Quick Lil' Buggers

My two big boys had a friend sleep over this past weekend. This particular friend has been to every one of their birthday parties I think since my now 7 year old was three. He knows I like parties, he knows my boys like parties, and just about every time he has slept over he's asked to play some sort of game. This time he didn't asked to play a game though. He asked to have a party.

It was close to bedtime so I went over the Basic Games with them and told them to think of some ideas and that after breakfast the next morning we would sit down and plan, make the games, and then have the "party". But before the griddle was even warm for pancakes, our guest had decided on a theme (bugs) and already made a game. How about that?

*If you're planning a party remember to involve your child in the planning. You will be amazed at what they can come up with. Discuss the Basic Games with them and see what they think of. I plan to do a nice long post about bug parties in the future but for now here is a short list of the 4 games we played...all thought up by the three boys.*

Bug Hunt -

We called the game that our guest came up with Bug Hunt. He buried my youngest son's entire plastic bug collection in a box of gravel/colored macaroni.

(In case you're curious, I have a box of gravel mixed with colored macaroni because my little one decided to pour our colored macaroni for crafts into the gravel his daddy was drying off after rinsing for the fish tank. I have since found it useful so I decided to keep it.)

He decided that all bugs except for the flies were worth 5 points, the flies worth 10, and the "really big huge" fly was worth 20.

They were all given 30 seconds to find as many bugs as they could.




Musical Spiders - We made Black Widow spiders using paper plates. I was in charge of drawing red hourglass shapes on each paper plate and then coloring around it black. My middles son drew heads for the spiders and then I cut them out and glued them on. Then I cut paper strips for legs. The legs were glued on by our guest.

We put the spiders on the floor and played Musical Spiders just like Musical Chairs.




Spider Walk - For this game we just added numbers onto the hourglass shape of each spider. This was played like a cake walk. They walked from spider to spider until the music was turned off. Then I drew a number and whoever was on that number won a prize. Both of the spider games were thought of by my middle son. "We can do like we did (The Little Mermaid) shell games but with spiders instead of shells!"


Pin the Tail on the Scorpion. - I did make this one entirely by myself but it was the idea of our guest. He even dug a toy scorpion out of the bug hunt game for me to look at. I just drew the scorpion, traced the end of his tail and cut one out for each boy.



Throw the Bee in the Hive - Our guest suggested we "throw some bugs in some holes". My oldest son immediately yelled out "Bees! Throw bees in a hive!" So that's what we did. Our guest drew a bee hive. I glued it to the front of a box and they took turns throwing two bees into the hive. We had three spots to throw from worth 5, 10, and 20 points.




This whole little party was planned, made, and played out in the span of maybe three hours so we had no food and therefore no decorated place settings. We did have prizes though. Inspired by my son's teacher last year I started a treasure chest with my boys last year. I highly reccommend it. Not only is it a great reward system, it is wonderful to have on hand for impromptu parties. All my prizes were purchased from a thrift store for 10 cents each.



Since this post is all about the boys' amazing party planning skills I decided to ask my oldest how to end this post...

"Remember to BEE good". ("and capitalize the bee!")

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

The Little Mermaid Theme

[Sidenotes]

Up first in movie themes is The Little Mermaid.



Place Settings

Cups- Buy a sea blue or green cups. Draw or print out Flounders for them. Cut them out and gluestick them on. Add little bubble detail with a white paint or glitter pen. You can also cut out stars or shells, cut slits in them, and attatch onto straws.



Plates- You can glue to the underside of each plate a fin on the top, tailfin on one side, and fish lips on the otherside.



Silverware - Attatching paper tags that say dinglehopper onto your forks is a must!

Napkins- Wrap your dinglehoppers and/or spoons in napkins and slip into shell and starfish napkin rings. For more detailed info on making your own napkin rings click here.



For Little Mermaid themed products click the photo below



Centerpiece

A purchased treasure chest or just a cardboard box painted like one filled with goody bags, shells, beads, and jewels would make a great centerpiece.

Another idea is to make Ursula. I thought a photo tutorial would help with this one so I made a quick example. It doesn't look the best but it should give you a good idea.


