We’re celebrating the surviving the family reunion season off by offering 20% off our reunion theme packages.
Yay, we did it! The “official” family reunion season has come to an end and we survived! To celebrate, FAMILY REUNION HELPER IS HAVING A SALE IN THEIR ETSY SHOP! Follow the link below to receive 20% off any reunion theme package.This even includes the wildly popular Family Reunion Brag Badges! But hurry, sale ends September 15th, 2020 .
At Familyreunionhelper.com we sell reunion theme packages. What’s a theme package you ask? Most of our digital downloads include 45 or more pages of invitations, name tags, water bottle labels, games,activities, templates and printables that compliment the theme you have chosen.
The following is an example of a name tag from our Heritage Reunion.
This cute invitation is from our Circus reunion. Just print it off and then fill in the blanks with your personalized reunion information.
Our Caveman reunion invitation is sure to get the kids excited about attending all the prehistoric fun.
Water bottle labels are a wonderful way to address your reunion theme and if everyone writes their name on the label, bottles don’t get mixed up or lost as easily.
Our theme packages also include pages and pages or games and activities that go along with the theme you’ve chosen. You can spend hours searching the web for your ideas but these have been tried and tested and we know they work. Here’s a page from our Superhero reunion.
Our reunion theme packages include tons of extras like these certificates from our Medieval Reunion and printable signs from our “No Place Like Home”, Oz inspired reunion.
Each of our reunion theme packages includes printable games and puzzles that go along with your theme. Like this Valentine’s game that is part of our “Home for the Holidays” reunion.
Our reunion themes also include food ideas that compliment your theme. Check out this recipe for “Parrot” (tastes a lot like chicken”)- it serves 100.
Serves 100.
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 ounces dehydrated onions
7 pounds 3 ounces catsup
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 pound 8 ounces brown sugar, packed
48 pounds chicken, cut-up
For barbecue sauce: Simmer chicken stock and onions over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add catsup, garlic powder, and brown sugar. Simmer 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently. Set aside.
Rinse chicken in cold water. Drain well. Arrange 25 pieces of chicken on each sheet pan (18 x 26 x 1 inch). Brush 3/4 to 1 quart of barbecue sauce over chicken in each pan. Bake uncovered until tender, checking frequently. Cook in conventional oven at 425 degrees F for 45 minutes.
Many of our themes have printable food tents like our Western Reunion food tent featured here.
We’ve tried to think of everything we could to make your reunion planning easier and less stressful. Check out Family Reunion Helper.com today and choose the reunion theme package that best suites your family. You can be sure that each package is jammed packed of ideas, game, activities and printables to get your creative juices flowing. Click on our logo below and follow the link.
Are you looking for a way to excite family members and stir up interest about your next family reunion? Choosing a reunion theme is a great way to build excitement for upcoming and make it more likely family members will want to attend. 
A reunion invitation that invites you to a “Prehistoric” reunion for Brontosaurs burgers and a dinosaur egg hunt is more interesting than an invitation that invites you to a family reunion at “the park” for hamburgers.
A reunion theme helps to drive your reunion and with a little imagination food, games, activities, invitations and just about every other aspect of the reunion becomes a memorable event.
Themes are inexpensive to implement and can inspire the creative side of many members in your family. Ask for their theme ideas, brainstorm and see what they come up with. Our best family reunion themes have come from brainstorming about themes. When a “Caveman”, Mafia and Oz theme were suggested in one of our brainstorming sessions I was kind of worried about what we would do but those themes are some of our favorites and have left us with some amazing reunion memories. Below are just a few family reunion themes that you may want to consider for your next family event.
All- Sport or Olympic Themed Reunion
Get away from a boring sit around and just visit family reunion and jump into some action-packed fun with an All-sport or Olympic themed family reunion.
Activities- Soccer, volleyball, “whiffle” ball, Whacky miniature golf. Hold a cheerleader camp for the girls in your family and a sports camp for the boys. Go bowling or hold a family 5K. Give a family reunion MVP award. For fun variations of these favorite sports- whiffle ball, soccer, bowling, swimming and volleyball plus lots of great ideas for your sports themed reunion.
Food- Smoothies, “Breakfast of Champions” or “Long Jump” lunch hoagies.
Wear– Favorite team jerseys and t-shirt. Make a family t-shirt fashioned after a sports jersey.
Decorations: Pom, poms, pennants, sports balls, sports posters and plastic tablecloths.
