New Years Eve At Home: Fun Family-Friendly Party Ideas

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If you’re planning to spend New Year’s Eve at home with your family but want to jazz up your year-end celebration, these family friendly party ideas are exactly what you need! Rest assured you and your children will be partying into the New Year (or at least until their bedtime).

As the clock ticks down to midnight, there’s no better way to ring in the New Year than with a celebration that includes the whole family. From younger kids to teens and adults, we’ve got you covered with a variety of festive and fun family friendly party ideas to make this New Year’s Eve party one for the memory books. 

So let’s kickstart the countdown to spectacular New Year’s Eve fun with creative themes, games and special treats.

New Years Eve Party Ideas: Kid-Friendly Themes 

Old School Hollywood

A fun theme for you and your kids on New Years is a Hollywood movie glamour party! You can decorate everything like a movie theater complete with a red carpet, or streamers, gold decorations, and classic film reels. Be sure to include plenty of lights and popcorn for this theme to bring out the old movie vibes for your party. 

While you and your children may be more familiar with modern-day Hollywood, this party gives everyone a chance to live out their movie star dreams.

You could even make walk-of-fame stars for you and your children to further enjoy the A-list stars experience. And don’t forget party poppers to ring in the new year.

Modern Disco

They may say disco is dead, but this party definitely won’t be! This is a fun party theme that will allow for dancing and playtime with the kids and teens.

If you don’t want to celebrate 70s disco, you can modernize this theme for the kids by making a playlist of your current favorite songs. 

Use multicolored lights, glow sticks, and even a dedicated dance floor to make this rockin’ new year party a real hit. Try using a lighted disco ball for a faux midnight ball drop. And a disco ball-shaped pinata filled with treats will ensure the kids have a great time. 

Roaring 20s

The 20s were prime time for the biggest party planner in literary history, Gatsby. While you may not have a mansion to throw your New Year’s Eve party in, you can still harness the class and fun this generation presented by decorating for the occasion. 

Add a diy photo booth complete with 20s photo props and serve kid-friendly “champagne” in the form of sparkling grape juice. Girls can dress in flapper dresses and boys can don dapper suspenders and dress shirts. 

Don’t forget fun things like beads, tinsel, and feather fans for the full effect. Pretty soon the entire family will be partying like you are 20s royalty and enjoy ringing in the New Year in your classy party clothes.

Masquerade 

New Year’s Eve is an interesting time when we count down to the New Year, so why not have an interesting party theme for your kids as well? This masquerade theme is sure to keep them entertained while also offering a little mystery behind the masks.

Up the fun factor by purchasing supplies at the dollar store and making your own masks. The older kids will have fun planning fancy outfits to coordinate with their masks for the New Year’s Eve ball you will be attending. 

For this one, you can decorate with colors like black, white, silver, and gold to keep your decorations sleek and mysterious. Another option is to decorate with colors reminiscent of Mardi Gras, like pink, green, purple, and yellow. These colors can work for your party theme and play into your children’s love of colors and glitter.

New Years Eve Food Ideas

Charcuterie Boards

A delicious snack with options for everyone is a charcuterie board. Get your children involved by letting them make food suggestions for the board.

Whether you like pickles, cheeses, salami, or any other cut of meat the options are endless. You can also make this board with just fruits and veggies, or create a dessert board full of sweet treats. 

Use some of my Charcuterie boards for inspiration:

• Charcuterie Ball
• Easy Thanksgiving Charcuterie Board
• Charcuterie Bouquet
• Breakfast Charcuterie Board

Glitter Star Cookies

This is a great dessert option for the kids that doubles as an easy party activity. Start with a regular sugar cookie recipe or buy premade sugar cookie dough. After that you’ll need icing, edible glitter (or luster dust), and a star-shaped cookie cutter. 

Cut the cookie dough into star shapes, bake and allow time to cool before adding the icing. Once the cookies are iced immediately add the glitter dust on top and then tap off the excess.

Or if you like to be more exact with your glitter placement or want to create a specific design use a baking paintbrush to apply the luster dust with precision.

7-Layer Dip

This dip is great for parties because it is full of flavor and tasty ingredients and doesn’t require any cooking. There are many ways to make a 7-layer dip, which makes it easy to modify if you have guests with dietary restrictions.

