In the past few years there has been a huge boom in companies offering sleepover parties. They usually look beautiful and I love that it takes the pressure off you as a parent having to do the work, but when I enquired about prices, I couldn't even begin to afford one for my daughter. So I thought I would try and do one myself. It might not have looked the prettiest thing from the outside, but inside was an absolute stunning sleep area. We used one of our B&B bedrooms, but you can use any bedroom that a tent will fit into!
I had envisaged a teepee and managed to borrow my sister's, but when it came to trying to put it up inside it just wasn't happening without tent pegs! So we dragged our trusty tent out (we got this on Freecycle 12 years ago, and it is still going strong. Definitely one of the best freebies we have ever had! I managed to get the tent to stand up using the guy ropes and attaching them to solid items around the room. Once the tent was up, I put three mattresses inside and then found as many cushions as I could from around the house and placed them all around.
Then I got some voile curtains which I haven't used and hung the voile all around the ceiling of the tent. I nipped into the attic to get our Christmas tree lights and hung them all around the voile, making a really beautiful effect. Decorations were all ones which I already had and I hung them around along with light up balloons. These were to make sure the room wasn't dark at night as I wanted them to have some light in case they needed the toilet in the middle of the night.
I bought all three girls little sleepover party bags on ebay and filled them with items from Claire's Accessories and also a few bits on Amazon. They had eye masks, suggly socks and a selection of friendship jewellery which all went down really well. They all had a fantastic time sliding down the stairs and playing together before settling down to watch a film. They all chose Coco which is one of my favourites! I took them a bowl of popcorn and sweets to enjoy with the film.
It was a night filled with giggles, friendship, sugar and a surprisingly large amount of sleep (they were all fast asleep by 10.30pm). We'd had to do the sleepover on the Sunday night, which meant that the next morning I had three different children't hair to do, which was probably the most challenging part of the whole weekend!
I would highly recommend doing your own sleepover party. In total, including food, balloons and the party bags, the cost was under £40. This is a huge amount less than the companies that I had looked at to provide the service for me. Yes, it meant that I had to take it all down, but we did have a bonus in that my son's birthday is a week later and he wanted it all to stay up for his birthday. So in fact it cost £40 in total for two birthdays!
The urge to sleep in it myself was huge. Sadly I had to take it all down because we had B&B guests coming to stay in that room at the end of the week, so it all needed putting away! I would definitely recommend doing your own sleepover party. It wasn't difficult, didn't take long to put together and actually I really enjoyed planning it. A sleepover is one of the least stressful parties we have ever had for the children. I will never forget, or recover from the joint disco with 40 children! If you're looking for a simple, fuss-free and inexpensive party, then I would recommend doing a sleepover party yourself.
