superhero 5th birthday party

We sent out the invitation a month before his birthday and allowed him to invite 5 friends to his birthday party. We live in a small apartment, so six 5 year old kids (including preston) is a LOT. 

 I found a Vietnamese woman who is really good at making costumes, I showed her a picture of a cape I wanted for Preston and his friends. It was a reversible superman and batman cape.  Preston was so excited about this new cape. I put a balloon on all the chairs at the table and also had the cape attached to each child's chair. Since the party was from 1-4 on a Sunday we decided to start with pizza. As the kids ate pizza we introduced them to the party theme. They were superhero's, and the house had been invaded by bad guys.  I basically printed off a sheet of batman villains I found on the internet, I cut them into 1 inch squares and lamenated them.  They were like tokens each kid could win.  The first game was superhero bingo.  When a kids got bingo, we gave them their first villain token.  Now that they were full of food and knew what bad guys they were looking for we moved on to our second game. The kids were so excited to get a villain after each task.

The next game was 'capture the villain bean bag toss'. I got a cardboard box and cut three shapes into it. I put the words pow, bam, and splat on it and put a picture of batman behind it. For each bean bag they got into a hole they captured a bad guy. I got the bean bag idea from here.  Each kid got three bean bags and had 3 turns each. Again they were so excited to get the little villains after each turn.

Because the attention span of a 5 year old is very short we quickly moved on to another game. This game was a last minute idea. In the above picture of the city, you can see a picture of a villain on the wall. Each kid got two turns with the nerf gun to shoot the villain. They were so cute trying to aim at the villain with precision. Most of the kids shot in all sorts of direction, and then Prestons friend Nick stood up took the gun squinted at the villain and with perfect aim hit the villain. It was so cute! Clearly Nick is on his way to being a super marksman. While our young super hero's were busy getting the bad guy, other bad guys took over our city. This led us to another game. 

 I cut holes in the outer two boxes. I then hot glued tissue paper to the holes. Then I placed a bad guy token, or a piece of candy in each 'window' and closed it with paper cups in the back. The kids took turns punching holes in the boxes and rescuing the city from the bad guys. When all the bad guys were found we moved to the final game. I made a pinata and inside had candy and more bad guys. It was the final game. Each kid got two turns to diffuse the 'bomb' and luckily it lasted so each kid got a hit. When it exploded they ran to catch the goods.

 The games lasted about an hour and we all had so much fun. Each child lined up and I could congratulate them on being fantastic superheros and capturing the bad guys. Then I gave them each a goody bag I had bought in the states back in September. When the excitement settled down we brought out the cake. I made a 4 layer chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. I had a spider man candle and put a few simple comic book sayings on top. It was the first time I made a layered cake that wasn't leaning to one side. I got the idea from here

 

 Of course we couldn't resist taking a few pictures of our super selves in the city background. Bella had fun with her pink cape too.

When it was all finished and many kids had left Preston and a few of his friends decided to help clean up and   tore everything to shreds. They had as much fun doing this as they did playing the games. 

 Needless to say superheros are a MUST have in our house. As a present for Prestons birthday I also had 2 more capes made for him. My favorite is the captain america cape. Having a boy is SO MUCH FUN!

To infinity and beyond...4th birthday party

Happy Birthday to my special boy. He wanted to have a buzz lightyear party, so thanks to pinterest I found a lot of creative ways to make that happen. We set up a photo booth for all the kids to have fun dressing up as  a character and taking pictures behind the etch a sketch. 

For the food table I made a watermelon rocket. It was supposed to have melon balls put back in, but they didn't come out as nice, so we just displayed the melon rocket  in front of the sliced melons. 

 The above cake was a pinterest idea. It came from here. It is layered chocolate cake surrounded by kit kat bars held on by icing and filled with little chocolate candies on top.  I knew I wouldn't get it round, so I went square.  Notice the 'moon' pops (4 of them) around the cake.

 For games we found a free printable Toy Story bingo game. The kids loved it and Preston tied for 1st place. It was a fun way to gather the friends and get them in the party mood.  For bingo chips we took the pieces from our connect 4 toy story game.

 We also made a life size Mr. Potato head out of cardboard. We used this for 2 games. The first game was a bean bag toss. We had cut a hole out behind the nose so when we removed the nose everyone got 3 trys to get their beanbag in the hole. Everyone had a GREAT time. Prestons friend Andrew won this game.

 Next we took off all the Mr Potato head parts and blind folded each child. They each got a turn placing the face parts back on the the Mr Potato. We then took a picture of each child with their recreated Potato Head.

Preston wasn't very excited about being blind folded, but loved seeing what his potato head looked like when the blind fold was off.

 Finally I had spent days making a pinata with a balloon and newspaper. I would mix flour and water into a paste and then take little strips of newspaper and put it all over the balloon. I think I got 4 layers on it. I would recomend giving this project a week, I only had 3 days, so it wasn't as dry as I wanted it to be. When it was finished I used the rest of the wrapping paper we had to decorate the outside. I filled the pinata with candy and trinkets. All the kids had fun beating it and Tim managed not to get hit by any of the zealous kids.

 Preston used his woody hat to collect his pinata goodies.

 We all sang Happy Birthday and he blew out his candles. Afterward he opened up his presents. The kids all had fun and so did we.

 To Infinity and Beyond

Before we knew it the day was over and we were exhausted.