Put an vase or other tall container in the middle of the table.


Drape a black trash bag (or black fabric) over it.


Then cut legs from the part of the bag that hangs down onto the table. Twist them and tie a small knot at the end to help them hold shape.


Then draw or print out a large picture of the top portion of Ursula.


Cut it out and tape to the top of the vase pushing a bit of it down into the vase opening. If you don't have too many party guests you could even make enough legs so that you could put a prize at the end of each one.



Food

Starfish and Fish sandwiches - Cut bread with shaped cookie cutters before adding sandwich fillings.

Ursula and Seaweed - Cut midway up each hot dog 8 times. When you boil them the cut part will curl up making nice Ursula legs. You can serve atop a bed of green tinted macaroni and cheese aka seaweed.


One of my boys is allergic to milk so we also had rice seaweed

Gadgets and Gizmos aplenty Popcorn - There is a song in The Little Mermaid with the line "I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty..." I made popcorn and added in pretzels, dried cranberries, sprinkles, and peanuts. You could have a popcorn bar to let each child add thier choice of extras. Label each bowl of addins with "Gadgets", "Gizmos", "Thingamabobs" etc.

Sea Water - This was just Crystal Light lemonade with blue food coloring added in.


Games

These games were all made based on Basic Games. To read more on Basic Games click here.

Find the Fish - I cut several fish from printer paper and added squiggly lines of different colors on them. Then I drew one of each color of fish on a piece of paper and assigned point values. I made sure to assign lower point values to the colors that I had made the most of. I also had one fish that was a prize fish. All of the fish were hidden while the movie was being watched. After they found all the fish we added up the points. One prize was given for the most points and another for the the prize fish. Instead of just a colored prize fish you could make one Flounder fish to find.



Pearl Match - I folded printer paper in half and cut a rough circular shape starting at the folded edges to make oysters. I then drew decorative lines on the outside of them as well as a pink line inside to represent the clam. Then I made two of each color of pearls inside them. I lined these all up around the dining room table and the boys took turns trying to find matches. Whoever ended up with the most matches was the winner.



Musical Shells - I cut out one shell for each child. I then added decorative lines with a marker. We played this two ways. The first time just like musical chairs. For the second time I drew shapes onto the back of each shell (you could use numbers for older children). When the music stopped I called out a shape and whoever was standing on that shape won a prize.




Pin the Fin on the Mermaid - Just like Pin the tail on the donkey but with Ariel and
tailfins.




Other games could include -

Father May I or King Neptune May I played like Mother May I

Sebastian Says played like Simon Says

Scuttle's Scavenger Hunt - Scuttle is the bird that tells Ariel what all the human treasures that she finds are called. Hide various objects including dinglehoppers (forks).

Scuttle's Little Helper - What if Scuttle was too busy to tell Ariel what all her treasures were? Pass out various random objects and have a contest to see who can come up with the most outlandish name and purpose for each object.

Seashell Shh - Draw shells like that which Ursula captures Ariel's voice in. Either glue them onto clothespins or poke a hole and attatch them to necklaces. Pass one out to each guest as they arrive. Have a list of words that are not allowed to be said (mermaid, party, present, any word that will likely get used a lot). Whenever someone catches someone saying one of the words the person that said it must hand over thier shell. Whichever child ends up with the most shells at the end of the party wins a prize. This would be best for older children or would also be a great way to get the grownups involved.

Pick a Duck with Mermaid rubber duckies which can be found here


Cake - A great cake for this theme would be the doll in the dome cake (for more info on that click here) or for lots of mermaid cake ideas click here.

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Hey, where'd I go?

It has been a bit over a month since my last post. This is for various reasons including my first "for hire" birthday cake (see pic below), computer problems, deep cleaning, a total revamp of my birthday closet (more on that in the future!), and lots of rearranging but mostly just because I have been busy enjoying having my big boys home for the summer.


