My daughter designed her own invitations on our computer to look like postcards. Decorations At 12 years old my daughter is not too big into decorations, so we kept it fairly simple. We cleared out our game room in our basement for the party. We put up a few of her posters from her room (Hannah Montana and High School Musical) and set up a few black lights. With the lights dimmed and the glow of the black lights, it gave the room more of a dance feel and gave the guests more ambition to get up and dance. The Karaoke Show Down We set up our karaoke machine with two microphones for our show down. We had a bunch of CDs ready; some were karaoke CDs (includes lyrics) while some weren't. There were a few CDs that the girls didn't need the lyrics too, because they had the songs memorized. If you don't have a lot of karaoke CDs and want the lyrics for the CDs you do have, search for them online. We divided the girls into teams of two, this way a few of the girls that were a little shy had someone to sing with. At first there were a couple girls that were a little hesitant about signing, but after the first 20 minutes everyone wanted to sing. It was sort of like American Idol. We had the teams that were not signing be the judges, giving the other teams a chance to get a score from 1 to 10, depending on if they got the lyrics right and how much they got into the song (not so much on the actual signing). Then I kept the total of everyone's score and didn't let anyone know who was winning until the end. Surprisingly nobody cared too much about who was ahead, they were too busy getting into the music. The team with the most points at the end won High School Musical posters. Party Favors For favors we ordered some glow in the dark bracelets, cups and tattoos off of orientaltrading.com. They offer a variety of glow in the dark favors and it worked out perfect with out black lights and setting.
CD Thank You Card Make sure you keep your camera in handy; the girls passed the camera around getting some funny shots of one another! Then after the party we put together a slide show of all the pictures and put them on a CD (along with music). We gave everyone a copy of the CD with their thank you card. It is fairly easy to make a slide show on your computer if you have the software for it. I used Adobe Photoshop, but there are other programs that can do slide shows, you can also find some programs online that will help you for free. Then the girls can stick there CD into a DVD player or their computer to watch themselves rock out. I got a lot of compliments from the other moms on the CD, and it is a great keepsake for the girls.
Other Game Ideas There are plenty of video games out there that you could also use when hosting a karaoke party, depending on the game system you might own or the money you want to spend. My sister's kids have the wii and love to play High School Musical sing it, she thought that would be a great party entertainer, but I didn't want to spend the money and she lives too far away to borrow it. There is also the rock band (video game) that I would highly recommend for a boy party. We have the American Idol talent challenge game, but decided not to use it because the songs that you sing are very short and it doesn't have a lot of song choices; the flip side of the talent challenge game is that my girls love to see what Simon and the other judges will say. Hope these birthday party ideas will help. Good luck.