Parties | 10th Anniversary of my Sweet Sixteen

About a month ago, I started planning my 26th birthday party. I saw the idea somewhere of a 10th Anniversary of a Sweet Sixteen, and I was SOLD!

For my actual Sweet Sixteen, I had a Survivor-themed outdoor challenge-based party. Given the unpredictable weather in Boston in April, I wanted to keep it indoors, but I still wanted to host a themed party.

This was my invite:

Food and Drinks
I definitely played up the jungle theme here, complete with appropriate names for the food. Here's what I had

• Carrots and "Hippo Hummus"
• Banana chips
• "Gorilla Grapes"
• "Jungle Twigs" (pretzels) and guacamole
• Monkey Bread
• "Parrot Poop"--M&Ms
• Pineapple
• Jungle Juice (1:1:1 of vodka, seltzer, and pineapple-mango-peach juice)

And check out these super cute cupcakes that Caroline made. We just stuck an animal cracker on top! And it was her idea to keep the pineapple tops for the display.

Decor
I wanted to create a Survivor island feel, so I found a fun way to create a backdrop--vines and flowers. I bought a small roll of craft paper, cut it into strips and twisted it to create vines. I cute out green leaves and pink flowers and taped it up against the wall. I made a sign for the event, and I also made a frame that said "I survived Rachel's Sweet Sixteen" for people to take photos against the backdrop. I love how it came together.

Challenges
No Survivor party would be complete without challenges! I divided the guests into two teams, (Red and Blue), and they competed in teams.

Challenge #1--Gross Food Competition
I picked out 5 different baby food containers of different flavors. Each team sampled the flavors and had to guess what the flavor was. I was surprised at how good they were at it! I picked up Bananas, Pears, Green Beans, Sweet Potatoes, and the final round was Kiwi, Mango, Apple. The last one ended up being the tie breaker to see which could get the most of the three flavors right.

Challenge #2--Trivia
Back in 2006, I was in high school taking AP exams, so I pulled some questions from AP European History, AP US History and AP Bio to use for a trivia competition. The groups did so well, so I had to use a personal question as the tie breaker. Very fun.

Challenge #3--Word Scramble
We didn't make it to this challenge, but I had a Bananagrams set, and the intent was to use them for a word scramble challenge. Didn't quite get that far in the planning.

Overall, it was an AWESOME party! I had so much fun.