So you’d like to organize your own giant food fight? Smashing idea. Here’s how.

Invitation

I should start off by saying that some of your friends just won’t be into this. I was surprised by people’s intense pro or con reactions. The invitation can say whatever you want, but there are a few things everyone needs to bring:

- Five containers of Cool Whip
- A towel
- A change of clothes
- A bag for wet clothes
- Their friends

Why Cool Whip? It’s easy to get, doesn’t go rancid as easily as whipped cream, washes away with sprinklers or rain, won’t bruise anyone, and tastes reasonably good. Plus my Google searches of “Cool Whip kills grass” “Cool Whip kills plants,” “Cool Whip hurts dogs” came up clean. Bonus.

Location

(Aubrey took this.)

The ideal place has five main features:

1. A large grassy area
2. A sprinkler system to wash away any mess you can’t clean up
3. A hose for cleaning up guests
4. Someplace for folks to change
5. Garbage cans and recycling nearby to dispose of all the Cool Whip containers

If you’re doing this in a backyard or somewhere equally convenient, consider collecting containers for local teachers. Thirty-plus empty containers are good for craft projects and storage.

Supplies

You’ll need:

- Large, lightweight painters tarps if you’d like to contain the mess and make it easier to clean up
- Tent stakes and a hammer to pin down the edges of the tarp
- Large garbage bags

Note that the tarps get very, very slippery when they’re covered in Cool Whip, so the fight tends to go in slow-mo. We didn’t have much choice because we were hosting in a public park, but you may want to forgo them and use a hose to cleanup instead if you have private land.

The “Rules”

Everyone places their open Cool Whip containers around the edges of the tarp. Once the fight starts, all the containers are fair game for anyone to use. Have your host do a countdown and commence chucking stuff at people.

Cleanup

If all the guests help, it takes about five minutes to roll up the tarps, put them in garbage bags and throw the Cool Whip containers in recycling.

In all this is a ludicrously simple party. If you plan to tack on any other activities (food, drinks, a birthday party), make sure you end with the food fight, because people will really want to go home and shower afterward.

That’s it! Go forth and live your dream.

Rockstar before.

Rockstar after.

See how one little food fight makes everything seem so much more fun?

It was incredible — in an “everything I ever hoped it would” be kind of way.

It was also undoubtedly the most family-oriented whipped cream fight on record. Update: This is not Hank! This is Brody, my friend Bonita’s son. Hank was there, but he wanted very little to do with the festivities, as he does not like to get food on him. You may recall the ice cream incident.

(Nate Bolt took this, and it’s my favorite photo of the day.)

The rest of the photos are over here.

Someone did manage to lose a wedding ring in the fray (and I can’t believe that only happened to one person). All of us pitched in to search for it without any luck, but the ring was found the next day! I still can’t really believe it. Lori wrote a post about it.

I’ll upload some video later today, and will soon post a how-to for putting together your own food fight, which you should do. Today.

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to fight. Special thanks to the Mighty Girl readers who gamely faced the unknown with tubs of Cool Whip in tow.

As you can see, Intel is making my site more interesting by sponsoring my Mighty Life List. If it weren’t for this campaign, it would have been years (and years and years) before I got off my bum to plan this. Hooray for deadlines!