Moments before the first guest rang the doorbell, Elizabeth surveyed her handiwork with pleasure. From the balloons on the mailbox to the beautiful table décor ordered online, all was in place for a wonderful celebration of her daughter's birthday.

Elizabeth had considered everything. Two fun crafts for the girls waited in the family room. The kitchen counter held homemade muffins, still warm from the oven, and a fruit and cheese platter for any parents who might want to stay for the party. The cake was gorgeous. The same design had been featured in a magazine a few years earlier. Elizabeth expected it to delight and amaze her little guests.

The Best Laid Party Plans....

But at some point during the first half hour of the party, Elizabeth realized that planning a successful birthday party is trickier than it seems. Each little guest, no matter how charming and well behaved, arrives with his or her own set of potential distractions, disruptions and disorganization-and a small group of them can lay waste to even the best laid party plans.

Elizabeth's planning began to unravel within the first few moments of the party. The front foyer was a flurry of activity, with boots, jackets and presents arriving each time the doorbell chimed. It chimed anew each time Elizabeth tried to move toward the closet to put away the last guest's apparel. She was unable to finish greeting one parent before a new one arrived with a little guest in tow. At one point, with her vision blocked by a stack of presents and coats she was attempting to carry, Elizabeth tripped over a stray pair of boots left by an anonymous guest in the entryway to the living room.

Simple craft - or simple catastrophe?

In the meantime, excited squeals coming from the family room told her that most of the little guests had gathered there, and were excitedly examining the craft with hands-on enthusiasm-with no adult supervision.

"I want pink!" one voice shrieked. "Me, too!" another echoed. The rest of the voices joined in, shrieking a cacophony of indistinguishable color claims. Elizabeth's heart sank as she heard the sound of the large container of 1,000 seed beads clattering across the coffee table in its descent to the floor.

The frenetic pace continued. The girls were so excited they just could not seem to sit stil and focus on the craft. Even with the help of another mom who stepped in to help control the chaos, Elizabeth was unable to assist all the girls in completing the seed bead craft in a timely manner. Some girls were unable to complete the craft at all. One began to cry in frustration. Other children finished almost instantly. Elizabeth did not think those children did more than glance at the craft!

Question, question....Who's got the question?

"What's next?" the early finishers wanted to know. "Can we have cake now? When do we open presents? Can we play upstairs?"

Two of the girls disappeared upstairs, although Elizabeth had planned to contain the party on the first floor. Others began to follow. With so many excited girls heading upstairs, Elizabeth decided not to attempt a second craft, but to usher the girls to the table instead.

She was happy to see the cake properly admired. "Could I have the big rose?" one guest asked. "Me, too!" another chimed in. Suddenly all the girls were begging for choice decorations from the cake.

"You'll have to be happy with whatever you get," Elizabeth said, somewhat more gruffly than intended. Fatigue was beginning to erode her patience. She thought she might slip into the kitchen to take some medicine for her headache while the girls were occupied eating cake.

She could scarcely believe her eyes when one little girl announced, ‘I'm through!" and left the table. An untouched chunk of cake remained on her plate.

"Me, too," another child echoed. More than half the girls disappeared from the table in the blink of an eye, leaving plate after plate of untouched cake. Very, very expensive untouched cake.

"Wait, girls!" Elizabeth called -- but the girls did not hear her and she was distracted by what happened next.

Rivers of lemonade, mountains of cake

"Oops!" said one of the remaining guests. A slow river of spilled lemonade was seeping across the table. Another girl jumped out of its path, losing her grip on a huge slice of cake. It tumbled to the carpet.

"I'm finished!" said the little girl sitting next to the lemonade spill. She pushed back her chair, grinding icing from the dropped piece of cake in a wide swatch of bright color across the dining room carpet. Elizabeth, still mopping at lemonade with wet napkins, winced.

"What do we do now?" a little girl asked. Elizabeth was surprised by the mean thought that slid into her head in response. She managed a weak smile. "We're going to open presents," she said.

Her words, so innocently delivered, seemed to create a stampede.

The Gift Opening Stampede

Elizabeth could not even see her own daughter in the crowd. Ribbons, bows and bits of wrapping paper danced skyward from the center of the frenzy, but so many little bodies were packed in a tight circle that it was hard to determine where one body stopped and another began. Elizabeth ran to the kitchen for a note pad and pencil to record who presented which gift to her daughter for thank-you cards. She quickly realized the futility of this plan. There was no way to tell what was what in all the chaos. Elizabeth just hoped no one would get hurt!

The doorbell chimed as parents began arriving -- and what ensued next made all that had transpired earlier look like a cakewalk.

As parents arrived to pick up their children, Elizabeth found herself unable to leave the entryway where she was needed to answer the door time and time again. Present opening continued in the next room. The mother of one little girl who was sobbing and holding her forehead brought the crying child to Elizabeth. "Could we have some ice?" the mother asked. "She bumped heads with someone."

"Would you happen to know where Allison's socks are?" another mom asked. "I'm sorry to ask when you're so busy, but we have to be somewhere else in just a few minutes."

Elizabeth discovered that matching a group of children with proper shoes, socks and jackets was harder than picking 1,000 spilled seed beads out of the carpet.

Socks, Shoes and Goodbye Blues

When the door closed behind the last guest, Elizabeth leaned her head against it in relief and surveyed the jumble of presents, wrapping paper, spilled cake and craft supplies that had taken over her house.

"That's it," she said out loud. "Never again."