Family History or Family Heritage Reunion
If your family reunion is held near where the family originated, then schedule a trip to the old family homestead, church or cemetery. You can use this as an opportunity to share family memories, or go a step further and recruit the clan to clean up the ancestral cemetery plots or research the family in old church records. Hold your reunion at the family home if available or in the town where one of your ancestors were born, raised, married or buried. You can find more Family History ideas for your family reunion at wwwfamilyreunionhelper.com.
Food – Use an ancestor’s home country as theme for your meals. Use recipes from that county and set tables with a centerpiece of memorabilia and a picture of your ancestor. If your people come from Italy, serve a spaghetti dinner, from Mexico, serve tacos, enchiladas or tamales. Box lunches are a fun idea to share an old-time tradition.
At our Family Heritage reunion, the girls in the family designed and decorated shoe boxes at home. We provided sandwich fixin’s, individual chip packages, fruit snacks and drink boxes along with cookies for dessert. The girls made lunches for two and put them in their box. We gave each box a number and the guys in the family each drew a number out of hat to determine which lunch they got to eat and which girl they ate lunch with. In a few instances, we had more girls than guys and so doubled up.
Activities – Play “classic” games at your reunion such as “3-legged race, gunny sack race, Annie I Over. Create a huge wall chart of your family so everyone can see how they are related. Take “old-time” photos and have everyone dress up. Make a family “time capsule”.
Dress – In the ethnic costume of your ancestors.
Ancestor Coloring Book- Making a heritage-coloring book about one of your ancestors is 
a monumental task but it’s a wonderful way to make family history come alive for the little ones in your family. If you have an artist in the family, then designing a coloring book will be much easier for you. If you don’t have a talented artist in the family a great resource is http://store.doverpublications.com/by- subject-coloring-books.html.
Sun, Sand and Surf Reunion Theme
If your reunion is in the summertime then it’s the perfect time for a Sun, Sand & Surf family reunion theme. Merge your beach reunion ideas with your Hawaiian reunion ideas for double the fun.
Invitations: Consider sending “Message in a Bottle” invitations to encourage family members to attend your family reunion or write out your reunion invitation on a beach ball with a permanent marker.
Activities: Sand candles and castles, sand art, volleyball variations and swimming pool games.
Aquatic Obstacle Course: Use sprinklers, Slip-N-Slides, baby pools, limbo sticks and hula hoops to create an obstacle course for wet and wild reunion fun!
Food: Sub sandwiches, fruit trays, shish kabobs, fruit kabobs, gold fish crackers.
Decorations are easy for a beach themed family reunion. Use beach umbrellas, Beach towels, Beach balls, Paper party lanterns, Paper Palm trees and party lights on a string. travel posters, flowers, straw skirt table. Don’t forget to use pink flamingos in your decorating and be sure to include music from the Beach Boys to round out your reunion theme.
Wedding Anniversary or Significant Birthday Family Reunion Theme
Planning a family reunion around an important wedding anniversary or milestone birthday makes for an easy but memorable family reunion.
Invitation – Put two photos of the honored couple on the invitation: their original wedding photo and a current photo.
Food – Finger foods and a “wedding” cake.
Activities- “When You Were My Age” A Celebration of Life’s Memorable Moments. This is such a fun program, fashioned after a Bill Cosby Show episode and was called, “When Mom Was my Age.” We have done variations of the program for 70th and 80th birthdays and 50th wedding anniversaries. Each time we do “When You Were My Age” everyone is a good sport and excited to be a part of the celebration. Everyone has a part on the program and an opportunity to highlight world events and significant family happenings throughout the life of your loved one. Download the “When You Were My Age” from Family Reunion Helper or write a “This Is Your Life” program for your reunion celebration.
Decorations –Photos and other various memorabilia of the couple’s life together.
Begin your reunion with a circus parade and invite everyone to dress in fun costumes and march around your reunion site.
Food –Circus food- corn dogs, cotton candy and popcorn.
Activities – As your family arrives, have then guess how many circus animal cookies or peanuts are in a jar. The person who guesses closest to the actual number wins the jar full of treats. Have a carnival. Assign 6- 10 family members a carnival booth. Children earn prizes at each booth. Face painting, fishing booth, fortune teller, Plinko, Dart Throw etc. Consider renting a bounce house for the little ones in your family. For more ideas check out the family reunion “circus” theme at www.familyreunionhelpercom/
Decorations – Balloons, tents and circus animal cutouts.
