What is a Reunion Theme Package?

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Aunt Mo

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.

Barbeque Captain’s “Parrot”

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.

The Ultimate Guide For Choosing a Family Reunion Theme

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Aunt Mo

Excite family members by using a reunion theme!

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.

Three Ring Circus and Carnival Reunion Theme

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.

There’s no place like home- Wizard of Oz Theme inspired theme

Oz Themed Activities

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.

Western Themed Reunion

Western Reunion Themed Activities

– 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”.

Candy Bar Game

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Aunt Mo

How well do you know your chocolate bars?

Whether you are in charge of planning a party for family, friends, co-workers or you church, here’s a fun printable with a twist. Instead of identifying candy bars by their name or wrapper you try and recognize your favorite bars by how they look on the inside. You can download a printable copy of the game below.

Chocolate candy bar game.jpg

Answer Key

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Although the candy bar game printable is lots of fun you can take your party to a whole new level by letting you guest actually EAT the candy bars.

Divide the group into teams. In advance, cut several well known candy bars into bite sized pieces. The object of this candy bar game is for the blindfolded person to guess the name of the candy bar by taste alone. No peeking and no hints allowed! Each player only gets one guess so give them a little time to come up with the correct answer. If the blindfolded player guesses the candy bar correctly, their team gets a point. The team with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. And what do you give as prizes- why candy bars!

Black Friday-ish Family Reunion Sale

Posted on November 21, 2017 by Aunt Mo

Never happened before and may never happen again- it’s a family reunion “Black Friday” sale! This year Family Reunion Helper is giving you a jump start on your 2018 family reunion. Buy one family reunion and get one family reunion theme package for free.

Purchase any of our family reunion theme packages through our website store- www.familyreunionhelper.com. When your purchase is complete send an email to auntmo@familyreunionhelper.com with the name of the reunion theme you’d like for FREE and Aunt Mo will email your free reunion theme package to you within 24 hours.

This offer is good today through midnight (mst) November 25, 2017.

Family Thanksgiving Turkey Trot

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Aunt Mo

Start a new Thanksgiving tradition this year with a family 5K.

I ran into an awesome young man at our local 5K fun run in July. It was his Turkey Trot shirt that caught my eye and I had a fun time talking to him about this fun family tradition.

Every Thanksgiving, this family hosts a 5K race for all visiting family members and friends. All that want to participate, bring their running or walking shoes and burn off all those weighty Thanksgiving dinner calories before the turkey even comes out of the oven.

What a fun idea to have t-shirts made for the big race- a fun memento of a fun day. I love any activity that gets family members up off their seats and moving and a family turkey trot certainly does that whether you trot or waddle across the finish line.

Beads! Family Reunion Activities

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Aunt Mo

This bead activity is perfect for your western themed family reunion.

Thanksgiving Day Arrowhead Necklace craft

I Love Beads! I really do. I use them for so many activities at family reunions.

Beach Family Reunion

The best thing I ever did with beads was to make a bead reward box for our family reunion in Lake Powell. Instructions and printables for the bead box are included in our Beach family reunion theme package. You can find it by clicking here- Beach Reunion

Western Family Reunion

More recently, I came across this fun, simple and inexpensive bead activity that would be perfect for your western themed family reunion.

To represent the Native American culture, make beaded arrowhead necklaces. You can limit the number of beads that can be put on each necklace or let them go wild. Pony beads are cheap and easy to come by at any craft store.

I thought the arrowheads would be hard to find or too expensive but felt pretty lucky when found a set of 50 Indian agate replica arrowheads at Amazon for under $10.00. Just click on the link below to purchase.

Arrowhead necklaces would also be a fun activity on Thanksgiving. Set up a table away from more traditional Thanksgiving activities and let your guests build their own creation.

Bead Geckos

Another fun bead activity for your reunion is bead geckos. Read our blog on Family Reunion Helper.com for detailed instructions. Bead Gecko Blog

Fun T-shirt Idea for Your Family Reunion

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Aunt Mo

A brand new idea for family reunion t-shirts!

One of my students wore this shirt to class one day and of course when I saw it I started thinking “family reunion”. If your family isn’t too big this could be a fun idea for your next family reunion.

Ask family members to draw a simple picture of themselves. The most difficult part of this
project will be getting the drawings returned to you. If you have enough time you may want to get the drawings at your family Christmas party and then you would have them for your summer reunion.

My “go to” t-shirt company is

http://www.cheaperthanshirt.com/

Kdee, their designer,( Kdeewood.au@gmail.com ) is so good to work with and can arrange your drawings on your shirt so they look great.

If you don’t have room on your shirt for people to draw their whole body you can just do “heads”.

Image result for stick figure head family

Thanks to Mrs.Rinker and her kindergarten kids for this fun new idea for family reunion t-shirts.

How Sweet it Is! Candy Match Game

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Aunt Mo

A pretty sweet printable game- and it’s free!

Whenever I plan a I party or a family reunion I like to have an activity or game that people can play when they first arrive. The goal is to get family members, or friends, laughing and talking with each other. The “How Sweet It Is” free printable fits the bill and coming up with prizes for the winners is a snap- candy bars! I suggest the snack size because you’ll probably have several winners. This ice breaker game is great for large or small group games and for family members of most ages. You can download the free printable by clicking below. Don’t forget to download the answer key.

