A Race Around the World

Or maybe just around the neighborhood.

This weekend we celebrated the middle’s birthday with an “Amazing Race” party.  Luckily for me, this kid has 4 best friends (sadly only 3 could make it) and that makes this a much more do-able party than if she had wanted to invite her whole class or something.  Today you get to see some of the details of the race and tomorrow, some of the actual fun!

So I LOVE the Amazing Race and have been a fan for a long time so it was super fun for me to get to work on this.  If you know the race then you will know that the clues are pivotal to the success.  I found the clue templates here…hooray!  They made the whole thing seem more official (to me anyway).  I don’t think anyone except the birthday girl has ever seen the race so most of the details stuff was for her benefit.  Also, the envelopes had the tear strip on the back…critical feature!

 

I really wanted a mat for the end of the race (decided the night before that this was integral to the success of the party).  So I painted a pretty big piece of cardboard.  Not as precise as I would have liked but it gives the right vibe.  (Please do not laugh too hard at my awesome cartography skills.)

 

For this party, anytime there was an option for a color it was purple/lavender or a number it was 11.  When the girls arrived the all received lavender t-shirts and bandannas…team lavender.  Also, there was only one team.  That made it easier on so many levels….lots of teamwork and we only had to supply one taxi.

The first task gave them 11 photos of the birthday girl which they had to organize in chronological order before they could receive their next clue.

The youngest was kind of our Phil and was the official clue holder and giver.  The clues were divided into route info, roadblocks, and detours.  The next clue sent them via taxi down to “the bridge”, which most of you will be familiar with as it is a favorite photo location of mine, where they were instructed to search for their next clue.

They had to find 51 Easter eggs which held 100 puzzle pieces and 2 dice.  Then they had to put the puzzle together and read the clue written on the back which instructed them to use the dice to roll an 11 to receive their next clue.  I thought this one was particularly inventive but by the end of it realized that maybe a 50 piece puzzle would have been better, especially considering that we couldn’t find the last 4 eggs (kind of sad since I had only hidden them that morning…perhaps a raccoon got a hold of them?)

The next clue sent them, on foot, to the park just up the hill where they had to complete a tricky swing/water balloon/bucket task which you will see more of tomorrow.  Then they headed to “the place where the birthday girl sleeps” and found this….

 

Once they popped all the balloons they found a bunch of letters that they had to unscramble to figure out the next clue location, which happened to be their school.  Once they got there via their fabulous taxi, they had to search the grounds for their next clue.  This time they had to learn how to say happy birthday in 5 different languages without the help of the Internet, though they were allowed the phone.  The rest of the tasks involved scoring goals, looking at a tray of 20 random items for 30 seconds and then trying to write them all down, feeding each other gummy bears with chopsticks (I am super glad I didn’t do jellybeans like I first wanted as we were already running way late and that would have taken FOREVER), and finally, an impossible online Harry Potter quiz that we worked on while we were eating pizza and that we never did finish.  The egg/puzzle task took WAY longer than anticipated so by the last few clues we were in a major hurry since we wanted to be able to have pizza and cake before the parents arrived…hence doing some tasks while we were eating lunch.

Overall, I think they all had a good time and you can see that tomorrow!