Bakugan Cake - If you don't know, Bakugans are a bit like little round transformers. There are cards that come with them. There are also people on the show. That concludes everything I know about Bakugans :) Now about the cake - the boy, Bakugans, and Bakugan cards are all made out of marshmallow fondant. If you haven't made your own fondant before I strongly reccommend that you give it a try. I had a little trouble at first but in the end it is so worth it. It ends up being cheaper and tastes SO much better. The trick I found was to add the powdered sugar a wee bit at a time. I tried different recipes and never ended up adding as much as any of them said. I did have to use some toothpick support which I've never had to do with the firmer store bought kind but I thought it was worth a couple of toothpicks for the better taste. Also, see those cards? Edible markers are my new favorite thing!

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Mario Party Party Finale

This is the round up of all of the Mario Party Party items made and games played.

Invitations were sent out -
Hidden Picture Mario Party Invitations

As guests arrived they decorated their own Coin Collector -

Arrival Activity - decorating coin collectors

Once everyone arrived they were divided into four teams Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow.
We rolled the dice to move around this board -



A member from whichever team's color we landed on selected a mini game to play.



For each game we played every player recieved a gold coin (painted Bingo markers) and the winning team members recieved tickets.

These are the mini games we played -

Scaldin' Cauldron - be the last team left to escape flaming cauldrons

Bob-ombs Away - Earn points by dropping down a Bob-omb, Plinko style

Breakneck Building - race to paint a board, hammer in nails, and saw a log

At the Chomp Wash - Scrub Away Chain Chomps

Shake It Up - Shake up "cans", see if they poof up

Fish Sticks - Cheep Cheep fishing game

Rumble Fumble - Find the Shy Guys, Avoid the Bob-bombs

Chimp Chase - Return the Lakiki babies to their Lakiki mamas

Paint Misbehavin' - Paint goombas

Aim of the Game - Grab cards to win points


After all of the games were played, everyone recieved a star. The stars were just printed Mario stars with numbers written on the back. The stars were in a magic bag so that when they first reached in they found nothing there. I told them they had to have a sticker for the stars to appear. After they'd put on a sticker I would flip the switch on the handle and the stars magically appeared. They did get wise and start putting the stickers on before it was their turn so I had to keep making up new things for them to do. "You're wearing green so you have to say "Yippty Bean!" etc.

After everyone had a star they were lined up in order of the numbers on their stars. This was to decide who would get to go into Shy Guy's Candy Shack to spend their coins and tickets first.

Three at a time they were sent in to buy candy -



The candy for sale was -

Goomba Gum - little packets of Chiclets from the checkout at a mexican restaurant
Toadette's Tarts - giant smarties with hearts on them from after valentine's clearance Blooper's Fish & Fish Food - bagged up two swedish fish with nerds sprinkled in Cheep Cheep Treats - gummy worms and lightning bugs
Luigi's Licorice Mustaches - mini licorice sticks
Latiku's Sour Balls - sour fruit candies
Princess Daisy's Fun Dips - valentine Fun Dips on the to and from I wrote You with a heart for the o and Daisy with a daisy for the dot of the i
Spikes - candy corn Princess Peach's Fruit Salad - I bought one package of peach rings and one of fruit slices cut them up and put them in lil baggies
Bob-bomb's Butterscotch - glued lil bob-bomb's to the wrappers
Baby Peach's Fruit Jewels - hard fruit candies
Dry Bones' Bones - leftover Halloween bone candy
Birdo's Eggs - jelly beans DK's Root Beer Barrels - root beer barrels
Toad's Taffy - taffy with picture of Toad glued on

Most of the candy could be purchased with coins but there was a section just for tickets as well.


Those that were not shopping for candy chose a drink and picked up a place setting -

KA-POW Punch and Mustache Straws

Boo Cups and Bob-omb Plates

Star Napkin Rings

After everyone had shopped for candy, we ate cake -




After cake we opened presents and visited with our friends and family.

Then I cleaned up, wrote up a detailed party plan, and entered it into the Birthday Party Idea contest at www.birthdaypartyideas.com and guess what, we won!

You can read the very detailed party plan at their site.

Happy Birthday to Jacob and Benjamin!

