Minecraft Birthday Preparations

We're back to talking about birthday parties! This year, my little one wants a Minecraft themed party. Daddy introduced her to "the block game" when she was very small. Since then she's grown to love everything about it.

A Minecraft themed party in some ways is simple because everything in the game is block shaped. However, this type of party presents a challenge because there just isn't that much to be found in the way of themed party supplies. Fortunately for me, I have left over boxes from our recent move to Montana, a color printer, and access to the internet. Lots of creative people have made free printables featuring textures from the game, which allows me to turn ordinary Dollar Tree party favors:

Into Minecraft themed party favors:

Likewise, all it took was some scissors and glue to go from this plain cardboard box:

To these neat table decorations:

For invites, party banners, food placards, and bottle wraps, go here.

Well, I've got a little more in the ideas department here, but I don't want to give it all away at once. In the past, I'd do a GIANT birthday post with all my ideas and pictures shoved in there, but this year I want to do it differently. I'll post a few ideas at a time, and then when party day has come and gone, I will post overall pictures and then link you to the individual idea posts. I figure it'll make things a little less overwhelming in the end. As always if you want to see some Minecraft ideas that may or may not have made the cut, check out my Pinterest Party Ideas board.

Catch you later, friends!

Ladybug Birthday Party

Continuing the theme of birthday party ideas, I'd like to share with you the first themed birthday party I ever did - my little one's Ladybug 3rd birthday party. Since my daughter was a baby, she has always loved ladybugs. This led my mom-in-law to start calling her ladybug, and it also inspired me to try this party.

As far as parties go, this one was pretty simple. The only party decor I made myself were the neon colored ladybugs. I ended up tracing, cutting, and coloring the dots on neon poster board to make about 50 ladybugs. I combined this with polka-dotted balloons from Walmart, and flower-shaped fan foldouts from Oriental Trading.

The food was standard party food: pizza, chips, fruit, etc. Instead of a cake, I did cupcakes which I decorated with ladybug and flower-shaped candies (the kind you get in the cake decorating isle.) I then arranged them to look like a field (in my mind, anyway.)

For favors, each kid got foil crowns and bubbles in ladybug bottles. The kids loved the bubbles, and even the adults got in on the fun. Between the bubbles and the balloons that I left on the floor for the kids to play with, I didn't even need any party games. It doesn't take much to entertain a toddler, apparently.

It doesn't take much to entertain teens, either.

Were I doing this party today, I probably would do a few things differently. I'd probably have made the flower ceiling hangers myself instead of buying them. I would have planned a couple of simple party games. I would have done more themed food. I would have used a piping tip to make the green frosting on the cupcakes look more like grass. I would have put more flowers and ladybugs on the cupcakes. In the end, however, those things are just for my satisfaction. My daughter had a blast at this party, and so did the other littles that came. 

It doesn't take much to make a kid's birthday special. Whatever party you want to do, just go for it. They'll love it!

How to Train Your Dragon Birthday Party

These ideas are from my nephew's party two birthdays ago, but I decided to share them with you now because How to Train Your Dragon 2 was released earlier this summer, and some of you might need some ideas! Note: I can't take credit for these ideas; they were all my mom-in-law's.

My sister-in-law claims to not have a crafty bone in her body, so when her son wanted a How to Train Your Dragon birthday party, she turned to her mom for help with the games. The movie focused on two things - how to fight dragons, and how to befriend dragons. With this in mind, my mom-in-law came up with two games.

The first game was a bean bag toss. My mom in law is quite good at painting, so she took the side of a refrigerator box and painted a three-headed dragon. After cutting out the dragon's mouths, she then sewed bean bags into the shape of fish. At the party, the kids did their best to feed the dragon by tossing the fish into his mouths.

As an added bonus, the dragon's mouths turned out to be a pretty good photo prop as well:

Now surely you're seeing those nifty shields and wondering what that's all about. My mom-in-law cut all those shields from cardboard, gave them a faux wood paint treatment, and gave them to the kids so they could defend themselves in the next game. The dragon, played by one of the adults, hurled fireballs made of red and yellow satin tied around balled up newspaper at the kids, and they had to use their shields not to get hit. We played this game several times.

 The kids really loved this one, and at the end, they all rushed the dangerous dragon to slay him!

As part of their training, our young vikings also tested their strength in tug of war. This was a game that was specifically requested by the birthday boy.

Then it was time to feast and have cake. My mom-in-law had a plan for that too. She made signs and came up with clever names to turn party food into HTTYD themed food. We had Dragon Egg grapes, Dragon Scale doritos, Dragon Wings chicken wings, and Dragon Teeth bugles.

The cake was also quite lovely because of a HTTYD edible cake decal my sister-in-law applied.

