Minecraft 8th Birthday Party

My son just turned eight and wanted a Minecraft-themed party.  There are plenty of great ideas out there on the internet.  Here's what we ended up doing.

Decorations:
Minecraft papercraft -- We used free printable templates found at instructables.com.  My boys chose several things they wanted to make, I printed them out on white cardstock and they went to town cutting and assembling. They made this lovely Minecraft display for the party all by themselves!

Birthday Banner -- I cut 3-inch squares out of kraft cardstock as the base, punched holes in the corners and strung brown ribbon through the holes. (For a few of the blocks, I used dark brown and green cardstock instead of the kraft just to keep things interesting.)  I found a "grass block" image online and used Photoshop Elements to create one 2x2 block for each letter I wanted for the banner.  The font for the letters is a free download on dafont.com.  Type the letters on the grass block, print them out, cut them out, and glue on the cardstock squares.

Torches -- I used a Minecraft wall torch template that I found here. I resized it for 8 1/2 x 11 paper and printed out two of them.  Once they were cut out, folded and assembled, I stuck them to the wall using straight pins and tape.  I crumpled up some yellow tissue paper to stick in the top of the torches to make them look more like they were on fire.

Pixelated Window -- My husband drew on the window with window markers to make them look like the glass you use in your Minecraft houses.  He also drew a creeper and a zombie face as well as a few blocks.

Steve and Zombie heads -- one of the talented guys in our youth group at church was Minecraft Steve for Halloween.  He let us borrow his costume for Steve and a Zombie made out of cardboard and paint.  (These became part of a game later!)

Food:  The world of Minecraft includes food so I decided our party menu should include things available in the game.

We served carrots, watermelon, apples, chicken (nuggets), and potatoes (french fries). To drink we had water bottles and "creeper juice".

The Choose Awesome blog has a fabulous blog post about hosting an epic Minecraft party.  The blog made my life so easy because she posted many of the free printables that I used for our party.

The "creeper juice" was some kind of sour warhead green drink that I saw on sale.  I used the water bottle labels from the Choose Awesome blog post and then modified them a bit to make the creeper juice labels.  The boys at the party were very excited about the creeper juice.


Activities:
We had several crafts and activities planned for the party.  As the guests arrived they got to craft their own chest.  We provided brown paper lunch sacks and pictures of various Minecraft characters.  (Again, I printed the images from the Choose Awesome blog.)  They glued the images on their bags.  These became the party favor bags: I added some square candies (Starburst, Now and Later, Nerds) and the guests put all the things they made at the party into their bags.

The guests could also make a torch like the ones I made to hang next to the banner.  I gave them each a glow stick to put inside their torches, too.

Later, they could make a Minecraft pickaxe.  I found an image here of a diamond pickaxe and had several copies printed out for the guests.  The guests cut out the images and glued them on to cardboard axes we had cut out ahead of time.  Because cutting the cardboard (or foam board) required an X-acto knife, we did that job prior to the party so the kids wouldn't endanger any of their fingers.

Surprisingly more popular than the pickaxes were the perler beads.  Perler beads and Minecraft go together so well because they both have that pixelated look.  I had printed out a few examples of things other people had made out of these beads (thank you, internet), and let the kids use their imagination.  Here are a couple things my niece made.  Aren't they cute?

In between the crafting sessions, we had a game for the kids to play.  First, we had scattered some "diamonds" and "ore" around the yard (vase fillers from the dollar bins at Michael's).  The two teams had to gather up all their diamonds/ore and stash them in little square boxes (dollar spot at Target).  Later those boxes filled with treasure became each team's "flag" in a game of capture the flag.  To spice up that game a little, my husband and I dressed up as Steve and the Zombie and ran around trying to tag the kids.

Here's my niece in the Steve costume after I got too hot.

When it was time for cake, we had one more game for the kids.  In the game of Minecraft, you have to collect eggs, milk, sugar and wheat to "craft" a cake.  We made them find all those ingredients hidden in Easter eggs in the yard before they could have cake.

I made a square cake to look like the ones on Minecraft.

Happy birthday to my sweet eight-year-old.  May creepers never explode your house.

Edited to add .jpg files for the cake crafting activity:

Easy Brave Party Food

My mother-in-law let the boys pick her birthday party theme this year and they went with Brave.  So I put together a relatively simple menu and gave each dish a Brave-themed title.

For the cake, I baked round cakes and frosted them to look like Merida's archery targets.

I used a couple bamboo skewers and some cardstock to make "arrows" to stick in the bullseye.

It came together pretty quickly and was eaten quickly, too!

Skylanders Tenth Birthday Party

My son had some friends over to celebrate his 10th birthday Skylander-style!

 

When the boys arrived, they started out by making their own bag clips using shrink plastic.  We set out some Skylander books and posters for them to trace, or they could design their own.

