Saturday we had a fun 4th birthday party for my little man! The official theme was "Jake and the Neverland Pirates." Here are some photos of what we did...
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| The invitation - I did this in Photoshop. |
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| Balloons! I made a balloon column with a pirate ship on top (Toby is standing in front of it), and then a tabletop base to hold the Jake balloon which sat on the table. I wanted to make that one float but my helium tank ran out on the ship! Boo! He loved them both though. I realize everyone out there isn't also a professional balloon twister, but if you live near me you can certainly hire me to make you a balloon centerpiece, too! ;-) Here you can see he is wearing his Jake Halloween costume I made him! |
The cake was really fun. I made a treasure chest and if you'd like to see every step of how I did it,
check out my Snapguide!
Rather than spend a ton of money on decorations, I usually try to work with what I have. Since we gave him a couple Jake toys earlier in the day, I cut the pictures of the characters out of the boxes and used them in various places as decoration during the party, too. I also took this white bowl and made it into a pirate-y skull with some black construction paper and tape:
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| We have this "FurReal" parrot that my parents gave us, and he made a fun decoration with an eye patch added! |
Doing projects rather than coloring sheets was such a huge hit at our last
Angry Bird party, I decided to go that route again for this party. I put out supplies for the kids to make three things...a telescope, a treasure map, and a pirate flag!
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| Supplies in a divided food dish |
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| The sample flag and telescope I made. I spent $2 on four black t-shirts at the thrift store, and cut rectangles using my zig-zag scissors for the flags...no hems needed! I then used some scrap felt that I had on hand to cut a few skull and bone shapes, and some noses/mouths. The telescopes I cut from wrapping paper tubes and attached the red yarn. The kids then could decorate them with colored tape, stampers, stickers, markers, etc. |
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| The treasure maps were fun! I had a huge pile of this brown paper that was used as packing material from Amazon, which is where I ordered some of his birthday gifts. I simply cut the paper into rectangles and they were perfect! Looks like old, worn, wrinkly paper like an old map. |
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| Goodie bags! I lucked out and happened to be in Target when they had only their pirate stuff on clearance. I got the pirate hats for $0.60 cents, and wrote their names on them with t-shirt paints. The package of pirate bags was $0.50 cents. The filling I got mostly on Amazon....eye patches, stampers, tattoos and gold coins. I also found Jake stickers on clearance at Target, and then added some Hershey nuggets and fruit snacks too. |
The pinata was fun to make! This one felt easy to me compared to others I've done because I didn't have to make any paper mache paste. No mess, and no waiting for stuff to dry! Just cardboard and tape, covered with paint.
Click here to see my Snapguide that shows all of the steps I took to make this pinata.
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| Being a balloon twister, I had to also make some balloon swords for all of the little pirates! The boys had fun having (safe) sword fights! I still have yet to ever do face painting or balloons at my own kids' parties...I'm always too busy hosting! But, these I could make ahead of time so it worked out great! |
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| I drew a few skulls and "4's" on the window with some window paint...a fun and quick way to add decorations without spending a lot of money or storing a lot of "stuff!" Our dollar store sells these window paints! |
Overall it was a really fun party! We did a baked potato bar for dinner which was yummy, plus some hot dogs for the kids. Usually the kids have so much fun just playing, we don't try to cram a lot of games into our parties. We put out some project stuff on the table which allows them to come and go as they please, and then the pinata is the perfect time to hand out goodie bags, which they then add to with their pinata "winnings!" We do the pinata right before gifts, so then all the kids have their own "gifts" as they watch the birthday boy open his gifts. It works well for us, anyway! Have you hosted a pirate party? If so, please feel free to post your own ideas in the comments!
