A Pirate Paaaaarty!

I have been so non existence on this blog of mine and I apologize.  But...I have good reason.    I was very busy planning a very special birthday party for a very special little 6 year old in my house.   This year we talked about tons of ideas for the theme and finally settled on a Pirate Party!  It was such a fun theme to work with and there were tons of ideas to steal  borrow on Pinterest!   You know what they say...imitation is the best form of flattery!

After we decided on our theme I went right to work on our invitations.  I searched Etsy for a fun pirate party invite, but I couldn't find one that was mature enough for a soon to be 6 year old, but not too mature at the same time.  So, I made my own.   I found some cream heavy weight paper and designed a pretty basic invite with fun wording and went to work.   I found the idea for the wording HERE.

Next I burned all of the edges of the invites to make them appear old.  That was quite a job.  We sent out 15 invitations so it was pretty time consuming, but I was so happy with the way they turned out and the kids LOVED them.   I personally believe the invitation sets the stage for a great party.

I really combed Pinterest for ideas for this party.  I had so much fun decorating too.   I transformed our mantle in the kitchen to fit our pirate theme.  We had pirate fish nets, flags, treasure chests, cannon balls and telescopes.

I invited my son's entire class so I knew with 15 boys here I would need to keep them busy.  Last year at his superhero party (click HERE to see it), I had "stations" of different activities that the boys did to earn their superhero status.  So I followed the same idea for this year and we had different activities for them to complete in order to get their pirate props.

But first, we dressed them all up once they arrived.   We had boxes of goodies for each child and a sign telling them what they would need to become a pirate....

Inside each box, each boy found a necklace, eye patch, bandana and their treasure map that told them where to go to earn more things towards becoming a pirate.

Here is my son after getting his box of goodies.  To say he was excited is a bit of an understatement.

After the boys were all "suited up", we headed outside to begin earning our pirate props.  We divided them into 4 groups because there were so many of them and each group started at a different place on their map and traveled through the different spots.  Here is what one of the maps looked like.

Similar to the invites, I created these and then just created four different versions.

Here is one of the boys studying his map before we started...

We had 4 different games/activities for the boys to do and at each station they earned something.  I was lucky enough to have a bunch of helpers that day to keep things moving!

The stations were "Walk the Plank" to earn a pirate sword...without landing among the sharks.

And of course they had to test out their swords...they seem to be working just fine!

Another station was "Knock Em' Down" to earn their pirate hooks....

That was very serious business at that station.  They HAD to knock them all down.   Love their determination!

Another station was the "Swab the Deck" where they had to push pirate "cannonballs" off the deck and stay within the lines to earn their telescopes.

And the last of the stations was the "Alligator Ring Toss" to earn their pirate tattoos.  This was actually pretty hard for them.

But their celebrated when they did it....

Our last point for everyone on their treasure maps was to find the treasure and the chest with the "X" on it.

These pirates were VERY excited to see what was inside and each child got a turn to dig up their own buried treasures.

Even the big kids got in on the action.

We headed inside for some pinata fun.  These store bought pinatas do NOT break though so we ended up mutilating the poor pirate to get the goodies out.  I didn't get any pictures at this point because I was too worried that they were going to hit each other by accident when trying to break this guy.

We ended the day with lots of snacks and cupcakes.   With 15 boys and a child with food allergies, food can be difficult.  I planned the party for an off time and did snacks and cupcakes only.  The kids seemed to enjoy it!
 
Here is the before...

I kept the table pretty simple and added a few fun treasure chests for decoration.

I had our kitchen island as the main food area and served watermelon, pretzels, popcorn, grapes and chips.

I wanted to try this fun watermelon shark and it was soooo easy.  I found simple to follow directions HERE. This is what he looked like filled.

And here is what he looked like before.  

I had a separate table for just the cupcakes and a treasure chest filled with goodies that the kids loved.

I made some simple cupcake toppers with card stock, the skull from the invitation (clip art) and toothpicks.  Super simple!

And of course no party would be complete without singing 'Happy Birthday'.  

Overall it was a great party and the boys were so well behaved.  They started out as little boys and left as full blown pirates!  What a fun day!!!

Poshed Up

A birthday party for a certain 10 year old....

With all of the craziness of the holidays in December....I forgot to post some pictures from my daughter's birthday party.  Her actual party was in early December, but we decided to have her party a week after to give us more time to prepare.

She didn't give me too many specifics to work on except - sleepover, zebra and blue.    Oh and a request for a certain cake, but we'll get to that later.  Unlike my son who gives me exact specifics on what he'd like, she really gave me a lot of freedom to plan this extravaganza.   I take birthday partying quite seriously around here because I feel like it's 1 day to truly celebrate them and how special it is to have them!

So....the planning began.  We worked together on the invitations and consulted pinterest to get some great ideas.  Pinterest never disappoints.   While she didn't have specifics do's for this upcoming celebration, she definitely had some don't do's for me when I started making suggestions.  Ok....so her 10 year oldness (if I may create a new word) definitely started showing.

We settled on these fancy invites....

I just now noticed a typo on her invites.   The first line should be a "too"  and not "to".  I hate that.
We had fun making them.  She picked the zebra paper that was textured so the black part felt like velvet.   They were a bit over-sized though, so we ended up hand delivering the invites.

