Star Wars Birthday Party: Part Two

Click HERE for Part One. 

GAMES

The idea was to get in teams of two and using just a piece of twine, somehow tie Yoda to you with your partner’s help. Then draw an activity out of the cup and if you can do that activity without touching Yoda with your hands, then you passed. To figure out some fun animals to act like, I typed in “weird star wars animals”. That did the trick.

Tying him on someone turned out to take way too long their attention, so we decided to just put Yoda in the hood of their robes and had them perform the task. It was so cute to see how seriously these kids took the tasks!

Next we played Save Princess Leia!

I printed out two storm troopers onto cardstock using an image found HERE, making sure to leave enough space at the bottom for the ‘stand’. Next I cut them out with the strip at the bottom, looped it together, and taped it to form the stand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we shot the storm troopers with nerf guns. They had fun with this game and wanted to try again and again.

Funny enough, my three year old was the first one to hit one down. I think it’s because of the look on her face.

Next we were off to free Han Solo from the Carbonite he was stuck in!

We don’t have any Han Solo action figures, and I didn’t want to pay $9.00 for one, so I decided to just print off a couple of him (picture found HERE) and laminated him twice to make sure the water didn’t soak through and ruin him. Being made of paper however posed the problem of him floating, so I sanded the back of the laminate a little bit and stuck a waterproof bandaid to the back of him and it worked!

I colored the water to try and look like carbonite but he ended up looking like he was stuck in jello, which, by the way, was another idea I found along the way, Han Solo in Jello to eat. Funny.

The kids split up into two teams. We laid a towel and cookie sheet under each pie dish with frozen Solo. I gave each kid a spoon, and each team got a small cup and a pitcher of warm water. They chipped away and chipped away and poured water and chipped some more. They loved this game!

Darth Vader was taped outside our house for them to spray with silly string.

Next time I’d splurge and get every kid a can of their own.  These were at the Dollar Store but I was trying to save a few dollars and only bought three cans.  They had a lot of fun spraying, but they would have had a lot more fun if they had their own can.

To make the Darth Vader at home, I saved THIS picture on my computer and opened it in Microsoft Paint.  Then you click on file and page setup.  Mark the box fit to and change that to make the picture print large on sheets to tape together to make one big picture.  Easy!

I have to say some of the kids were a pretty good aim, ha ha!

The last game was Light Saber Training.

Each child was given their foam light saber and a balloon, and they were supposed to make sure the balloon didn’t touch the ground.  I’m convinced the kids could have played with the light sabers the entire time!  But when asking my kids which their favorite games were, they all named different games from the other.

And lastly, the kids were “dubbed” real Jedi Knights by Dillon.  They were given these certificates. 

The birthday boy was so sweet during all the preparations and kept telling me thank you and how great everything looked and that he loved me.  I think he felt loved, too, which is what I was going for!

Star Wars Birthday Party: Part One

My middle son turned 7 last week!   He is seriously such a sweet kid and brings us so much happiness to our home! 

He’s majorly obsessed with Star Wars these days so that was the theme he chose.  At first I wasn’t very excited, but man alive, there are a million ideas online for a Star Wars themed party!  We had SO MUCH FUN! 

So many sources had the same ideas, so I just want to put that out there that I didn’t come up with these ideas…they were all found online on multiple sites, but there were too many to list!  I did list the sources for things that were specific to one website, however. 

invitAtions

The invitations were light sabers from an idea I found HERE.  D was so excited to hand them out to his friends! (I know, oops on the larger silver band on the blue—I made that one first and decided it didn’t leave enough blue on it so made the others smaller).

We had our wording to say this:

Seven years ago in a galaxy far far away,

a young padawan was born.

The council named him _________.

He became a great Jedi! But in order to defeat the

Sith lord he needs all other padawans to

come for their Jedi training. Please hasten to

The Jedi Temple at (address).

May the force be with you!

 

THE DECoRatioNs

The kids were greeted at the door by this sign, made with star punches taped to black wrapping paper. I used my silhouette machine to cut out the letters. 

I bought some Star Wars crepe paper from Zurchers and hung it around the table and of course around the room.

The table was covered with a black tablecloth and silver star confetti.  The Yoda plates were purchased at Zurchers also.  D’s favorite color is red so we had to get red cups and napkins!

I also chose a well-lit area in my house to put up more black wrapping paper for a sort of backdrop.  I wish I had found a black sheet or something that wasn’t reflective and wouldn’t have had seams, but it was too late at that point.  The kids still thought it was awesome. 

 

THE FooD

We just kept it simple and ate cupcakes and drank Yoda Soda (green sherbet and 7-Up drink poured on top). 

My hubby made fun of the scalloped Darth Vaders, but I didn’t have a hole punch large enough to cut the circles and I was short on time!  I must say I agree though.  Darth Vader is supposed to look cool and definitely NOT have a scalloped flowery edge!  I found the Vader HERE.  So yah, just ignore the froofy Vader. 

And the perfect-for-light-saber candles were at Walmart.  I was so excited when I saw them!

I forgot to take a picture of the Yoda Soda, but here is a picture I found online for some (source—and many great Star War Party ideas there!). 

 

Party Favors

Zurchers was awesome for the party bags…they had a pack for 8 kids which was how many kids we’d have there, for $8.00.  Perfect!  I also found the play packs in the dollar section of Target a couple months ago, and was pretty happy they fit into the Zurchers bags perfectly. The Zurchers pack came with a Yoda bag, a maze activity sheet, a Yoda sticker, a kaleidoscope, a slinky, and a “whistle” that actually didn’t whistle but sounds just like Darth Vader if you blow in and out the right way. 

