Patriotic Party Planning Guide

Patriotic Theme Parties

• You Decide 2008!  Primaries, Caucuses, Election Nights - Celebrate in style

• Spectacular Patriotic Holiday Gathering.  We wrote this one  with Memorial Day in mind (and it’s a great Memorial Day party) but it can work with any patriotic holiday

• Uncle Sam Wants You!  Makes sense for the 4^th of July

• Fireworks! A 4th of July Celebration.  What would the 4^th of July be without fireworks?

• Stars and Stripes. Celebrating the Flag!

• God Bless America

• Welcome Home Soldier.  Please don’t forget the soldiers that defend our liberties.

• Barbecue Express.  The perfect summer party.

Patriotic Party Invitations, Decorations, Party Favors and More

• For a great selection of personalized products for your party including invitations, candy bar wrappers and life size cardboard cutouts visit Party411's Creations for You. No matter what theme you select, we will help you find ways to personalize the event and make planning and clean up easier.

• For more party supplies, paper products and party favors, see our Patriotic Party Decorating411.

Party Party Activities for Kids

• Have a parade. So what if it’s from your front yard to your back yard? Your guests will have a ball getting ready. Provide red, white and blue crepe paper; flags of all sizes, a toy drum and more. Let people make decorations and signs to carry (You provide the materials). Vote on who should be the Grand Marshal.  You should have a review stand with God Bless America banners displayed and maybe some velvet patriotic bunting.

• Kids get a kick out of glowing light sticks. Hand them out and they'll amuse themselves. Kids also love blinking flag beads or red, white and blue beads.

• "Pin the Hat on Uncle Sam" - Give each child a small paper top hat to decorate as Uncle Sam's hat. Then blindfold each child, and have him try to stick the hat on Uncle Sam. The child who comes closest to putting the hat in the right place wins a prize. Prizes may also be awarded for the "most creative," "most colorful," etc. hats.

• Have all of the kids make top hats that will fit them, and have a decorating contest (awarding a different prize to all kids- "most colorful", "most elaborate", most creative", etc.). Then have a parade around the neighborhood (wearing the new hats) to a famous march. Don't forget the universal bike parade where kids use crepe paper and the like to decorate their bikes to show off in the neighborhood. Watching a parade is hard work, so give the adults an American Flag Folding Fan

• Another decorating contest that you can have for the kids is a "decorate your own placemat" contest. This adds to the overall decoration, as well as giving the kids something to do to keep them busy

• Have your own baseball game! Divide guests into teams and play ball! Or you can have an entire Olympiad! The games don't have to be traditional ones either. You can have cookie eating contests and fun relay races or other crazy games. 

Patriotic Party Food

Hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, anything barbecued /grilled, Cole slaw, fruit salad, etc. For dessert you can have apple pie, and cake.

What about decorating your cake to resemble a flag, or use cookie cutters to make star, flag, and Statue of Liberty cookies.

Want to be a little fancier than that? Try some of these Bobby Flay grilling ideas.

Here are some more barbecue recipes and grilling tips.  

Did You Know?

•  Sure there were 13 but can you name them? So what were the original 13 colonies?  Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia

•  What’s in a name?  Eleven places have "independence" in their name. The biggest is Independence, Missouri, with 113,288 residents.  Five places have "freedom." In their name.  Not as big as Independence the largest is Freedom, California, with 6,000 residents.  And what would Mel Gibson think about there being only one place named "patriot" — Patriot, Indiana, with a population of 202.

•  That smells good.  Where did you get it?  Millions of us will barbecue on summer holidays this year.   We’ll eat millions of pounds of wonderful food.  Where will it come from? About 16% of the beef on your backyard grill will come from Texas. About 1-in-4 of the hot dogs and ribs enjoyed on July 4^th will come from Iowa. Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina and Mississippi will raise over half of the chicken barbecued this year.

•  Betsy Ross sewed it, but who designed the first U.S. flag? The answer, according to the experts at the Betsy Ross house, is that it was possibly designed by Francis Hopkinson, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The stars on the flag were in a circle so that no one colony would be viewed above another. It is reported that George Washington said, "Let the 13 stars in a circle stand as a new constellation in the heavens."

Ask the Experts

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