My sweet middle child just turned 11 and after having the traditional summer birthday pool party for the past few years, we wanted to do something different and fun for her party this year. After a family brainstorm, we decided to hold a photo scavenger hunt at our local mall.

First, we did some Pinterest searching and came up with a list of items to search for or activities the team must do and capture a photo of. I tried to make it a mix of easy and more difficult tasks.

On the day of the party, we got to the mall and split the group into two teams by pulling names out of a hat. I went with one team and big sister went with the other team so that they were well-chaperoned. Dad and brother manned base, which was a comfortable sitting area at Nordstrom’s, and kept time.

The kids were really into it. They immediately started going down the list coming up with ideas of where to get the photo. Each of them had to be in every photo. Each photo had to be taken in a different store. Some of the tasks included posing like an ad that is posted in the mall (above photos), wearing hats, wearing high heels, with their favorite Disney character, and getting a perfume sample.

They had an hour and 15 minutes to get as many items on the list as they could. Each item or task was given a point value. The team with the most points won. There were lots of giggles and high fives and a good time was had by all.

The retailers seemed happy to join in on our fun. However, we were stopped by a mall cop after we took a picture of a group of strangers doing the YMCA positions. He told us scavenger hunts are “not authorized.” You’d think a shopping mall would welcome anything positive to bring in traffic. So we hid our papers and went into stealth mode.

But watch out for the mall cop!

Get your copy of the scavenger hunt list and the game rules!