The Latest Trend in Family Reunion T-shirts

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Aunt Mo

I LOVE family reunion T-shirts! They are the ultimate “party favor” or “souvenir” that family members can take home with them after the reunion fun is over. Reunion T-shirts are a reminder of the good times had at that years family reunion.

There’s a new reunion T-shirt trend going around and I think it’s great! We used to take family pictures at our reunion like the one below (we used paper plates with numbers on it).

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But now, families are having fun applying this idea to t-shirts. Each family has a different color, and each t-shirt gets a number on the back representing the order you joined the family (through marriage or birth).

You can have each generation be a color and the in laws all have their own color as well. Then, every person is either numbered according to birth order (by generation) or by when they married into the family.

If there are people at the reunion who aren’t yet married into the family, you can give them a shirt with a question mark on it as in, who will be the next lucky member of the family?”

When it comes to figuring out what number everyone is your most valuable resource will be the matriarch of the family. Make a list of each family member and when they became part of the family. You may want to ask your family to email you their birthdates and anniversary to make sure your list is accurate. Email the completed list to your family so they can double check your numbers.

A common design for the front of the shirts is a fun idea. You may want to have a t-shirt company print the common design on the front of each shirt and then apply the numbers yourself, especially if you are doing multiple colors.

Of course, you’ll want to take a family picture. Take a picture with everyone facing forward and then do a second photo of the back of the shirts. I just love this latest trend in family reunion t-shirts. If you decide to do this at your reunion, send us a photo and we’ll feature your family on our website.

The Family Reunion Planner’s Shopping List

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Aunt Mo

10 things every family reunion planner needs in her arsenal

Here’s my list of top ten tools I need to pull off a family reunion:

1. Divider Sticky Notes 60 Ruled Notes- I am an organization freak and these are perfect for keeping everything organized. They are like regular sticky notes but they have a tab that makes everything easier to find. They are very helpful when organizing your registration binder. You can find them at Amazon following the link below.

2. Tape- every size and every type. Be sure and include Duct tape.

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3. Jumbo paper clips– It seems that every time I try to clip together a group of paper they get all messed up. The clips come off and I end up with a bigger mess than if I had just stacked them . I found these jumbo paper clips a couple of years ago and I use them for everything. They may seem pricey but after you’ve used them I think you’ll agree with me- it’s a screaming deal!

4. Ziploc bags– These bags go a long way to keeping me organized and I’m not talking about food. I use Ziploc bags to keep office supplies, game pieces, personal grooming supplies and a host of other items grouped together. For me, they have to be the bags with the zipper that slides across the top- they are faster to close and I know for sure that they are sealed. I like to put groups of items such as pencils and markers in smaller quart size bags and use gallon sized bags for larger items such as props for a game, items for a costume or all the tape variations I’ve collected.

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5. Sharpie markers– more than one. I usually keep at least one Sharpie in my pocket at all times during a family reunion. A Sharpie for me and one or two to loan out.

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6. A Laminator– I was so surprised to learn that I could buy a laminator for less than $20.00 and although they are pretty slow I love not gathering up all my signs, name tags and table toppers to take to the copy store for laminating . With this inexpensive laminator you can laminate documents up to 9 inches wide and it warms up and is ready to use in about 5 minutes. I still take my large jobs to the copy store but there are so many times I need to laminate a few items and this product has really saved me tons of time and trips to the store. Don’t forget the laminating pouches also available at Amazon.

7. Cell phone– You might think that’s a pretty obvious choice but when it comes to planning a family reunion it a cellphone is the perfect place to store your lists. Just a take a photo of the agreement for the rental site and you’ve got it at your fingertips when you need to show your reservation. Take a photo of your t-shirt order, family list, agenda and rules and instructions and you won’t have to run off to grab your files- they’ll be right there in the palm of your hand. (Not to mention all the phone numbers you’ll have handy)

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8. Storage containers– I usually use Rubbermaid containers but paper boxes will work as well. I use one box or container for each day and time period. For instance- Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Saturday morning. As I prepare and pack for the reunion Ii I put everything I need for that time period in its box. At the reunion location I organize the containers according to the day and time when their contents will be needed. This saves me from having to dig through a jumble of boxes and bags.

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9. Camera– I need my own personal camera, preferably one that fits in my pocket. (If your phone takes good pictures that may be all you need.) I don’t like to rely on others to take pictures of the reunion so I like to have my own camera to take pictures whenever or wherever I want. I like to document many aspects of the reunion for my blogs and reunion theme packages and with my personal camera I’m sure to get just the shot I’m looking for.

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10. Emergency items– I’m talking about “fun” emergencies. If you have the following items you always have a fun game or activity if something doesn’t go quite right or if you have time to fill: A ball, 2 large dice and a deck of cards.

I prefer a playground ball that you can kick, jumbo dice and a regular deck of playing cards. You might also want to include sidewalk chalk, colored markers, Frisbees and a rope for group jumping games.

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Category Archives: Planning a Family Reunion