Our New Year's Eve Schedule!

Last year, on New Year's Eve, we did something really cool. We spent the day at the in-laws' homestead. Now, they only have TVs in the bedroom and they don't really ever plan anything to do so if you come unprepared, you could end up pretty bored. However, knowing this in advance, I prepared. We started at 8am and ended at 8pm so that our 6-year-old could still go to bed at his normal time. He didn't seem to mind. We started with a schedule:

8am: Ring Pop 'Get ready for 12 Hours of Ringing in the New Year!'
9am: Make a '2017' sign
10am: Glitter some champagne glasses
11am: Decorate star cookies
12pm: Gift
1pm: Play a game
2pm: Make a new years ball
3pm: Make headbands/hats
4pm: Write new year's resolutions
5pm: Make noise makers
6pm: Photo booth
7pm: Fun with sparklers
8pm: Ring in the New Year with sparkling cider

Then we executed:
8am: Ring Pop

9am: Make a '2017' sign

10am: Glitter some champagne glasses

11am: Decorate star cookies (I made the cookies the night before)

12pm: Gift (I just picked up a couple things from Party City totalling about $5. It was a nice break between activities)

1pm: Play a game

2pm: Make a New Years ball (We just made this with a piece of paper that we added glitter to and a couple brads)

3pm: Make headbands/hats (Again, we just made these out of paper and glitter)

4pm: Write New Years Resolutions

5pm: Make funny noise makers (This was so much fun. We took a paper plate and drew a mouth/beak/mustache. Then, we colored it and cut it out. We cut an X where we wanted the noise maker to go and then just inserted the mouth piece into the X.)

6pm: Photo booth (we used the noise makers and hats along with the props I brought)

7pm: Fun with sparklers

8pm: Ring in the New Year with sparkling cider

Now, just to be clear, we didn't follow our schedule completely. We ended up eating breakfast and opening Christmas presents (we weren't able to see them for Christmas so we just celebrated a week late) in the morning so we got a couple hours behind. Also, since glitter is very messy, we ended up prepping all the glitter things at one time (during the glitter champagne glasses time) and then assembling our ball and hats during the time slot to make them. This worked out well since they needed time to dry anyway. By the end of the night, my son was watching the clock so that he could tell me the exact minute it turned to the next hour so that we could open up our next activity! It was great. And no one got bored!