This Soccer Themed Upsherin Party Was So Fun to Plan!

My son was obsessed with soccer. It started from there, and the rest just fell into place.

You can get so creative with upsherins. There are no rules, no expectations, just lots of fun and games. My son loves to kick a soccer ball around. He sleeps with his ball, eats with it on his lap, and takes it to morah. We know it’s a stage, but right now, this is what he obsesses over. It was only natural that soccer became the “theme” of the party, with black white and green (grass) as the primary colors.

I knew I wanted the party to be fun and practical. I wanted each child to feel special. I came up with this “cafeteria” concept, where the food is laid out as a loop in individual serving sizes. Each child first grabs a tray, then takes the food he wants, adding to his tray, one thing at a time.

This is the tray we used.

I filled little buckets with precut parchment paper to serve the chicken. Another important and cute component were these mini dip cups, which I filled with mustard and ketchup. Every little detail adds cuteness.

I had a local stamp store print papers to place inside the trays. I preferred not writing my son’s name there but just “I am a big boy…etc.” since all these placemats end up in the trash. It always hurts me to see a kid’s name go to the trash. The same goes for the napkins; I opted on not putting the name there too.

Click here to customize this napkin.

Each kid would grab a lined tray from the stack, then get a bucket, and proceed to fill his bucket with fried chicken, chicken nuggets, and fries.

Click here to order the customized placemats.

After that station, one could find a lineup of ready to grab tacos, ingeniously standing on these adorable and disposable cardboard taco stands. I had prepared traditional taco meat and also this shredded beef with salsa (click here for link to a winning recipe.)
Little bottles of Sprite worked well with the color scheme. Too bad if you didn’t like Sprite. Just kidding. Not really.
After that, for the adults, I had a spread of carved meats and salads. The food was a real hit, because it was geared for both kids and adults.
On the other side of the room, I set up a s’mores station similar to the one Victoria wrote about here. I had these boats prepared with graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows so that each kid could grab one and make themselves a s’more.

Last but not least, I had a table set with nosh and prizes (actually more prizes than nosh) so that children could make their own pekaleh. The fun never ended!