Family Friendly New Years Party Ideas

New Year's Day is an extra special day for our family. Not only do we celebrate the dawn of a fresh, new year, but January 1st is also the day that my oldest daughter was born. In fact, she was born shortly after the clock struck midnight - 12:22 am! Because of this, we party extra hard for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. And by "party hard", I mean we eat all of our favourite snacks, do our favourite count-down, don our party hats, and decorate our home with as much glitter and sparkle as we possibly can! Let me share with you some family friendly New Year's party ideas that will make it easy and fun for you and your kids to celebrate the new year.

The Kid Friendly New Year's Party Time

We use a bit of trickery when we ring in the new year with our kids. Rather than staying up until midnight (which we can't even do these days - so sad!), we do a special new year's countdown at around 8pm with our kids. It's still fun for them, and they still get to go to bed when they're tired. Netflix usually has some cute little New Year's countdown shows that you can turn on whenever you want and countdown to the new year with your kids.

The Easy Snacks

Cupcakes and simple hors d'oeuvres like spring rolls and wontons are a special treat around here and quite simple to make (cake mix and the frozen food section, baby!), so we'll usually have some combination of these at our New Year's party.

This year, our LG double oven electric range from The Brick has been making prepping for our Holiday events so much easier! When making two totally different snacks like spring rolls and cupcakes, I can set each oven to a different temperature and cook the foods at the same time.

Prepping for parties is quicker and easier, and even my Christmas baking has been so much more streamlined this year! You can check out more features of this electric range with double ovens right here.

The DIY New Year's Eve Party Decor

By mixing inexpensive new decorations and some decor from last year, we came up with a fun and festive way to decorate for our New Year's party. I always recommend sticking to only one or two areas if you're decorating for a party on a budget to make the most impact, so here I've decorated our Hancock Park Buffet & Hutch from The Brick with gold and glittery accents.

Pretty food items like cupcakes decorated with gold flags are an inexpensive way to decorate a buffet area like this, and I always like to buy a few paper items in the party theme's colours.

Paper items aren't pricey, and they can make a big statement! To match our gold, glittery theme, we found some adorable gold paper party hats, I made some DIY gold polka-dotted party bags, and we included some gold paper plates to add to the sparkle.

Paper straws are always a big hit around here for special occasions, so placing some in a mason jar wrapped with a gold sequin ribbon was a cute way to dress up our buffet.

I always love using my computer geek skills when decorating for parties too, so I made some festive printables to display while we're ringing in the new year. You can find them right here to download for free!

New Year's Eve Party Activities for Kids

The countdown and food-eating is a party in itself, but if you want to enjoy more activities during your family friendly New Year's eve party, talking and writing about the past year is always a fun thing to do together!

I made a simple year-end questionnaire that you can download for free right here that would be fun to do with your kids on New Year's Eve. Keep these in a binder to look at every year to see how each one of you has changed, or roll them up and pop them in a DIY time capsule like this one I made a few years ago.

We're pretty lucky, because sometimes our neighbors will set some fireworks off on New Year's Eve, so that's another special activity that we enjoy almost every year together. If you have lots of snow like we do, it would also be fun to throw in some outdoor activities like sledding or skating into your family's New Year's Eve party plans!