We had nurtured community on our street prior to Covid, celebrating in the traditional concept of a block party. We would gather on my driveway, Lindsey (next door neighbour) and myself flipping pancakes, our partners running in and out of the house to make more batter.
Lindsey taught me the joy of using cooking oil to crisp those cakes. We have no special recipe, just the box, add eggs and water, and have never had a complaint!
In fact, our neighbours couldn’t stop thanking us the first year we hosted, and still smile ear to ear when we come around in early spring asking for their street closure signatures.
I know anyone can host a block party, and I’d love to share our simple steps!
How-to Pancake Breakfast
Step One:
Choose your date! We like to host on a Sunday morning, and let the party go all day.
Step Two:
Create a poster, I always use canva ~ here’s our 2022 version!
Step Three:
Go to your city’s website and click ‘block party’. We like to do this at minimum one month prior to the party date.
Here is the Saskatoon link.
In our city it’s found under ‘community culture heritage/neighbourhoods/community associations’ so try searching one of those if it doesn’t come up right away.
Step Four:
Print off the street closure form.
In our city you need 51% of your street to agree to the closure.
We have so much fun gathering the kids on the street to walk around doing this job for us! With adult supervision of course.
Step Five:
Print a full colour poster to hand out to every house on your street. I like to print at Staples and save my printer ink.
Step Six:
Grab a clipboard, pen, street closure form, and the posters.
Walk up and down your street until you’ve knocked on every door and met every neighbour. Ask them to sign and give them a poster.
Pro Tip:
Help your kids write a ‘pitch’ to share with each house. We say a rough version of the following:
Hello! I live down the street and we want to invite you to our annual pancake breakfast! Here is the poster, please put it on your fridge. But first, we need your help. Can you please sign this form so we can close down the street?
Let your cute kids do this job. It gets them comfortable public speaking and meeting their neighbours which is less and less common now that kids live on devices. We know ours spend too much time on theirs!
Step Seven: Almost done!
Upload the form to your City’s website and you are good to go for a few weeks until final party prep starts.
Stay tuned for part two when we reveal party prep for the actual day, and how it all plays out.
Block Party, ‘The Day Of’, is posted! read here