Many moms can identify with Elizabeth and her home birthday party experience. Hostessing a child's birthday party is hard work, requiring meticulous planning, great attention to detail, patience, flexibility and some measure of resilience. Does it help to know that even professional party planners sometimes wring their hands afterward, wondering how so much could possibly go wrong in so short a time? The mark of a professional is in being prepared to handle the EXPECTED problems -- and being quick enough to handle the UNEXPECTED before they get out of hand.

Before you throw in the towel and book a party at a local establishment specializing in parties, know that it most certainly IS possible to have a successful party that is great fun for the children and easy for the hostess to conduct.

Here are The Party Fairy's Top 5 Tips for helping moms contain chaos and run a smooth and successful home birthday party. These tips would have made a huge difference for Elizabeth!

The Party Fairy's Top Five Tips for Success

1. RECRUIT HELPERS. Never try a home birthday party alone; it's a sure recipe for disaster. You'll need plenty of helping hands to keep a child's birthday party moving smoothly and successfully. And don't count on just one helper, because anything can happen. What if dear Aunt Wilma, who is always so good to help out when needed, winds up with pneumonia on the day of the party?

The best plan of action makes use of many different helping hands throughout the party. Most family members and friends love to help by taking on a specific task or two, but very few people truly want to spend the entire party helping. They want to enjoy watching and feel like guests, too! If you parcel out tasks here and there, everyone will feel good about helping -- but still be able to enjoy the party.

Be very specific about tasks. For example, don't ask your sister if she will help at the table. Ask her if she will be in charge of serving the lemonade, including keeping cups refilled and cleaning up spills. This way you will be free to continue serving cake when the inevitable calls for "More lemonade, please!" and "I didn't get any lemonade yet!" and "Uh-oh! I spilled it!" occur. You'll be amazed at how much it helps to have somoene else take total responsibility for small tasks so that you can focus on keeping the party moving.

2. SHEDULE AN ARRIVAL ACTIVITY. Failure to do this is one of the most common mistakes made when planning a child's birthday party. Your guests are going to arrive at different times -- and without an arrival activity to engage those who arrive early while waiting for those who arrive late, children are going to explore your home or check out the crafts and projects you've planned before you are ready for them to do so.

But be careful. You don't want your arrival activity to be something necessary to enjoyment of the party, or late arrivals will feel left out. You may even feel like you need to delay the start of the party to give late arrivals a chance to catch up with the other children. The Party Fairy recommends an arrival activity that consists of making decorations which can be displayed at the party. If you are making a chain of stars, for example, to suspend overhead, it's easy to stop when the last child arrives -- or to keep adding stars as needed.

Recruit a helper to run the arrival activity for you so that you will be free to greet other arriving guests. Make sure your child remains with the group and does not run to the door each time a new guest arrives, or the other children will follow and you will have an excited mob at your front door. Send each new arrival to your child and the rest of the group with instructions about what is going on.

"Hello, Lucy! We're so happy to see you. Madison will be so excited that you're here. She's in the kitchen with a few other friends, making some pretty stars to hang over the table. I'll take your coat -- and you can go right this way to join the other girls."

3 . DIVIDE AND CONQUER. If you are having more than 8 children at a home birthday party, the best way to maintain order is to divide and conquer. When all have arrived, split the children into two groups and rotate from craft to craft. While one group of six children makes a necklace, have the other group of five children color a bookmark. Then switch crafts.

Teachers appreciate how effective this method is in the classroom. It works just as well at home parties. Most children are familiar with the concept from school, so they are happy to go along with the plan. It does help, however, to reassure young children that they WILL have a chance to do the other craft in just a few minutes. Even 8-year-olds, who are getting old enough to figure out the rotation system, appreciate a reminder!

You'll need a volunteer to assist at each crafts station. If possible, use two other helpers and keep yourself free to be the hostess, walking from station to encourage the little crafters and handle any problems.

4. CONTROL CHAOS. Label, label, label to avoid confusion. The more time you spend on the front end, labeling party favor bags and writing names on craft projects, the less time you will lose throughout and at the end of the party to confusion and chaos.

The Party Fairy recommends having a paper grocery bag with each child's name on it. When children remove socks, shoes, jackets, etc., at the beginning of the party, place those items in that child's bag. Be diligent throughout the party in having children place their art projects in the bags upon completion, and drop in any prizes won during the course of the party. This will make an enormous difference at the end of the party.

Paper grocery bags are not as attractive as pretty little party favor bags - but they are ever so much more practical and will make a huge difference in the success of your party. And you will still be able to hand out those pretty party favor bags! They'll just get placed in the grocery bags as the children head home.

If the thought of a boring grocery bag makes you long for something more in keeping with your party theme, purchase large solid colored gift bags the size of grocery bags and decorate them.

5. PLAN ACTIVITIES IN BLOCKS OF 15 MINUTES. Developing a timeline for a party is the hardest task of all. A general rule for success is to allocate 15 minutes per activity for children 8 and younger. Craft projects or games taking longer than this are inappropriate for most parties for young children, who will quickly become bored and disruptive. You will eliminate a great many headaches for yourself if you avoid lengthy craft projects, no matter how appealing they are to you, and focus on simple projects which can be completed in 15-minute blocks of time.

When selecting projects, keep in mind that it's always better to plan three 15-minute projects rather than one 45-minute project. This will keep the party moving at a good pace. By age 10, children are ready to enjoy a longer project, and sleepovers certainly offer the perfect venue for those involved, time-consuming, multi-step craft projects!

This hub was contributed by The Party Fairy, a children's birthday and special events service in Richmond, VA.