Design an obstacle course depicting famous scenes from the movie. Run through a tissue paper poppy field, jump over bale of straw etc. Make bottle tornados and make a yellow brick road out of scrap lumber. Plan an activity that represents each Oz character such as paper plate lions, red glitter shoes and
Decorations- Make flying monkeys from black poster board and hang around your reunion location. Use rainbow colored tablecloths (one color per table).
Food- “Ding Dong” the witch is dead Ding Dong cakes, rainbow lollypops, Lions, Tigers and Bears animal crackers and melted witch treats.
– Make ponies from dollar store pool noodles and have a pool noodle rodeo. Shoot at targets with rubber band guns or pvc pipe bow and arrows. Make a family totem pole or try some line dance.
Food- Call the food you serve” vittles”. Have a chili cook off., have a Texas Straw Hat food bar or serve barbeque, spareribs or grilled hamburgers. Use tin pie plates, mason jars with handles and lots of bandanas.
Decorations- Put up a large ranch sign at the party entrance. Print off some wanted posters. To make it more fun, get hold of some photos of the guests and put them on the posters. Place some paper or real horseshoes on the path leading to the party entrance. Create a teepee out of a large sheet and some wooden dowels. Create a large cactus out of a cardboard box or even buy some inflatable ones. Cover the party food table in a red and white checkered cloth and hang up a sign saying “SALOON”.
Now is this the perfect time to purchase plastic Easter eggs- not only for Easter egg hunts but for other themed parties you may have throughout the year.For instance, fill eggs with small plastic dinosaurs for a prehistoric or dinosaur reunion or fill eggs with small plastic dragons for your medieval reunion or princess party.
With all the excitement over Moana you could also fill plastic eggs with HeiHei memorabilia or pictures. (Take a picture or HeiHei and then cut into puzzle pieces. Hide one piece in each egg and when all the pieces Are found you can put the puzzle together.) These eggs would be perfect for a HeiHei egg hunt. I purchased them at Walmart.
Hide the eggs around your reunion or party location. Tell the kids that they must find all the eggs before they hatch. The person that collects the most dinosaurs or dragons (or Easter themed prize) is the winner. This may not be the child that finds the most eggs as not every egg will have a prize in it.
A fun twist is to tell kids that if they find an egg that is empty, they have to put it back for another player to find. This way, the hunters will have to remember which eggs they’ve already checked…which adds to the mystery and suspense of the hunt.
Planning a family reunion can be a nightmare. But the good news is that you are not alone, we can do this together. I don’t know your specific situation but I can tell you that if you will follow these 3 important keys you will be on your way to having a successful family reunion. So let’s get to work- first key is…
This is the most important aspect of reunion planning- it’s not much of a reunion if no one can attend.
When we began planning the “Stewart” family reunion we were only working around about 20 people and it was fairly easy to find a date that was good for everyone, but now that we are more than 100 family members strong we would never be able to find a date that met everyone’s needs. Lucky for us, about 20 years ago we set Labor Day weekend as the permanent date for our family reunion.
We have found that holding the reunion at the same time every year helps family members plan their busy lives around that weekend. They always know when the Stewart reunion will be and although the location may change the date never does. Unbelievable but true- we usually have all but about 3 family members attend our reunion each year.
If you can’t choose a permanent date, plan your next reunion date before you end the reunion you are currently attending. Planning in advance will increase the odds that more people will be able to attend the reunion, which translates into more fun for everyone. If you book early, you can most likely get better rates and/or reserve your preferred hotel or retreat site, flights and other travel arrangements. Most campgrounds and parks can be booked a year in advance.
Last of all, stick to your decision. Changing dates in the middle of planning can create a huge amount of anxiety and additional work.
People always wonder why we have such good attendance at our reunions and I tell them, “Because everyone has a job!” There is always someway that everyone can contribute to your reunion no matter what their age or their ability. You can assign a couple of pre-teen girls to do a story time or games for the younger children at your reunion, ask a 5 year old to bring a can of olives or assign someone that loves music to lead a sing- a- long.
It’s impossible to organize a reunion by yourself, I know, because I’ve tried it. Not only that, but it is good to have the input of different family members’ points of views. Family members that have a responsibility feel greater ownership in the reunion.
Delegate tasks according to those with special talents, skills and connections. Our Uncle Ben owns a restaurant whose specialty is turkey steaks and quite often we have turkey steaks at our reunions or family parties. We have great Dutch oven cooks in our family and of course, we give them the opportunity to practice their skills. Use the resources that you have.
