Plan a Playground Party

• Clear out a room of most, if not all, furniture that you can. Remove paintings and wall hangings. Buy a large roll of paper, the kind that is about four feet in width and comes on a large cardboard roll. Cover the floor of your living room, or party space, with this paper using painters' tape to secure it to hardwood floors or masking tape to secure it to the carpet.
  
  Using a set of washable markers (to avoid bleeding through onto carpets or the wood floor), draw a hopscotch pattern on one side and a basketball half-court on the other. Buy a suction-cup basketball hoop or hang a child's hoop from the wall above the court to host games. Provide the markers to guests to use like "chalk" to color the floors or draw pavement, walkways and flowers as desired. You can also draw these things in yourself to add to the ambience.
  
  Bring in small, plastic children's play sets that you would normally find on a playground. Slides and corner hammocks are easy to find and easy to set up; the slide would be your "swing" set. Provide hula hoops and balls (foam or rubber, so nothing breaks). Fill a small child's pool with sand and insert buckets and shovels to make a sandbox. Try your local toyshop, or the online store listed in the References section, to find supplies.
  
  Carry on the theme by making a sandbox theme cake, with brown sides for wood, yellow icing for sand and a toy truck on top; make a playground on top of a cake with green icing by purchasing a children's toy playground set that fits on the cake top. Use garden- or outdoor-themed silverware, napkins and cups in the color green or with flowers.