Skylander Party

This year Monkey really wanted a Skylander Giants birthday party. I don't know much about this. All I do know is that it is a video. I did some research and found out that these "creatures" live on islands in the sky and battle it out. 

For the invitation I kept it simple but special for him.

Next thing I worked on was his banner. I tried to mimic the elements that I had made. 

The decorations were what I was most excited about. I made a bunch of elements put up on the cuboards. These were out of my famous felt, hot glue and paper plates idea. 

I hung them up all around the kitchen as well has vines to give it an "island" feel.

I took the lanterns that I had from other parties and spray painted them. Then I tried my best to make them look like Skylander Characters.

The skylander gang 

I ended up hanging them in the kitchen.

 I kept the present area pretty simple

I made Bouncer out of felt and posterboard 

I wish I would have gotten a better picture of the table scape. But here is what I did get. I decorated it was some fake rocks made out of paper bags and spray paint.

 Monkey said he wanted a portal as a cake. 

For the actives we did a Skylander's Trivia. The kids really enjoyed this.

After trivia we did the funnest game ever! I had made a bunch of these pretend rocks out of paper bags, newspaper and spray paint. We were just going to use them as decorations but then my love thought of a great game the morning of the party. Since they throw rocks in Skylander video game, the idea of the game was to lay all the rocks in a line in the middle. We divided the kids into 2 groups and then had them take 15 steps back. When my love said "GO" they had to try and throw as many rocks as possible on the other teams side of the court until the time was up. Then the team with the least amount of rocks on their side won the game. Let me just say this was a SERIOUS hit! 

 For the favors I decided to just keep it simple easy. I gave a personalized candy bar away at the end.

 It turned out to be a great party!

Ninjago Birthday Party

It was no surprise when Big Guy told me he wanted a Lego Ninjago Birthday Party. He is obsessed with it. First off I needed to come up with an invitation. I found one I liked online and then tweaked it to what I wanted. Here was the end result. Actually when I picked these up from Walmart they told me I was going to need a copyright release form. Guess they did turn out good. Ha!

 Now for the banner. I wasn't sure what I was going to do and then this idea popped in my head. Big Guy really loved the way this turned out. 

Decorations! Decorations!

I kept all those Chinese lanterns from Bear's Chinese party and thought maybe I could possibly use them again but the only problem is that they were pink and white. So I thought maybe, spray paint? Yep! It worked perfectly! After spray paint I printed out the Ninjago eyes. I had one giant lantern which I spray painted yellow and made some eyebrows and a beard to make it look like Sensei Wu.

I also found some cheap gold place mats and cut out gold ninja stars. The ninjas all over the cupboards are just dollar store paper plates covered in felt. Cheap easy decorations, I'd say!

Now for the table scape. 

This was my favorite part of the food.

And for the cake. He wanted Jay and Jay is what he got. At least the best that I could do.  

The front room I decorated only a little for where the presents would go. 

This Jay was made out of poster board, felt and puff paint.  

This table was the "What's your Ninja Name" table.  

The kids had to take the letters in their names and figure out their Ninja name. 

When the guest arrived they were welcomed by Sensei Wu and No-ku-fu-chi-mo-to. Luckily Big Guy's birthday is right by Halloween so I was able to find a Sensei hat at the Halloween store. With a homemade beard, some thrift store pants and a white shirt, Sensei Wu came alive!

After the guest were greeted the they got their personalized ninja bands that I had made each friend with scrap fabric and a sharpie. 

We let the kids play and run a muck until everyone got to the party. Then the fun began!

I printed out this Sensei Wu picture on the computer and then made a bunch of beards so that we could play "Pin the Beard on Sensei Wu."

When everyone got their beards I took a picture because I couldn't pass up on a chance to take this photo. Too funny. 

 A training session with Sensei Wu. I had made some nun chucks for the kids out of foam tubing stuff I found at Home Depot, some duct tape and yarn  Again super cheap. 

The training session begins.

When it was time for the guest to leave they each got a Ninjago Bonezai favor.

I made these from marshmallows, pretzels and chocolate covered rice krispie treats. 

Pokemon Birthday Party

This year when I asked Monkey what kind of birthday party he wanted I wasn't surprised when he told me he wanted a Pokemon Birthday Party. I went to work on the invitations right away. I wanted them to look like a Pokemon card.

Here was the end result. Here was the front of the invitations.

The back.

Next thing to work on was his birthday banner. I decided to make Pokeballs with Pikachu's. I like the way it turned out. 

As far as the decorations I went to the dollar store for some inspiration. That's the place that inspires me. Why? Because its cheap. Luckily I did get some ideas. I made pokeballs out of dollar store paper plates and felt. I also went online and printed up some pictures of some Pokemon characters. Then cut them out and hung them up.

The garland hanging from the fan was those plastic hockey balls with holes in them. I just covered them with colored duck tape and black electrical tape to make them look like more pokeballs.

This was suppose to be a Pikachu head. I went to Wal-mart and saw this big yellow ball. I thought if I added some stuff to it, it might actually resemble Pikachu. (the random Clifford was because Monkey was star student and got to take the class mascot home.)

These Pikachu heads were actually yellow eggs from the Easter section at the dollar store. I just added some ears, yellow confetti paper and drew a face on them. Perfect. The table scape was a big felt Pokeball.

The final tablescape.  

Monkey wanted a Pikachu cake and so that's what he got. This cake was 5 layers high. The ears were sugar ice cream cones and the arms and legs were Twinkies. The cheeks were red fruit rollups cut into circles. 

The present area.

More Pokeballs and a homemade felt Pikachu glued onto poster board for Monkey. He loved it.

As far as the games I found a great blog online that gave me the idea for the "Hunt for Pokeballs." I found some ping pong balls at the dollars and colored them red and black. Then we hid them around the house and the kid who found the most won the prize.

The next game was "Pass the Pikachu." The big Pikachu head was perfect for this. Although half way in we realized that we should probably take the ears off since they were almost poking kids eyes out. Other than that it was perfect.  

When it was time to leave, everyone got a party favor. Each favor had a homemade coloring book. I love making these. They are cheap and easy. Each guest also recieved pokemon cards. These can get expensive but I bought 100 used (but like new) cards for $9. Also each favor had a personalized Pokemon card that I made and had laminated for them. I asked each parent to email me a picture of their son/ daughter so I could personalize each card. I found this website online that allowed me to make these. Then I found another website that if I plugged in the child's name and favorite color in, it was give me their "Pokemon name" and bio. It was perfect. Here were my kids cards.

The favors.