Compared to my son's superhero party, I really didn't do a whole lot for this one since her expectations weren't too high.  I did make a few decorations in her favorite combo of blue/aqua and zebra and since she had her room re-done for her 9th birthday last year in these exact colors, they were able to be re-purposed as room decor after.

I made these tissue paper pom poms that I'd been eyeing up on pinterest forever.  Here was my inspiration...

(source)

And a simple tutorial...they really are so stinkin' easy to make.

(source)

And here's how ours turned out....

We hung them over our kitchen table with clear command strip hooks.  This was my 1st time using them and I'd definitely use them again.  Simple and easy to remove!

I also used these few photos for inspiration for our banner and table decor.   My daughter made it crystal clear that she didn't want me to go overboard on the decorations.  I can't imagine why she would think I would ever do that...lol  So...it's much simpler than usual for me, but fit her taste just the same.

Inspiration...

from 'Thoughtfully simple'

from 'Hostess with the Mostess'

Gorgeous, huh?  She would have killed me if I had gone this crazy.  She thinks it's so uncool to have a party with too much decoration.   Maybe so...but I loved this one.

And here's what our party looked like before the madness, I mean fun began :)

On the kitchen table where the girls ate dinner and dessert...oh and breakfast the next day too.

I found these cute bells at Michael's on sale the week prior and they matched the theme perfectly and added a little color to the otherwise zebra'd out table.

 Our mantle.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I switch my mantle decor a LOT and at least twice for Christmas.  My daughter's birthday each year gives me a good excuse to change it up and this is what we did for the big soiree.

And Isabella's favorite candy just happened to be zebra striped...coincidental?  

Next was the game plan for the activities.   We talked about a bunch of ideas and she finally decided she liked the idea of lots games throughout the night.

When the girls arrived, we had pizza for dinner and the girls did mad libs.   That alone was tons of laughter and the start of the night's silliness ahead.

Ms. Serious writing it all down....










Apparently the bells make great earrings too.

After dinner the girls took part in a mystery.   We got this great idea from a friend and it ended up being one of the party highlights.     Dramaticfanatic is a great website where you can purchase interactive mysteries that the kids get to act out and try to solve that are written by an Emmy-award winning writer.  They are totally reasonable and can be the whole party theme if you want, but we just incorporated in into our whole party.  We chose to do the Slumber Party Mystery and the girls had soooo much fun with it.  I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  They REALLY got into their parts too.

Here are a few highlights...

You need a minimum of 8 kids and up to 14 I think for each mystery plus a host.  I had to play the host and since we had only 7 girls (which was plenty for a sleepover), my daughter was two different parts.

Next was the cake....oh the cake.   I mentioned early that the only other request my daughter had was for a cake that she found a picture of.  Note to self, DO NOT under any circumstances let your daughter or son search pinterest for ideas.  There are some super crafty people out there that I'll never top.

Needless to say, I said yes before seeing the picture of what I had signed up for.  Here is all she wanted...

Oh, that's it...really?   I'd never even worked with fondant before this.

So....I put it off until the day of the party.  And let's just say I have a great appreciation for the Cake Boss, Cake Wars, Duff and any other cake MASTERS out there now.   Yikes that was a lot of work.  Here is what I created...

These are a little grainy because they're from my phone.  So....outcome...she went crazy...but

after about an hour, the cake sort of started falling apart.  Apparently I didn't use the right kind of icing.  Oh well.  Hopefully I won't EVER have to make one of these beauties again.

See the side caving....oops!

After cake the girls played a game we play every year at my daughter's birthday.  I forgot to get pictures, but basically I buy enough $5 gifts to match the number of attendees...for instance, this year I bought 7 $5 gifts.  The smallest gift gets wrapped inside the next biggest box and so on.  Each gift is wrapped individually and at the end there is only 1 big box to start the game.   And this year, it was a big box.

Then we play musical gift and when the music stops, the person holding the box opens the gift.  When they unwrap they will reveal their prize and then there will be a box left wrapped that contains the other gifts inside.  I hope this is making sense....pictures would have helped.  That person is now out and the gift box continues to circulate and get unwrapped until the last person is holding the last gift.  This year we added the steal the gift game at the end...hopefully you all know what that is!  That was their prize since my daughter said they are too old for "goody bags"!

We then moved on to TWISTER....oh my how they laughed.   I couldn't get them to stop this one.  Thankfully, I had them change into pj's prior to playing.  They played for ever it felt like.   Here are some funny pictures....

And these two...a battle to the end.  Ryan had to get in on the action and try to lift his sister's hand so someone else could win.  Little stinker!

We took a break to calm the girls back down and get ready to attempt a movie and sleep with a hot chocolate bar..a big hit.  Here was my inspiration...

from 'The Actor's Wife'

Here is what we had at ours... plus the whipped cream that's not out.

 I bought cheap mugs at the Dollar Store in black and white (zebra theme remember) and put their names on each so we wouldn't have any mix ups.  Here they are before....

And the toppings bar...

Apparently 10 year olds are not into peppermint.  Who knew?  I thought everyone loved it as much as me!

We then finally calmed down and had a movie and lights out...not sure what time, but all in all...it was a GREAT TIME!

And last but not least...here is her room now with the party decorations...I'm all into re-purposing and upcycling!

Happy 10 years to a little girl I couldn't love more.  She is such a great joy and brings so much sunshine to my life.  I am so proud of her and the little lady she's turning into.   As I said when you were a baby...

'You are and will always be my sunshine!!!'

Poshed Up