Each kid also received a foam light saber made from a pool noodle.  Since it’s March in Utah and there is snow, no where in my county had swim noodles.  So I found a place in Salt Lake that did for $2.00 each (Leslie’s Pool Supply for anyone interested), and each noodle makes two light sabers.  I read that someone used the shiny duct tape so I looked at Home Depot and it was $8.00 for a large roll (the cheapest).  But Joann had some for $4.00 and I had a 40% off coupon, so it was much cheaper there. I also used black electrical tape I had on hand.

Lastly, as the kids arrived at the party they each received their own brown Jedi Robe. 

I found the cheapest brown fabric in the lining section of Joann and used a coupon, so they ended up about $3.60 a robe (I guessed a yard and a half for each kid, and made them using our Harry Potter robes as the template.  I’d say go ahead and get one extra yard just to be safe.  B’s robe almost didn’t make it and it was smaller than the others).  I made 8 robes the day (mostly night) before and to be honest, about half way through I was thinking, “What was I thinking!” But I just kept plugging away.

Seeing them all run around in their robes was so cute and so I decided it was totally worth it.  Their little eyes sure lit up when they were handed one to keep!

D’s outfit underneath are all things we had.  The thrifted for $3.00 karate shirt underneath just had a patch on the front that I removed and he was good to go! 

And what would a Star Wars Party be without Princess Leia? 

Tomorrow I’ll be back with the games we played!

Magic Party

My sweet middle son D turned six a couple weeks ago and requested a Magic Party.

Most of the party ideas online mentioned hiring a magician.  I thought, “Score!”  My father-in-law was a Rodeo Clown for many years and had a few fun magic tricks he’d perform during his acts.  But he was going to be gone in Hawaii, so it was up to my husband to learn a few tricks. 

So with my husband as the magician and only a few games and activities, the party was a success.  It’s not hard to please a group of kids that age!

THE INVITES

I used my Silhouette to cut the invitations, just using shapes from Silhouette’s website.  The invites looked like a plain top-hat.  But we left the top of a bunny sticking out of the middle of two hats glued together so you could pull the bunny out of the hat.  On the bunny, we had all the party information the guests needed to know.

PARTY FAVORS

I made some simple bow ties attached to elastic.  I used the method in my tutorial here, but you can see that I cheated a bit.  I didn’t sew a tube for the middle piece of fabric. Rather, I cut it longer and wider, folded the ends in, then sewed and left the raw edge as pictured in the bottom right hand picture (there was excess fabric so it was easy to sew, that I just clipped off after sewing).  I used hot glue to keep the bow and elastic together.  Easy!

The capes were also really easy.  There was an 8 yard bolt at Wal-Mart of the thin, silky, non-fraying fabric that most cheap Halloween costumes are made out of.  It was only $5.00 for the 8 yards.  So I cut the shape of a cape, then some knit for the neck, which I sewed into a loop.  I then started in the middle of the cape and the seam of the neck loop so the knit seam was in the back and not the front.

I used my Silhouette to cut the hats and names for the favor bags.  The white bags I found at Dollar Tree, 2 for $1.00.

Also at the Dollar Tree were these Magic Kits.  Not all of the tricks worked for my kids, but they had fun with the ones that did!

I also bought some Trix cereal to put in their party favor bags.  I thought of the idea only because of THIS website, because you can purchase a Bag of Trix.  I thought it was a bag of the cereal at first until I read further--it really is a bag of magic tricks.  So that’s how this came about :). 

I added the a.k.a. tricks under the word Trix, because my kids and even a couple adults said, “So, what’s magic about the Trix?  What do they do?”  Kind of funny ;).  But you can download the bag toppers HERE—they fit a normal sandwich Ziploc baggie. 

 

GAMES and ACTIVITIES

As the guests came, they tried to guess how many Jelly Bellies were in the jar. There were 123 and someone actually guessed 120!!!  Rather than letting that child take them all, everyone ate them.

Next they got their own wand to decorate.  I found an 8 pack of wood sticks at Joann for a dollar.  I tried to find some good stickers to decorate with, but didn’t find any I really liked.  So they used washable markers.  I wouldn’t recommend that because the marker got all over their hands.  Paint seems like it would be a little messy too, especially if it got on their clothes.  So I recommend stickers!

The third activity we did was like Hot Potato, only with a magician.  I found the idea HERE.   I just made an extra bow tie and cape for the puppy to be the magician, and my husband was in charge of starting and stopping the music from the another room.

The next game, also found HERE, was to have one person in the middle close their eyes, while the other people circle around him and pass the wand around.  When I said stop, the person with the wand hid it behind their back, and all the others in the circle put their hands behind their back also.  The middle person then opens their eyes and tried to guess who has the wand. 

Then, the moment we were building up to…my husband came out to be The Magician.  He did GREAT.  And looked even better with his bathrobe and ironing board he chose to use, ha ha!  I teased him about being some type of Housewife Magician.

I just love this next picture, despite it’s graininess, because D really was so amazed.  Dillon would perform a trick, and D would say, “Awesome!”  so sincerely!  Very cute.   (P.S.  I’m very much aware the D’s magician hat looks rather funny. That’s because it is indeed quite funny looking.)

B really enjoyed it also.  Dillon was pretty funny and if I wasn’t concerned about the privacy of the other kids more, I’d post some fun pics of the kids jumping and laughing.

We ate cupcakes and opened presents and called it a party!

I’m happy he chose to do this kind of party!  I was a little hesitant to agree, but seeing his happy face makes the challenge of some birthday themes totally worth it!