I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!
We've talked for a couple years now about having a big 'friend' party for Tenor's 10th birthday. We did a big party for his 1st birthday but all the other years, we just got together with the grandparents and aunts and uncles to celebrate. He's really been looking forward to a 'friends' party for awhile. But while we've talked about it for several years, I did not have my act together this year to spend months and months planning and prepping. :) We had to finish our school year, do our homeschool evaluation, my mother-in-law was with us for a visit, my sister was getting married, and we were headed to the beach! We were swamped!
All of a sudden we realized that to fit a party in pronto! That night, we decided to have the party in 2 weeks. It was a toss-up between a Lego party or an Angry Birds party because both are huge hits in our house right now. The game ideas I saw online totally swayed us to do Angry Birds though.
Using some ideas I had already pinned and some super speedy internet and Pinterest searches, we came up with a game plan. I quick made invites using this neat (and free!!!)
party printable set.
I popped the background image into Publisher, installed the Angry Bird font, and just added the pertinent info. We mailed them out the next day.
Then it was time for decor ideas:
Since the party would be boys from the ages of 7-11, I tried to keep it simple. :)
I printed the bird faces from
The Party Animal, cut them out, and stuck them on the day of the party.
I used old formula cans covered with green construction paper to hold straws ($1 at Michaels) and flatware (Dollar Tree). I found a pig face clip art online and printed up a ton of them for different things. I cut 'em out and stuck one on each can.
I printed the banner letters from
The Party Animal. The 'appy' birthday idea was clever but we weren't sure the kids would get it. So When we printed it, I just printed an extra 'h'. To add color, I taped them on bright 8.5x11 pieces of cardstock. We strung them with yellow curling ribbon I had in my stash and attached them our badminton net poles. We splurged a bit on a
pig tablecloth and bird napkins from Oriental Trading. We saved money by getting plain red plates and plain red and yellow cups from the dollar store.
I made a cute tissue paper red bird "wreath" that we hung on a stake in the front yard but I forgot to take pics. It looked kind of like this pig
one.
That was it for decor. Not too bad. :)
We kept the snacks pretty simple too:
water and lemonade, chips, pretzel fish, and baby carrots, 2 flavors of ice cream, and angry bird cupcakes. I saw
some online that looked super cute so I had to copy them. The hardest part of making the cupcakes was digging the exact amount of colored jelly beans out of the Jelly Belly dispenser at the grocery store. Those big plastic scoops are a little awkward when you're trying to get 1 more blue bean!
Favor bags included an Angry Birds eraser, a sheet of Angry Bird stickers, a bag of Angry Birds gummy candies, a slingshot, and 6 mini porcupine balls. I got plain red lunch bags at the craft store and then printed extra red bird faces from
here. They turned out cute, kind of like
these.
Next up, the most important part of the party... games!
We had a can toss game like
here. (With more formula cans and pig faces.We borrowed the angry bird dog toys from my folks who had just purchased them the previous week for their doggy.)
We clipped a bunch of green balloons (also with printed pig faces) onto our laundry line with clothespins (like
here). We had a basket of wooden handled slingshots and mini porcupine balls for the boys to shoot the balloons. (The tarp was to keep too many balls from getting lost in our firewood stacks.) Later the
slingshots and
balls went into the favor bags for the guests to keep.
I printed more pig faces and made up some point values using the Angry Birds font and taped them into our old living room window (that was sitting in the trash pile). The boys used suction dart guns to shoot at the pigs and point values.
On the driveway, I set up our giant bowling set (complete with a red bird face taped on the red bowling ball.) I forgot to get a picture of it though. You could do something like
this if you don't have a bowling game handy.
We set up ladderball but it didn't get much use.
Mainly because we had this....
Yup... Bass built a 5' slingshot with 2x4s and a beach water balloon launcher and some cable ties. I saw an
idea online that he worked off of. It was kind of a MacGyver project but we tested it so that it would be sturdy and safe. The boys had a blast trying to knock down a stack of boxes and some pigs (more formula cans.) I found mini kickballs at the dollar store which worked great.
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| Even some of the moms gave it a try at pick-up time. |
More party shots:
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| Introducing everyone |
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| Snacks |
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| Singing to the birthday boy |
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| Present Time |
The best part.... a very happy 10 year old!
Linking up to these great blog parties:
Sunday: Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming; Show Me What Ya Got at Not Just a Housewife;
Tuesday: One Project at a Time at A Bowl Full of Lemons; Tuesday's Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia;
Wednesday: Wicked Awesome Wednesday at Handy Man, Crafty Woman; It's Overflowing at Overflowing with Creativity; Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts;
Home Decor & Organizing at Organize and Decorate Everything;
Thursday: Delightfully Inspiring Thursday at Delightful Order; Thrifty Thursday at Thrifty and Fabuless; Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Creek Cottage;
Friday: Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest; Flaunt it Friday at Chic on a Shoestring;