As favors, each child got a viking helmet, the shield mom-in-law made for them, and several HTTYD coloring pages that were found free on the internet. It was a great party!

A Nyan Cat Birthday

I promised you a while back I would tell you about my little one's party this past November. Well, today I'm going to share that with you.

Do you know Nyan cat? If you don't, check this out:

Well, there you have it. That's all it is. Not much to go on for a party, huh? Yet, this video consists of a cat, a pop-tart, stars, a rainbow, and an annoying-yet-catchy tune. This is the stuff my little one's dreams are made of, and so this is the theme she picked for her fifth birthday.

I started off with the cake. A Google search led me to this, which I set out to copy, sans the flowers. Not to brag, but I think I might have nailed it :).  My next idea was to expand on the Nyan cat theme by combining ideas for rainbow parties with ideas from kitty cat themed parties. This is what I came up with:

The large Nyan Cat was drawn on a grid-lined poster board (which helped immensely with the pixel look). The letters I cut out by hand from some colored cardstock. The blue star balloons, blue table covers, and streamers I purchased from our local Party City.

To create the rainbow ceiling decorations below, I purchased small diameter dowels, cut them to size and then glued streamers to them in ROYGBV order. The star dangles were purchased from Walmart.

The centerpieces I made myself. I couldn't find any satisfactory ones at the time, so I found a picture of Nyan cat online, printed it, cut it out, and attached it to a bamboo skewer. I then put that skewer in a small cup filled with quick-setting concrete, along with some curled pipe-cleaners. After the concrete was set, I tied some blue cellophane around the cup with some prismatic silver curling ribbon, and attached some silver star stickers to the side. That, along with some star confetti was the perfect decor for my tables.

For favors, I made kitty ears out of colored headbands and felt. The other thing I did was make a basket of kitties that were "free to a good home." They were made of cardstock and had different designs for the kids to take home and color. As an added bonus, they also had Pixy-Stix whiskers. I also bought a few random party favors to give out after the games. The winners of each game got a big treat bag filled with several prizes, while everyone else got to pick one toy from the prize box.

This year, I kept the games simple. We played "Pin the Rainbow on Nyan Cat," a variation of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey." We also did musical chairs to the Nyan Cat theme, but for the adults' sakes, I used the slightly less annoying piano cover :). Musical chairs was such a hit, the kids asked if they could play it twice. You can tell by the blurry, yet smiling faces below that everyone had a good time.

The food was simple and delicious. As with everything else, I stuck with either a rainbow or cat theme. The tent labels for the food I made with Microsoft Word. I printed out the labels and glued them to folded cardstock. For the rainbow fruit, I chose red apples, peaches, dried pineapple, green grapes, and blueberries with a lovely whipped fruit dip. To make the fruit dip, all you do is combine 8 oz. of softened cream cheese with 8 oz of Cool Whip and a 7 oz jar of marshmallow creme, and beat until fluffy. My daughter loves cheese, so I had a plate of colby-jack cubes that I called "mouse bait." Another idea I had was to use a cookie cutter to make fish-shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or "peanut butter and jellyfish" sandwiches. Since, you know, cats are crazy for fish. I also made a veggie and cracker tray with a buttermilk ranch cheese ball that I made to look like a ball of yarn with some cream cheese and a flat cake frosting tip. Of course, we also had pop-tarts in several flavors! However, I think my absolute favorite themed food from this party was the chocolate mice. You heard right, mice.

I got my idea from this pin. However, my little one doesn't eat cherries or almonds, so I needed something else that would work. What I found was Walgreen's Good & Delish Mini S'mores. Wanna make these? Gather mini s'mores, fudge stripe cookies, Hershey's kisses, and chocolate candy bark. Carefully melt the chocolate bark in the microwave ten seconds at a time. Spoon the melted bark into a piping bag with a small round tip (I don't know what number tip mine was, honestly). On a sheet of wax paper, start piping as many pairs of ears as you will need. While those are cooling, pipe some chocolate onto the bottom of the mini s'more, then attach it to the cookie. Then, pipe a small tail coming from the edge of the mini s'more. Once the ears have hardened, they can be carefully peeled from the wax paper. To attach the ears to the head, pipe a small amount of chocolate onto the Hershey's kiss, then stick the ears on. After that, pipe some chocolate onto the mini s'more, then attach the head to the body. You may have to hold the head in place for a second while the bark hardens. Repeat until you have the desired number of mice. Note that you might need to reheat the chocolate bark as you're working with it. This can be done by making sure the piping bag is sealed, and dipping it into a bowl of hot water (just uncomfortable to the touch, not boiling).

Well, there you have it, a Nyan Cat birthday party fit for a five-year old. As always, you can check out my Party Ideas board on Pinterest for more stuff to make your next party spectacular. See you next time!

