Take Me Out To The Ballgame

My son just completed an amazing season playing for the Dodgers. Okay, who am I trying to fool...the little league Dodgers! This was his second season playing and we are now convinced that in addition to having great teams, this league also hosts the best ceremonies. Let's talk about Opening Day - they shut down major roads for a mile-long parade procession of teams. Did I mention this was little league? And Closing Day was just as big. So with all of this celebrating going on, I came up with a few ideas that could be used at an end-of-the-season bash for a little league team.

In most little leagues there is no guarantee that kids will ever play on the same team again, so why not send them home with a party favor that's also a cool keepsake... team baseball cards. The key to this favor are pictures, so make sure that you take a bunch of every player throughout the season so that you have a lot to choose from. You can create a custom template fairly easily using editing software like Photoshop Elements. This particular software also allows you to upload pictures directly into the template. My husband (who would readily admit that he is the least creative person in our house) created these, so it's pretty easy to do...



Here is an idea for centerpieces that is easy to construct and costs nothing! Stack two or more baseball gloves on top of each other and connect them with the velcro straps. Then top the gloves off with a baseball...that's it.



To the make the centerpieces more meaningful ask each player to bring his/her game ball - trust me, they still won't figure out that everyone on the team gets a treasured game ball.



I adore cupcake flags - I think they make the cupcake taste better because they're just so darn cute. At the last major league baseball game that I attended my sons were transfixed by the oversized foam fingers that were being sold for a fortune. I thought it would be cool to create a foam finger cupcake flag for this type of party. To make the flag, cut out a picture of a foam finger (just google 'foam finger') and cut out the identical shape on foam paper. Glue the pieces together and then attach a lollipop stick on back.



Hope these ideas are useful...now go play ball!