Star Wars Birthday!

This past weekend we had a Star Wars Birthday Party! I was pretty excited that my son had picked Star Wars, because there are so many great ideas out there! I looked all over Pinterest and Amazon (my two weaknesses) and found some really great ideas. The fun thing about a Star Wars party is that a lot of times the parents are into it even more than the kids!

Here are some of the products and ideas we used:

First of all, a big thank you to homemadebyjill.blogspot.com! She was awesome.  I loved all of her ideas for the Star Wars party she threw for her son. She was kind enough to email me some of the Silhouette files she created, which made life much easier for me!

I loved her idea for this R2D2 Water dispenser and she was gracious enough to send me the file. I think it turned out really fun:

My other favorite from the party were these Millenium Falcons. To make these I ordered this silicone mold from Amazon and filled them with melting candy from Michaels. I love the detail!

I've seen these cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma and have loved them and was just looking for an excuse to buy them! They come with Boba Fett, a Storm Trooper, Darth Vader and Yoda. We used them to make chocolate sugar cookies and regular sugar cookies and for the Star Wars "hot pockets". This is another idea that homemadebyjill listed on her blog. They are little pockets of ham and cheese inside pie crust dough.

 

We also did Obi-Wan Kebabies...hehehe..I feel like such a nerd.

My son was a huge fan of the Darth Vader cake. My husband and I are starting to worry that his favorite character is Darth Vader. He turns out ok in the end, right? So, we shouldn't be too worried! This cake pan is made by Wilton and comes with really easy to follow directions. Black frosting can be hard to get just right without adding way too much food coloring, so I went with the "black frosting in a tube" route.

We also had candy dipped pretzel lightsabers, thermal detonators (aka whoppers), Qui-Gon Jin-ger snaps, Leia's Buns (cinnamon rolls), Bow-ba Fett Pasta, Wookie Cookies (Teddy Grahams) and Korean food for the adults!

The activities were not as organized as I would have liked.  It was raining which kind of threw me off my game, because we were planning on doing most of the activities outside, but I think it all turned out ok. I kept taking deep breaths and telling myself that it was a 4 year old's birthday party.

For the death star pinata, I ordered a beach ball pinata, spray painted it black with some leftover paint, and then painted on silver squares.  I also painted a death star on a poster board and the kids had to "stay on target" by flying paper airplanes through the hole.

For the train with Yoda game, I ordered a stuffed Yoda and the kids had to wear him on their backs in a backpack and balance across a board and go through a tunnel, like they were training on Dagobah with Yoda.

Homemadebyjill had an awesome idea of having a "Tattoo-ine Parlor" using temporary tattoos.

We had a little photo session with the kids using this mural and these masks I ordered off of etsy.

Once again I did not get a picture of the favor boxes! I was lucky enough to find a bunch of star wars things on sale at Target and Michaels, including small markers with stamps and notebooks. We also had little bags of "Han's Rolos" and "Ewok Gummies".

It was a lot of fun. I love throwing birthday parties and seeing my kids get excited about the details. I especially love finding fun products and blogs that make my life so much easier!

I'm really excited about the fact that I get to use my new Star Wars cookie cutters for May the Fourth.

Booyakasha!

I love birthdays! I treat birthdays like national holidays. Back in October my 6 year old decided he wanted to have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Birthday Party. So, off to Pinterest I went. Unfortunately this was one of those times when I couldn't really find a whole lot of ideas. I guess Ninja Turtles are becoming popular again, but at the time there weren't a lot of party ideas out there! There were some though so I pieced together some ideas and came up with some on my own. Here are some of the things we did:

First, and most importantly, the Food.  Ninja Turtles love pizza. So, Sister #2 and I decided it would be fun to have all pizza themed foods. I made Veggie Pizza, Fruit Pizza, Cookie Pizzas and we also had a pizza bar where the kids could make their own pizzas. The best part was that I was able to make all of the food the night before the party and I used aluminum foil pizza pans so the clean up was super easy! As some extra treats we had Pretzel sticks (Donnie's staffs), Swedish Fish for Fish Face and Kraang Brains. To make the Kraang brains I used this Brain Mold I found on Amazon and filled them with pink candy melts from Michaels and mini oreos. (Please excuse the baby bottle next to the cookie pizza :)

For Decorations we used Pizza Boxes, which I also bought on Amazon. You get a lot of boxes, but it worked out well, because we used them to put the kids pizza on after they were baked and because Sister #2 used some for her son's party in December. I used some old Slim Fast cans as containers for the pizza sauce and toppings. It worked well because they are silver under the labels and made them look like pipes from the sewers. We also got a lot of helium filled balloons, streamers, and the usual kind of decorations. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the favor bags!

Awesome Sister #4 who is way more artistic than I could even ever hope to be drew this amazing Kraang Robot. I mean, she drew it. How amazing is that!? Then we played "Pin the Kraang on the Robot."

We also threw the sewer lids (aluminum foil grill pans) into the ooze.

We made ooze using the basic Borax Ooze recipe. This was a lot of fun and I was really glad we were outside for this step!

We also got these huge 36 inch helium balloons, 2 of which popped before the party. We made some staffs out of pool noodles and had the kids attack the big balloon. This was fun until they realized it was way more fun to attack the Dad.

We also hung a poster and had fun photo sessions. I was going to make masks for each of them, but decided it would be way too much work to cut out the holes for eyes and most of them would get tired of them, so we just made headbands, which made them look like Sushi chefs..but oh well!

Overall, it was a lot of fun! And most importantly, it made for one happy kid: