Minecraft Birthday Party

Look who turned 8 last week!  He was SO excited - and who can blame him?  Birthdays are exciting, especially when you are looking forward to a party with a bunch of your new friends and one with the theme of your favorite game to boot.  Yup - Tyler, like many kids right now, is completely obsessed with Minecraft.

I have to admit I know very, very little about Minecraft, nor was I really in the mood to sit down and play the game with the kids.  So I relied pretty heavily on looking at ideas online with one of the kids at my side making comments.  It was kind of a fun process actually.  Tyler had lots and lots and lots of ideas. ;)  And Kaitlyn is great about helping me pull it all together.  In the end, we decided on the following:

Creeper Rice Krispie Treats went to school with Tyler for all of his classmates.  We just tinted the marshmallow green and the eyes are chocolate chips which I melted and piped onto wax paper to form the eyes and mouth.

Once the birthday boy was off to school I got to work on the cake.  He had requested a TNT cake, which seemed as easy as stacking a few cake squares on top of each other and covering it with red.  Uh huh.  Yeah.  First ever epic cake fail.  It started leaning after I got all the layers on and even with additional support, it had toppled before I could get the exterior frosting on it.

I had to laugh.  Really, what can you do but laugh?  And my brother, who was eating breakfast at the time, laughed at me too - and asked if he could "publicly humiliate" me by posting a photo on Facebook.  I told him that was fine, because I fully intended to blog about it ;)

So what do you do when your cake falls apart and you don't want to run to the store?  I turned it into Dirt Cake, that's what.  

The kids didn't have a clue - ha!  In fact, they loved it.  Couldn't get enough of the cake in the cups with the Minecraft toppers I printed at the last minute (found here).

 The rest of the food was pretty easy.  Tyler had been pretty quick to suggest a bunch of foods that were in the game:  "bread" was sandwiches cut into squares, "potion of healing" were just Hugs with labels on them (I was informed that the potions are always red but since it would have taken way too many boxes to find enough red drinks for everyone we used green too since Creepers are his favorite character from the game), "slime balls" were green grapes, "raw fish" were goldfish crackers, and carrots and gold apples were, well, carrots and apples ;)

 Printables for the food and drink lables came from here, though I did resize and edit them a bit, as well as use them for the base to make the other signs for the party.

I found the printable for the large Steve and the Creeper here.

The table set up was pretty simple (and inexpensive) too.  It doesn't take a lot to make a big statement.

 The plates were just green plates with Creeper faces that I had cut out of vinyl with the Silhouette machine.

And the table runner was green wrapping paper that I quickly cut into block-type forms on the edges.  I used the Silhouette to cut a pattern for the Creeper face out of cardstock and used it and a Sharpie to make Creeper faces on the table runner and on a bunch of green balloons.

 The balloons went downstairs in the "party area," along with my standard bead board birthday banner.  I also put a set a balloons out by the road and by the door, along with a Minecraft Welcome sign.  I always try to do something like that in case a guest hasn't visited our house before so they can easily tell where the party is.

 As I mentioned in an earlier post, Tyler had invited his entire class to his party and not knowing how many kids would actually show up, planning was a little tricky.  I decided to use the kitchen/living room for the food and do all the activities in the family room downstairs.  I only set up one table, which was perfect for the amount of kids that did RSVP but I had another table and extra decorations on stand-by in case we had any show up unannounced.  We only ended up with one that hadn't called ahead, so it was fine.
Anyway.  One of Tyler's first requests was to have "torches" as decoration so I printed off a few for the stairs/hallway and used crepe paper to form the "portal" (or am I confused and they only use that term in Skylanders??)

Downstairs, I had turned my craft tables into "crafting tables" (of course!).  It was just a simple matter of using electrical tape and a ruler to form the grid.  Minecraft is all about building, so I had a few crafty projects planned.

 And again, not knowing how many kids would actually attend the party, I had planned accordingly.  If we had a large number of guests, I had extra helpers on hand so we could split them up into smaller groups and do "stations" for the different crafts and games.  I put all the things needed for each activity in its own little basket so we could just grab them as needed.

 As it turned out, we had about 10 kids attend so they just did everything in one big group, but I was still glad I had planned ahead and set it up this way.

 I always like to have some sort of low key activity for everyone to start working on when they arrive.  This keeps the fidgeting and chaos to a minimum while still allowing time for any later guests to arrive without missing much of the planned activities.  For the Minecraft party, our Arrival Activity was making Minecraft masks.  I cut out a bunch of small squares out of colored paper and the kids glued them onto poster board that I had cut into squares with a couple of square openings for eyes.

This worked pretty well, but these kids were HYPER that night so as soon as we could, we moved on to the more active games.

This game was originally intended to be a beanbag toss, but the beanbags we have for our cornhole boards were too big for holes so we used Neft guns instead.  Nerf dart look close enough to the TNT in the game, right?  The kids didn't care - they had fun (though some of them were way too excited to wait their turns!).

The next game was probably the favorite for our rowdy crew.  I had filled a bunch of balloons and put a line of tape down the center of the room to split it into two parts.  Yes, I was all creative and used some of the Creeper balloons as well as some smaller colored ones which could represent the other animals in the game - but I don't think the kids noticed or cared.  The point of the game was to get all the balloons onto the other team's side.  We played music while they bopped balloons back and forth (had intended to find Minecraft parody songs but forgot to get them cued up and just ended up using whatever was on the IPOD) until the music stopped, then everyone would freeze while we counted the balloons on each side.  As I said - this game was a perfect way for them to use up their energy without hurting anything so we let them do 5 or 6 rounds before we headed upstairs for cake and gifts.

The time just flew by and by the time everyone had finished eating and all the gifts were unwrapped we only had a few minutes left before parents would start arriving so I gave them some block character printables to assemble.

This link has a lot of great printables for all of the blocks, characters, etc.

As I said, the time went by so quickly we didn't end up using some of the activities I had planned.  Like:

Minecraft character Perler bead keychains.  This activity alone probably would have taken them half an hour.

 And the bean bags were going to be repurposed to "Feed the Wolf."

But I'd rather have too many activities planned than have bored kids at the end of a party.

As they were working on the character printables, I also had them take turns assembling their own favor bags.

For the favor bag tags I used a pdf file I found online (see this blog), added the rest of the message (in Photoshop) then printed them 6 to a page.  

 The tags went inside a cellophane bag and the kids got to fill it with:

Creeper face lollipops, (had an a-ha moment on this one and instead of cutting them all out by hand I figured out how to make my own pattern for the Silhouette to cut out - go me!)

 glow stick "torches"

licorice "TNT" (Tyler was very pleased with those.  When he saw them all assembled he told me "Mom, you've really outdone yourself!") and Hershey Kiss "emeralds, red stones, and silver"

So there you have it!  Paper, scissors, a printer, and a lot of ink - that's really all it takes to make a little guy happy on his birthday ;)



Linking to:

Link Party Palooza

Back to Card Group!

One of the side benefits of moving back home - card group!  The same friend that started up my old card making group has a new one going now and I got to join them last night.  Yay!  I'm completely rusty (and slow!) and couldn't find half my stuff (thank goodness the local "Drug Store" has a small scrapbooking section so I didn't have to run all the way to Walmart for glue dots!) but it was so nice to get back to something that used to be one of my favorite nights of the month.

One night per month, we leave the kiddos home and get together with a small group of crafty ladies.  Everyone designs one card around the theme that month's hostess has set, and makes kits for everone in the group.  Then we all get together to put together our kits and we go home with a handful of new cards for our stash.  It's a lot of fun seeing all of the different personalities and techniques - such a wide variety for one tiny little theme.

 The theme for this month was Thank You cards.  This one is mine:

I was so excited to run across a fun little blog full of FREE cut files for the Silhouette machine. and as soon as I saw the "thanks" one I knew that I had to use it.  (cut file can be found here)  I cut it out of cardstock and used that for my starting point, grabbing a couple of fun patterned papers from my stash and cutting out the "ever so much" sentiment from black vinyl.

The kit looked like this:

 Not bad for my first card club in 4 years, right?  Can't wait for next month!

Horse Birthday Slumber Party - Cowgirl Style

 Our house has been Party Central this weekend - fun fun!  (and exhausting!)  My daughter turns 11 next week and she has been helping me plan the party for months.  She is definitely my child - she knows what she wants and is full of ideas, she wants it to look good, and she wants to Do It Herself.  ;)

After all the horseback riding she did while we were in Utah this summer, it was almost a forgone conclusion that she would pick Horses for her theme for her birthday party.  And her very first request- after specifying that she wanted a slumber party, of course - was that she have chocolate horses topping her cupcakes - and that she be able to do them herself.  She had seen a YouTube video about piping chocolate onto wax paper to make shapes and that was what she had in mind, but that sounded a little intense for her first attempt at real cake decorating so I found a chocolate mold online.  With our lives as crazy as they are right now and the amount of time it takes each batch of chocolate to cool I did end up making most of the chocolate horses myself, though I did make sure she got to do a few on her own.

 Once we started looking at ideas online (you can see my Pinterest inspiration board here) we decided to go with a Cowgirl theme in pink and brown with a few blue accents thrown in.  The invitations, of course, came first.  (You can see the invitations in an earlier post here)

 Kaitlyn fell in love with the idea of a big wooden pallet sign with the outline of a horse on it, but I didn't want to work on a project that big right now.  Instead, I grabbed some scrap wood from the garage, distressed it and stained it, then used hot glue to attach some jute "rope" to spell out the word Howdy.  We used this sign on the front door to greet everyone and set the mood for the party.

When the guests arrived they each received a cowboy hat.

 From previous experience with birthday slumber parties I know that the girls are always super-hyped, loud, and anxious to direct their own fun.  They spent most of the party playing Just Dance or playing with Kaitlyn's fast-growing collection of Ever After High dolls, but I did set up a couple of stations to go along with the party theme.
The Photo Booth props were a lot of fun

 And I threw together a bucket of stuff for mani/pedis, though it didn't get used.  We also had the idea to YouTube some line dances (perfect for a cowgirl party, right?!) and would have done so if the party was lagging.  As I said, the girls had no problem having fun on their own so I just let them do their thing.

 Knowing that, I spent more time on the food and the decorations than I did on the activities.  The beadboard pennant birthday banner got some theme-appropriate fabric and ribbon and provided the backdrop for the dining table.

 The longer I do this, the easier it gets.  I also have a handful of Go To tricks that I can use for any theme - like dressing up the drink containers.  For this party, I picked up a 6-pack of cream soda bottles and added a vinyl horse silhouette (made it using a horse dingbat font and my Silhouette machine.  I love that there are so many great fonts out there for free!).  The plates are part of a stack of inexpensive plastic party plates we picked up at Sam's club a couple years back - they work great for parties.  The napkins, bandana, and tiny pink cowboy hats (aren't they cute?!) were all fun finds at the party store.

 On to the food!  The cupcakes turned out great - though I suggest putting the horses on only at the last minute.  It was a warm day and some of them wanted to tip over when their legs got a little soft.

 For dinner, Kaitlyn had requested ribs and mashed potatoes.  And you know what that means?  That means the husband did most of the food prep because he is the rib smoker expert ;)
Side note - the rolls down there on the end are in a pink plastic cowboy hat.  I forgot to get a detail photo of that, but I wanted to point it out because the girls thought it was a fun detail.

 Once the girls had a couple of hours to play and were ready to settle down a bit, I prepared a tray of goodies so they could snack and watch TV.  Included:  popcorn in brown paper bags (that I had folded down and fringed the edges), water bottles with the horse decals (I try to avoid having any colored drinks on the playroom carpet - it is horrible when it comes to stains), Cow Tales carames, licorice "ropes" and rice krispie treat "hay bales."

 I went to bed around 11:00 that night and I'm told some of the girls stayed up only 'til midnight while the other half made it to around 2AM.  But they were all awake and hungry by 7:30 in the morning.  We did a full cowboy breakfast spread with pancakes, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and chocolate milk.

 Party favors were their cowboy hats, more of Kate's chocolate horses, some cute fingernail decals (in the closest we could find to the party colors), a pen, and some more Cow Tale caramels.

If noise levels and chaos are any indication (naw they weren't that bad - I didn't even have to wake up in the middle of the night to tell them to tone it down), the party was a rip-roaring success.  Yay!

Linking to:
Tutorials and Tips Link Party @ homestoriesAtoZ
Time to Sparkle Link Party
Made By You Monday Link Party