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Bob-ombs Away

When I saw the Mario Party 8 mini game Bob-ombs Away, I immediately thought of The Price is Right game, Plinko. In the video game version 3 players stand on top of a Plinko type board dropping Bob-ombs down onto the 4th player. Our party game is a friendlier version in which a Bob-omb is dropped down the board to win points.



Unfortunately I did not take photos along the way but hopefully I can describe it well enough.

I started with a (free of course) box from Walmart. It was angled down on the sides. I lifted the front part of the back and put it down across the top angled down to the front. I attatched this with a LOT of tape and covered in construction paper that I then decorated.

Across the top I put a section that had been inside the box to seperate the toys it once held. At the bottom I placed another free container this one from Pop Rocks Easter Eggs. I painted each cup of this container with point values in each one.

I then stuck multicolored push pins all over for the ping pong ball (painted to look like a Bob-omb) to bounce around against.

I used what I had but you could also cut out your own piece of cardboard to angle down and tape a few paper cups together for the bottom.



Each player was allowed to drop the Bob-omb down three times and then the teams total scores were added to determine the winner.

Items Used and Total Cost of This Game -

Box - $0
Construction paper - (already had) $0
Pop Rocks Egg container - $0
Paint - (already had) $0
Push Pins - (already had) $0
Ping Pong Ball - (already had) $0

Total Cost of This Game - $0

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Scaldin' Cauldron

Scaldin' Cauldron is a Mario Party 5 game in which players hide in cauldrons. Koopa enters and blows his flame breath on one cauldron at a time until only one player remains. The youtube video and a short how to on the party game version are below.




For our cauldrons I emptied out four of my boys' toy bins. I lined them up behind the couch and taped black construction paper cauldrons with the letters A,B,C,and D on them and flames below them above each bin.



I taped four pieces of orange construction paper together with painters tape. On each one I glued on a cauldron cut from an old pair of black sweatpants. I used sweatpants because my "flames" were nerf darts that would stick quit nicely to sweatpant material. I painted the corresponding letters on these cauldrons and hung the finished project up on a door across from the toy bins.

I printed out a Bowser face from the internet, cut it out, and attatched it to a wooden stick used for mixing paint.



One person from each team climbed into a bin and then I as Bowser stuck a dart onto one of the cauldrons. Whomever was in that letter cauldron was out of the game. Then another player would go in and everyone would switch cauldrons. When only one team member was left that persons team won.

Items Used and Total Cost of This Game -

Plastic Bins - (already had) $0
Construction Paper - (already had) $0
Paint - (already had) $0
Nerf Darts - (already had) $0
Sweatpants - (already had) $0
Painter's Tape - (already had) $0
Wooden stick - (already had) $0
Printed Bowser - $0

Total Cost of This Game - $0

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Breakneck Building

Once again, here is a youtube video of a Mario Party 8 mini game followed by photos of my party game version.



In our party game version of Breakneck Building we timed each team painting a "board", hammering in nails, and cutting "logs". The team with the best time won.

For the boards I cut regular printer paper in half and then rolled a brown crayon (with wrapper removed) across each one. Then I just drew on a little bit of wood grain detail. The paint was just a few drops of food coloring mixed with water inside of an old sour cream container. I taped a piece of paper that I had written the word paint on and attatched a metal handle on top. The paintbrush was just a real paintbrush that I already had.



For the hammering part of the game I painted a box brown and drew on wood grain with a brown marker. I painted just the tops of nails to match each team's colors. I did six nails for each team. I pushed the nails all the way down to make sure they would be easy enough and then pulled them back up. The hammer was a plastic one from my youngest son's tool bench.




The logs were shaped from clay and then painted brown. I drew out a saw on an empty plastic bottle, cut it out, and painted with brown and silver paint.



The teams did this game one at a time with each member painting one board, nailing in three nails, and sawing off one section of a log. Each team was timed and then the fastest time was announced at the end.



