Ideas for Celebrating New Year’s Eve as a Family
Having a Fun New Year’s Eve With the Family
Once we have children, our lives certainly aren’t the same. Between nap schedules, early bed times and plenty of tantrums, children make going out for holidays much harder and often have us wanting to just stay home instead of going out.
Now, with New Year’s coming up, it’s even harder to find a sitter that actually wants to babysit on the special night and to find a place to take them. So, if you’re looking to spend this New Year’s with your family and away from all the action, here are some ways to still make the holiday enjoyable and memorable as a family.
Vacation: If you’re able to afford a nice vacation with your family, this is a nice time to do so. So, whether you’d like to go someplace warm or even a magical place like Disney, families can certainly have a blast while being away from home. Since you’d like to have fun as a family, it’s best to only consider this if your children are old enough to comprehend what is going on and are old enough to behave. This is a great way to enjoy the holiday as a family, yet not feel bad about attending parties and celebrating with others.
Visitors: Since it’s not always practical to take the children out till midnight, it may be best to have people over your house. Just be wise with whom you’d like to have over and find people like the grandparents and close friends to enjoy the holiday with. We invite other families that have kids so they can have fun too. It is amazing how well they all play together and it gives the adults time to talk and hang out.
Cook and bake: If you’d like to stay home for the night and still have fun, cooking dinner and baking as a family can be a lot of fun. For example, one can work on the main entree for dinner, while another works on baking and the children work on decorating the baked goods or doing something simple like setting up the table. This year we are going to make lots of family friendly appetizers. The kids new favorite is a baked brie wrapped in a crescent roll, easy and quick to make!
Now, as far as meals and desserts go, find something the whole family will enjoy and will be able to eat. It may even be fun to let the children decide for once, but if you’re looking for ideas, items such as steaks, potatoes, some seafood or even glazed ham can make great options. You can also consider items that are more holiday spirited like confetti cakes, Jello jigglers and drizzled ice cream cones that represent party hats. This holiday has so much room to be creative so have fun with it.
Activities: I always like to go to the craft store and pick up a few things! Just about every child enjoys putting together a nice craft. From making stepping stones of their hand-prints, noisemakers out of paper and making ornaments for next year’s Christmas, one can find all sorts of fun things to create. We always get out our rock band for the wii and have random karaoke competitions. When we downloaded some new music for it before everyone arrived I was shocked at how many songs the kids recognized. We have little prizes for the winners and it really helps the time pass! Another thing we do it start a puzzle and everyone helps with it and we get all our family board games out! I’ll be honest in years past we have tried the whole firework extravaganza and it ended badly with someone getting burned but if you still want to do them read our Kids and Firework Safety.
Drinks: Once the children have gone to bed and it’s only adults that are awake, it’s time to have fun making some fun drinks. From making margaritas to martinis, it’s nice to not only try something new, but to also be creative when making them. If the kids are still awake at midnight we have our champagne toast and some chilled cider for the kids in plastic champagne flutes.
Attire: This is a fun one we always let the kids pick! One year we were dressed super fancy in dresses, ties and we got sick of it and changed quickly. The next year we tried a Pajama Party and that was fun! We suggest the everybody just dress comfortably, it will make the party last longer.
As you can see, there are so many great things you can do to enjoy this special holiday with your children. So, whether you’d like to take a trip down south together or you’d like to stay at home with the family to cook a nice dinner and work on crafts, all that matters is you have fun and take lots of pictures to remember the fun moments. We wish you a Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year from our family to yours!
Since we’re on the West Coast, we take advantage of the time difference and have an “East Coast Countdown” at 9 pm. It’s mostly just an excuse to make noise, but what kid doesn’t like that? Then everyone can be in bed well before midnight if need be.
Have fun, and Happy New Year!
What great ideas. My girls love to make crafts, it would be fun to do their handprints and then have them do them next New Years Eve. Our big plans were sparkling cider in our jammies.