We recently held a surprise 95th birthday party for our Grandmother who lives several states away. Because our Grandmother is very active and had many hobbies over the years we decided to do a
costume party. Costumes were very simple- just pick a hobby of Grandma's and wear something representing it. We used a video camera to record the whole thing beginning with the entrance at
the front door and everyone yelling surprise" as she (the camera) entered the house. The party decorations consisted of ballons a birthday banner and a few blown up pictures from
grandma's childhood. We started out with a simple lunch with a meat platter and rolls veggies dip chips etc. While we we're having lunch the camera was set up in a seperate room and each
person took a turn talking to Grandma (the camera). We had two party games. My Grandmother does genealogy so the first game was a family tree.
I gave out a list of her ancestors that then had to be put in the correct order on a family tree diagram. The loser of this game won a Genealogy for Dummies book and the winner won a bag with a mix of Grandma's favorite candy. For the second game my aunt sent me several pictures of Grandam when she was younger that none of our family members had seen. I blew them up glued them to thin card board and cut them up into puzzles. Everyone really enjoyed trying to put these puzzles together. I did not put out the actual pictures for a guide. The winner of this game won a nice frame with two of the pictures in it. After the games we lit the candles on the cake and sang Happy Birthday. We kept the camera running the whole time. After singing Happy Birthday we each took turns explaining to Grandma what our costume represented. After we said our good-byes to Grandma the video was copied onto a disk. We wrapped the dvd and the card attached was an invitation to a party in her honor. Everyone in attendance really enjoyed the party and our Grandmother loved receiving the dvd and has watched it several times. She can enjoy her party whenever she wants! "