Items Used and Total Cost of This Game -

Printer paper - (already had) $0
Crayon - (already had) $0
Sour Cream Container - (already had) $0
Markers - (already had) $0
Box -(already had) $0
Paint - (already had) $0
Nails - (already had) $0
Plastic hammer - (already had) $0
Clay - (already had) $0

Total Cost - $0

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

At The Chomp Wash

In this game, At The Chomp Wash, players have to wipe paint off of a big Chain Chomp. Below is a youtube video of the game followed by a how to on our party game version.



In the party game instead of having one big Chomp for each player I made 7 small chain chomps for each team. I drew them all with white chalk out in my carport and put different colored spots on them to match with the team colors.




Then I drew one large Chomp for each time to keep track of how many chomps they had washed.



I passed out a damp sponge piece to each player. Then they wiped away their team's chomps as fast as they could. The team to get rid of all their Chomps first won.

*Note - To save money on sponges, buy a cheap bag from the dollar store and cut them into 6 pieces each. I did this for a previous party game and had enough left over that I didn't have to buy any for this one!

Items Used and Total Cost of This Game -

Sponges - (already had) $0
Chalk - (already had) $0

Total Cost - $0

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Mario Party Party Slideshow

I will update soon with more tutorials and etc. but in the meantime here is a slideshow of our Mario Party Party.

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

Boo Cups and Bob-bomb Plates

For our Mario Party I made Boo cups and Bob-bomb plates.

Boo Cups - First I printed out (in draft mode) several Boos.

I then cut out just the mouths.

Gluesticked the mouths to the cups

Then I added on eyes and eyebrows with a permanent black marker.

I wrote BOO on the backs with a red permanent marker

The Bob-bomb plate tutorial photos are currently stuck on a now non-working computer. *Remember to save to a disk frequently! Lesson learned. Here is a quick non-photo tutorial -

First I traced the narrow side of a rectangular block onto black construction paper and cut them out to make the top of the Bob-bombs.

Then I used the wider side of anothere block and traced it onto white paper to make the wicks. I added line detail on the wicks with a gray crayon.

I traced two ovals onto the back of each black plated and cut them out for the eyes. I then glued the tops and wicks onto the underside of each plate before adding a white plate underneath. To attatch the white plate I put one thing line of glue around the very edge of the plates as well as around the place where the plates indent down.



Items used and Total Cost of Cups and Plates -

White Cups - $1
Printed Boos - $0
Markers - (already had) $0
Black Plates - $1
White Plates - $1
Construction paper (already had) - $0

Total cost for 15 Boo Cups and 20 Bob-bomb plates - $3

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook

KA-POW Punch and Mustache Straws

A great way to personalize drinks at your party is to make labels for individual sized drinks. A favorite amongst my children (and probably every other child I've ever met) are Little Hugs. You can find them at most grocery stores. I purchased mine on sale at Walmart for $2.89.

If you haven't seen them, here is what to look for -



Besides the fact that children love them, they are also a great way to prevent spills. When I buy them we poke a straw through the top instead of removing the lids.

Below are the Mario themed labels I made for our upcoming party. Feel free to print them out for yourself (print out as wallet size) or contact me if you'd like personalized labels for YOUR party.

*Scroll down after the labels to see how we Mario-ized our straws*






After labels are printed, cut out and glue onto each drink.



For the straws we added mustaches so that if you bend it just so as you drink it appears as if you have a mustache of your own. To make the mustaches I drew out one and then traced and cut out several more. I then folded each in half and cut two small lines to slip the straw through.



If you don't feel comfortable freehanding the mustaches, I did find this template that you could use. (You could also put double stick tape on the back of mustaches for your guests to wear or even create a pin the mustache on Mario game.)

I put my mustache straws in a small pot that I had painted green to be a pipe. Then I cut out Mario and Luigi faces and attatched to a k'nex toy in the middle of each one.



Items used and total cost of this project -

Little Hugs drinks - $2.89
Printed labels - $0
Glue - (already had) $0
Straws - (already had) $0
Black construction paper - (already had) $0
Small pots - (already had and fyi- from a thrift store for 10 cents!) $0
Paint - (already had) $0

Total Cost for 20 personalized drinks - $2.89

Become a fan of build-a-birthday on Facebook