, played bocce ball or played keep-up with the volleyballs. At 10 pm we started bringing out blow up mattresses and huge outdoor pillows for people to use while watching movies on the projector. We had a vote, and watched the Hunger Games.

Behind the pillows we set up the bonfire, and it was up for the rest of the night. After the movie people sat around the bonfire and talked, one of my friends brought a guitar which worked out great! We played a couple rounds of truth or dare and mingled. Eventually people started to leave, and a few girls slept over.  Overall the party was great, everyone loved it and they cant wait to do it again.