If you’re planning on staying home this New Year’s with the kids, here are our favourite ways to celebrate as 
a family!
– What’s a party without food? If you don’t want to make a big dinner, why not just do appetizers? Let the kids pick out which ones they like – might not be the healthiest meal, but it’ll be a lot of fun! You can serve it all at once, or do courses throughout the party.
– For drinks, make up some fun ones for the kids. Perrier with fruit juice in a fun glass is great for kids. You can even make some Shirley Temples, which is just 7up or similar pop, grenadine and a maraschino cherry – let the kids decorate the glasses with lemon or orange slices too.
– For dessert, why not do fondue? If you don’t have a fondue pot, just melt some chocolate on the stove or the microwave. Serve it with fruit, cake, marshmallows – whatever your kids would enjoy
– Let the kids make decorations, or hit up your local party store or dollar store and get noise makers, hats, etc. Doesn’t take much to get in the 2015 mood!
– Pick a dress code for the party – it can be fancy dress up, a pajama party, halloween costumes – let the kids pick and go with it!
– If your kids are really young, celebrate early in the day. Do a Noon Year’s Eve party, or watch a broadcast from a different time zone if they won’t last til midnight your time – or if you don’t want super tired kids the next day 🙂 If need be, change some clocks around to really be in that time zone.
– A fun activity to do during the day is send out some Happy New Year’s cards to friends and family. Great time to also say thanks for xmas gifts, but also to wish people the best in the new year. Everyone loves to get cards in the mail – the kids can either make the cards or just buy a box of cards at the store.
– Get a jar or container and fill it with wishes and hopes for 2015. Or memories and events from 2014, you can even turn it into a time capsule. Put it away until next NYE and have fun reading them at the next party.
– Make some top 10 lists for everyone to fill out. You can either handwrite them or print them out – things like favourite movie of 2014, favourite memory, favourite book, best holiday, favourite toy, best friend etc. depending on their ages. This one can also be a lot of fun to put away for next year, or even for when they’re grown up to see what their top tens of 2014 were!
– Lots of fun activities to do during the party, do a dancing game if they’re in that right age, do a puzzle night, or a board game night. Let each kid choose one game that the whole family will play. Or if they’re older set up a game that will take several hours to play – or keep it going for the rest of the holidays.
– Sit down together and watch home movies from 2014, or even just pop in the memory card from your camera and watch the pictures on the tv. Great way to remember all the photo worthy moments from the year – and make sure to take a lot of pictures at the party too!
Have a great New Year’s Eve – and if you have any activities your family enjoys at NYE parties make sure to put them in the comments.