These days, appearance is everything. If you’re thinking of hosting or organising a birthday party for a group of kids in the near future, there are many things you’ll need to be considering. One of them is how you’re going to present your home or external venue so that the kids have the best possible day

Considerations

When decorating for a party, always try and see things from a child�s perspective. You may think you�ve seen plenty of DIY decoration and home makeover programmes on the television to give you a great eye for design and layout, but what Carol Smilie has told you about furniture arrangement and colour combinations means nothing when it comes to decorating your home for kids!

Colour

Colour is everything - lots of bright, fun colours should be used to make the place as lively as possible. Go over-the-top with your decoration too. If you think something is bordering on the garish with bright reds, yellows, greens and blues visible every way you look, then you�re most likely doing something right. Remember, you�re not decorating your place for yourself or the parents who�ll be bringing the kids, but for the kids themselves. If children�s television can teach you anything, it�s that bright is beautiful. Those little rascals are looking for a few hours in a colour filled sugar-coated wonderland and your party will stay in the memory if it’s remembered as a mostly colourful, noisy experience.

Theme days

Theme parties are becoming increasingly popular these days, with commercially orientated parties, such as Disney and other well-known children�s television programmes proving the most successful. Parties such as these can really fuel a child�s imagination. Be it a pirate party - with eye patches, much plank walking and pieces-of-8 hunting - a spaceman party - where exploration and adventure is the order of the day - or a good old fashioned fancy dress party, try and be as varied as possible with your decoration

For theme parties, decoration is the key to success. You may think that, for a successful theme party, your home should look as authentic as possible, with suitable decorations all over the place but you don�t have to be authentic to entertain those young minds.

Remember, the imagination of a child is a powerful thing indeed. Can you recall how you entertained yourself for hours when you were younger with only a few pieces of this and a little bit of that? When decorating for a theme party, think content rather than appearance. Stick with the traditional party decoration ideas for the most part - perhaps look around for pirate/space/disney etc. themed balloons or party bags, but keep the simple party decoration concepts such as balloons and streamers and build on top of them to create your themed party

Want to organise a Pirate Party Treasure Hunt? You need only a handful of �gold� chocolate coins and perhaps a simple treasure map (of your back garden. Unless you�re lucky enough to live on a tropical island!). How about a �moon walk� for your Spaceman Party? Why not try a length of string (hi-tech spacewalk attachment apparatus) for them to hold onto as they bounce across the surface (again, of your garden. I seriously doubt that you live on the moon)

Add to this a simple assortment of hats, badges and stuffed animals (a pirate parrot and maybe a mischievous moon alien) and you�ve got the ingredients for a perfect themed party that�ll keep the kids entertained for hours. Of course, you can make things as simple, or as detailed as possible but remember who you’re dealing with here. Your imaginative decorating techniques will be no match for the mind of a child. These are people who can fill an afternoon with nothing but a cardboard box and some “driving” noises. They’re the ultimate critics, and if they feel they can do something more entertaining with much less then they will.

Build it up, tear it down

It�s a well known law of nature, proven by many and completely irrefutable - kids love to cause chaos!

When decorating, keep in mind that quite a lot of your hard work will be completely undone by the end of the day, balloons will be popped, or scattered randomly. Streamers will have found their way in, under, over any piece of furnishing you own and those table decorations will no longer be decorating the table - they�ll have found new homes wherever the imagination of a child takes them!

Considering that, you should decorate assuming that it’ll all be on the floor by the end of the day. If you are expecting a large number of children at your party, then you should apply your decorative ideas accordingly. The more the merrier, as they say. But also, the more, the more chaotic; Don�t spend too long on anything that you know will, by the end of the day, have been completely transformed into part of a robot, a football or something attached to a string that obviously means something to the child dragging it around with them.

Taking it outside

If you choose to have your party somewhere other than your home, perhaps in a hall or other such venue (usually a good idea if you are hosting for, say, 15-20 children or more) you’ll want to take into consideration the quantity of decorations you’ll need. A decent sized hall can easily dwarf any decoration attempts. To overcome this, you should look around for larger scale decor, such as big balloons, longer, wider banners, larger table decorations etc. Just to give the place a much brighter and active feel.

If you feel the hall still looks rather empty, why not try partitioning off a section of it, perhaps with a row of tables, so that there is a smaller space where you can organise group activities, while still allowing the kids to roam free around the hall in the area outside your “zone”. This will also help keep things organised, as you’ll be able to sort out props for a party game, for example, while the tiny tearaways are off running riot around the rest of the room.

A daunting experience

Decorating for a children’s party can seem like a rather overwhelming task. There’s so much to take into account, but if you plan ahead and keep things simple then there’s no reason why the day shouldn’t go ahead smoothly and as planned and, you never know, you might even have a little fun yourself in the process!