making lately: Zoom birthday party packs

As various family members' birthdays came over the spring, summer, and fall we would jokingly say, "everyone gets a Covid birthday!" - but it's just reality now. We're down to one family member not yet marking the occasion - and he'll be having his quarentimes birthday next week. (Now the main thing is to limit how many people have to have two of them!!) So we've all done plenty of Zoom celebrations over the last year, but to take things up a notch for my grandpa's 80th last weekend, my mom had the idea to deliver a party pack to each household's porch, so that we could all celebrate with the same decorations in our Zoom background, and enjoy the same snacks and treats while we gathered virtually. 

 

With Target curbside pickup + a little session with my kitchen helper and our birthday-themed cookie cutters, here's what I came up with for the execution of said party packs. Each household received:

• a birthday banner for everyone to hang up behind them
• party hats to wear during the call
• festive napkins
  
• a beverage to cheers with: either my grandpa's favorite beer, or a cream soda for the underage participants
• a bag of colorfully iced + sprinkled cookies (classic family recipe great for all occasions!) made with birthday-themed cookie cutters
• 4 baggies of chips, labeled with numbers: we did a chip tasting, with everyone sampling the different numbers and ranking what they liked, before I revealed the brand of each (people were good at identifying the classic Lays, and everyone landed on one of the kettle chip options as their fave)
  

This was a fun way to make a Zoom gathering more festive to mark a big milestone - adds something special but also a little bit of an activity to enjoy together. A great way to celebrate safely with local family and friends that you would have otherwise had over in person. 

There are lots of other fun ideas for tastings you could do too! Of course there's the kind of stuff you might think to do for an in-person gathering that you can just do in porch delivery + Zoom format instead: beer or wine would be enjoyable for a gathering of adults, or a selection of cheeses or cupcakes/cake slices. Or you could go with various flavored chips (bbq, jalepeno, etc.) and have people guess the flavor. We even did a jelly bean flavor guessing game for Hendrik's Harry Potter Zoom party in October.

Happy and safe celebrating out there... Hopefully back to regular party programming soon though!