Fishy Fun Party

So, my little one just turned four, and I have to say, I'm pretty proud of how her party turned out. One day she was sitting on my lap while I was browsing Pinterest, and together we saw this awesome fish cake from Cupcakes Take the Cake. My little one loved this cake so much that right then and there she decided she wanted a fish-themed party. With the help of Pinterest and Oriental Trading, I was able to come up with some pretty nice stuff.

The cake ended up being super adorable. The mama fish was chocolate cake, the babies were yellow cake, and all of them were frosted with a homemade cream cheese frosting. One of these days, I'll learn how to frost without making a complete mess of the cake board, but eh, I don't think too many people noticed. There was one alteration I made to the original cupcake design, and that was to add a fruit slice for the tail. I was going to include fins by cutting a fruit slice in half, but alas, there really wasn't room on the the cupcakes. A word to the wise, if you end up doing this, you won't need NEARLY as many M&M's as I bought. I got three bags, and in hindsight, I probably could have gotten away with one.


A lot of the food was just a matter of creative labeling. For example: carrot sticks were crab legs, bell pepper sticks were calamari, cheese cut into triangles became shark's teeth, and regular old cucumber slices became sea cucumbers. Potato chips and Goldfish crackers were arranged next to each other with a sign that read, "Fish & Chips." PB and J sandwiches became starfish with the use of a handy, star-shaped cookie cutter. Cheese puffs in Dixie cups (turned into buckets by the addition of a pipe-cleaner handle) became "live bait."

Other foods took a little more effort. There was my little squid, relaxing in a tub of ranch veggie dip. He helped make the bell pepper calamari appear a little more convincing. It was super simple, all I had to do was sink a baby bell into the dip upside down, use some gel frosting to make a face, and slip in eight pepper sticks for the legs.

Next were submarine cakes. My daughter has a video called "The Big Submarine" from Little Mammoth Media (they make wonderful educational videos for kids, please take a minute to check them out). I bought it for her so that she could see what life was like for Daddy when he was at sea in the Navy. Little did I know that she would love that video so much. When she saw these, she nearly deafened me as she pointed at the screen and shouted, "MOMMY, CAN WE HAVE THOSE AT MY FISH PARTY?!!" These were made with chocolate filled Twinkies. Yes, we ate collector's items, and they were delicious.  All I did was use frosting to "glue" on the M&M windows, and insert trimmed-down bendy straws at one end. If you absolutely love this idea, but fear paying $500 a box for Twinkies, DO NOT FRET. Little Debbie makes Cloud Cakes. I've noticed they're a little harder to find in stores, but you won't spend your child's entire college fund to get them.

I also made oyster cookies. The hardest part of this was finding something to use as pearls. Luckily, my local Hobby Lobby had shiny, white Sixlets in the wedding section. After that, it was a matter of coloring some frosting, frosting the bottom of a Nilla Wafer, adding the Sixlet, and then topping it all with another Nilla Wafer. I don't even like Nilla Wafers or Sixlets, but these cookies were tasty. Something about the flavor combo made them really, really good.

Last, but not least, is the Rice Crispy treat sushi. This was as simple as making Rice Crispy treats, making them into patties, wrapping them with Fruit by the Foot, and topping them with a fish-shaped candy. I did have to use frosting to make the fish candy stick, but I consider this a success, because a lot of my family told me this would be the only sushi they'd ever eat. (My family isn't terribly adventurous when it comes to cuisine.)

Now, you may have noticed the cute little labels I made for the food. That wouldn't have been possible without my mom's Cricut machine. Well, it would have, but it would have taken ten times as long and been a lot more work. Actually, I made quite a few decorations with Mom's machine. I made seashells and starfish to scatter on the tables, as well as fish and seaweed to hang from the ceiling. Speaking of decorations, I thought the room looked fabulous:



Thank heavens for my parents, my MIL and SIL. I would never have gotten all this set up in time without them.

We also played several games the kids thoroughly enjoyed. For the first game, the kids got to go fishing for fish-shaped goody bags filled with bubbles, stickers, and necklaces. In the next game, the kids became the fish and had to catch gummy worms hanging from strings with their mouths. As is expected with young children, chaos and hilarity ensued.

When the party was all over, we sent everyone home with favors that I got from Oriental Trading. These little water-filled games were so cute, and my little one loved hers almost as much as she liked her presents.

All in all, I felt it was a big success. It was a lot of work and a little bit stressful, but my philosophy is that eventually, there will come a time when my baby will no longer think my ideas are all that great, and so I might as well go all out while I can. The little one has already informed me that she wants a kitty party next year, and so I will be keeping my eyes open for more good ideas. If you'd like to check out my Pinterest party board, you can do so here: http://pinterest.com/am_crittenden/party-ideas/. Happy party planning!