There are certain jobs at our reunions that have become tradition- for instance cousin R.D. and Uncle Richard always make the homemade root beer, Aunt Lynn is always in charge of Bunko and Uncle Steven always makes his Dutch oven potatoes.
So how do you put all these people and their great ideas together? Let me tell you how we do it. There are six original children in the Stewart family; we call them the “Big 6”. We schedule a planning meeting and ask that there be a representative from each Big 6 family at the meeting. These people become your liaison from each branch of the family.
At the meeting we discuss our plans and make assignments, that way every family has a representative and if they have concerns they can be addressed at that meeting and each families’ fun ideas can be implemented. We ask for volunteers to be in charge of each major aspect of the reunion – food, family history, invitations, photography, games and activities, finances and facilities. The chairman of the committee, that’s me, takes the ideas and suggestions home and makes a master plan or schedule which is emailed to the committee members for their approval.
A reunion committee is essential to planning a smooth, successful family reunion. Be sure your chairman (if you’re reading this than the chairman is probably YOU) is creative, energetic and willing to put in the time and effort required to organize a reunion.
Planning a family reunion is a too big a job for one person, so make a checklist, get some help, put your entire family to work and let everyone share in the satisfaction of a job well done!
A theme gives your family get-together an added twist that can build excitement. Choosing a theme for a family reunion is a great way to interest people and make them more likely to attend your reunion. Who wouldn’t want to attend a “Caveman” reunion where they can feed on “Brontosaurus” Burgers?
Or Conjure up a Wild West atmosphere for your next family reunion or party by using the decorating ideas, wild and wooly western games, activities and recipes available at familyreunionhelper.com You’re sure to have a rootin’ tootin’ good time!
If your family has ever dreamed of sailing the seven seas in search of excitement and adventure plan a pirate reunion where you feast on barbequed parrots, search for treasure and walk the plank.
A theme also makes it more fun to plan when it comes to being imaginative with food, games, activities, invitations and just about every other aspect of the reunion.
If you have a wedding anniversary or a significant birthday coming up in your family you could choose to celebrate around those special events. If your grandparents were married in the 50?s, plan a fifties reunion complete with poodle skirts and sodas. If Aunt Addie will be turning 70, celebrate with her by having a seventies party- make tie-dyed shirts and decorate with peace and flower power signs.
Just because it is a family reunion doesn?t mean the theme has to be centered on the family itself. Plenty of other party themes are perfect for a reunion. Plan a western, caveman, boot camp or other similar theme.
A few years ago my sister-in-law suggested that we have a caveman reunion and I was pretty nervous about it- caveman? How do we do a caveman reunion? But we all shared ideas at our planning meeting and guess what- our caveman reunion turned out to be one of our best family reunions ever.
Whatever theme you choose, design your decorations, food, activities and games around that theme. Your caveman theme might feature Brontosaurus burgers and a dinosaur egg hunt or a pirate theme might include Barbecued Parrot and a treasure hunt.
Planning a family reunion requires serious effort and thoughtful strategic planning but if will follow these 3 important keys you will be well on your way to a memorable and successful family reunion. And who knows- maybe they?ll want you to be in charge next year too.
Aunt MO
For the next seven days Family Reunion Helper is offering special pricing on our Caveman reunion theme package- $12.95. You can save 50% on this package if you order it before it’s official release November 14th.
We’re excited to share with you the new line of products our staff has been working on for the upcoming reunion season. The Caveman reunion has been given a complete overhaul and now includes new invitations, water bottle labels and name tags. Choose either a formal or fun Caveman theme.
http://familyreunionhelper.com/products/products.php?ProductID=1
Take your family back in time to celebrate with a Prehistoric Family
Reunion complete with dinosaurs and cave dwellers. With this fun family reunion you can plan a Saber Tooth Tiger Cateye hike in the dark or challenge family members to work together to make a prehistoric pipeline. Children at your reunion will have fun with their dinosaur hunting license, searching for dinosaur eggs or making prehistoric slime. They’ll also love “Lost World” obstacle course.
A fill-in-the blank invitation is included along with water bottle labels and reunion name tags in two styles to choose from- forma or fun. You will also find recipes and ideas for “Good Things to Eat”. Don’t forget to print off the dinosaur Bunko score card and leave dinosaur footprints all over your reunion site with the footprint printable pattern. Reunion activities for one day or a weekend of prehistoric family fun!
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