Baseball Party

These are some ideas for my nephew's baseball party:

Invitations: cut to look like tickets to a major league game. The invitations can say "Take me out to the Ball Game . . . It's a Baseball Birthday Party for Ollie! Help this slugger celebrate his 5th birthday in true baseball style!" For the ticket seat (row and section), you can put birth date of your child. Or they could look like baseball cards with a picture of Ollie in a baseball uniform and write "All Star," put the picture on the front and the details of the party on the back. Ask the guests to come dressed wearing baseball hats and jerseys.

I think you start out with food that you would typically eat at a baseball game: hot dogs, soda, popcorn, nachos, marshmallow peanuts and cracker jacks. Maybe you should throw in baby carrots and cherry tomatoes as bats and balls. Pretzels, soft or regular. For the drinks maybe lemonade or soda or gatorade. Licorice, Cotton candy, ice cream sundaes.

Cute goodie bags would be those red and white cardboard popcorn containers (dollar store!). Or you could give wiffle balls and bats as party favors.

A fun game would be musical chairs, but using baseball bases that you could make out of white cardboard and you could play the Boys of Summer or Take Me Out to the ball game. You could also play hot potato and use a baseball as the potato. The kids could also hit wiffle balls through a hula hoop.

Another fun game would be a bean bag toss with baseball bean bags into a little baseball diamond you have made with white spray paint on the grass. You could do a baseball on spoon relay using ping pong balls decorated with red pen for seams.

I think a cool cake would be a baseball diamond with little plastic baseball players on it, you could even make it an ice cream cake layered with cake. Or a cupcake cake frosted to look like a giant baseball or a bunch of regular cupcakes frosted as baseballs. Or some vanilla ice cream scooped into round balls, rolled in white chocolate flakes or coconut and then decorated with red licorice shoelaces or red frosting  to make the seams for baseballs.

Decorations: banner made from freezer paper on the front of the house with "Welcome to Ollie Field" Use old baseball trophies, cards, bats, balls and gloves. You could make place mats that look like baseballs or baseball diamonds and laminate them.