The most common ingredients to use are refried beans, sour cream, guacamole, olives, cheese, green onions, and salsa. Begin by layering the beans into the bottom of a casserole dish. Then layer the guacamole, sour cream, salsa, cheese, and top with sliced olives and green onions. Then refrigerate until ready to serve. 

More great party dips:

• Neiman Marcus Dip
• Little Debbie Dip
• Knorr Veggie Dip
• Orange Flavored Marshmallow Cream Cheese Fruit Dip
• Fluffy Marshmallow Cream Cheese Fruit Dip

Pull Apart Bread 

Another fun food for your kids to get their hands into is pull-apart bread. It can be made in either a sweet or savory version.

A personal favorite is to make a pizza version using pepperoni and cheese, which is a bit more exciting than the usual garlic bread. To start, you can make your own homemade dough recipe or purchase a store-bought dough. 

Then you’ll need whatever seasonings you want to use, your cheese of choice, and pepperoni slices. Or use mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes for a Margherita bread.

Cut the dough into smaller pieces and toss them in oil. Combine the cheese, pepperoni, and other seasonings with the cut dough and gently toss them until the dough pieces are evenly coated. 

Then spray a bundt cake pan and place the coated dough balls into the pan. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and allow to cool for 1-2 minutes in the pan.

Place a serving plate over the top of the bundt pan and carefully turn the pan upside down to remove the pull-apart bread from the pan. Serve with warm marinara or any sauce of your choice.

If you are looking for a sweeter bread, try my Pull-Apart Monkey Pecan Bread.

Games For News Year Eve Party At Home 

Charades 

A game your whole family can take part in is New Year’s Eve charades! You can pick teams, and play to guess popular movies, tv shows, or anything else that you and your family enjoys. You can also pick topics to coordinate with your party theme.

Karaoke

Who doesn’t love music? I’m sure your children do and that is why karaoke is an exciting and unique way to spend time together on New Year’s Eve. Look for kid-friendly karaoke tracks or you can make your own karaoke mix.

UNO 

The classic card game UNO is easy enough for children to play yet competitive for the teens and adults. Which means everyone can enjoy playing this card game.

There are many iterations of this classic game. Choose whichever version you prefer to play with your family, or go with the classic card game. 

Resolution Mad Libs

A New Year’s specific game sure to bring laughs to your party is Resolution Mad Libs! You can either create your own template or print some out online and pass them out to the family and partygoers.

Have party guests fill in the blanks with hilarious and outlandish resolutions then take turns reading them out loud to each other.

Family Game Night

Another great way to celebrate the end of the year is a family game night. Set up a variety of your favorite card, dice or board games to enjoy throughout the night.

One of our favorite games is Left Right Center (we play with dollars but dimes or quarters can be used). Pictionary, Yahtzee and new year’s eve bingo are a few more good options. We even did Lego-building contests for a few years.

Fun Contests & Prizes

Funniest photo booth

If you use a diy photo booth for your party you can turn your photos into a friendly contest. Whoever can make the funniest photo could win a handmade Hollywood star with their name on it.

Craziest Mask

For your masquerade-themed party, this is a great contest to flex your artistic side. Compete to see who can make the craziest, most decorated mask.

The winner of this challenge could receive a goody bag with beads, confetti poppers, and a candy ring to showcase the glitz of this theme.

Balloon Popping

This may be a loud activity but it is perfect for kids! You can use balloons that have glitter or confetti inside for extra festive flair (we don’t recommend playing this on carpeted surfaces because it can be messy).

The goal is to have teams compete to see who can sit on their balloon and pop the most balloons in the shortest amount of time. The winners of this contest could win a chocolate trophy or lollipop, that can easily be made with this mold.

Trivia

Trivia is a classic game contest that allows your family and friends to divide into teams and compete. You can create specific question topics that you and your family will have a blast answering.

For the winners of this contest, hand out smarty-pants goody bags that contain New Year’s Eve glasses, and packs of smarties candies.

You Can Have A Fun Family-Friendly New Years Eve Party At Home

Bid farewell to last year and welcome in the new year with these fun activities and New Year’s Eve party ideas. Your family members are sure to enjoy these new year’s celebrations and creating new traditions.

But the best part is spending quality time with your loved ones, making memories they will cherish for a lifetime.

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