 

The boys really got into this activity!  After the charms were shrunk, we added the carabiners so they could be used as bag clips on the boys' backpacks.  I think they turned out super cute!

 

 

The bag clips went into their favor bags.  I found blue lunch sacks and stuck a label on them to make the favor bags.  The label says "Skylanders: Aaron's Adventure" which matched the invitations and the banner.  The bags also contained some gold coin candy, a pencil, a bouncy ball and some Starburst candies. (To see my post about making the birthday banner, click here.)

 

The boys then went downstairs to play some games.  I didn't get many pictures of the games but I'll try to describe them.

1. Wrecking Ball's Tongue - I purchased some Skylander's trading cards and some sticky hands party favors at Target.  We scattered the cards on the floor and the boys tried to pick them up using the sticky hands.  They got to keep the cards as party favors.

2.  Trigger Happy's Target Practice - We lined up some stuffed balls and the boys took turns shooting at them with a nerf gun.

3.  SkyStones - We made our own version of the Sky Stones mini game in the Skylanders video game.  My husband cut some wood blocks and drew arrows on them with a sharpie.  He drew a grid on some paper for the playing surface and they used different colored chips to indicate which stones they had won.

After the games, it was time for cake!

 

Of course, I had to attempt a Portal of Power cake since it was a Skylanders party.  I personally think fondant tastes terrible, so I used buttercreme icing  and made a cake that was more "suggestive" of a Portal of Power rather than an exact representation.  The boys knew what it was and it tasted good!

 

To see my post on Skylander sheep cupcakes, click here.

 To see my post on Skylanders Elements sugar cookies, click here.

Just Ducky First Birthday

My sweet niece just turned one.  She doesn't say very many words yet, but she can say "duck!"  So I made her a rubber ducky birthday cake and cookies.

The cake was a 2-layer round cake that I covered in baby blue frosting.  I drew the ducky outline with a toothpick and then piped the yellow and orange frosting with a star tip.  The eye is an M&M.

 

She thought it was pretty interesting.

 And even checked it out with her toes!

 

I was in a big hurry, so this is the only picture I took of the cookies.  They are chocolate cookies with yellow royal icing.  Once the base layer was dry, I piped on the eye and wing detail with the same yellow icing.  I like the tone-on-tone look.

My boys made up a few games to play at the party.  Here is the birthday girl after she found all the duckies that were scattered around the living room.  So nice to see she has her ducks in a row.

Precursor Orb (Jak and Daxter) Birthday Cake

I had never heard of the Jak and Daxter video game, so when my nephew asked me to bake his birthday cake in the shape of the precursor orb, I had no idea what he was talking about.  He described it as "an orange easter egg with weird writing on it."  Okay?  So I googled it and here's what I found:

Sure! I can make a cake that looks like that!  No problem!

I don't have an egg-shaped baking pan, so I decided to modify my round pans.  (I could have just baked the round cakes and then cut them into an egg shape, but I always have serious crumb-in-the-frosting issues when I try that method.  Not to mention the cake scraps that get wasted.)  So get ready for some serious "make do" action.

I fashioned some aluminum foil into an egg shape and inserted it in the pans.

Then I added more foil to fill up the empty areas.

Finally I covered it with parchment paper so that, when I poured in the batter, it didn't seep under the foil.

It's not pretty, but it worked OK.  And out came two (sort of) egg-shaped cakes!

I tinted the buttercream icing orange and frosted the cake with a shell border at the bottom.  Then I added some brown food coloring to the orange frosting to make a slightly darker shade for the writing.  I drew on the writing with a toothpick and then went over it with the frosting in a bag with a #2 tip.

And here we have a precursor orb birthday cake!

The birthday boy was over-the-moon.  Even though he was the only one who knew what the cake was supposed to be.

Happy 12th birthday, Dawson!

Soccer Ball Cake

As soon as I made a Pokemon ball birthday cake for my nephew, my niece requested the same cake for her birthday party.  It was a triple-layer red velvet cake with buttercream icing.  But Kayla's not into Pokemon, so I made her cake a soccer ball instead.

I frosted the whole thing with white and then added the pentagon shapes in black.  Here's the secret trick for making the soccer ball design:  I had a pentagon cookie cutter and used that to make impressions in the white icing.  Then I simply outlined the impression with the black icing!

We actually celebrated all four family members with February birthdays including Kayla and my husband.  There was even less cake left this time than last time I made it.  I have a feeling it will get requested again!

Pokemon Birthday Cake

My nephew decided he wanted a Pokemon-themed birthday after seeing my son's birthday.  They were travelling until the day before the birthday party, so I volunteered to make his cake.  He actually requested a red velvet cake. Sophisticated taste!

I happen to LOVE red velvet cake ever since I made this recipe from Better Homes & Gardens magazine.  I followed their cake recipe, but I used my own recipe for buttercream frosting.  So I'm not sure how their frosting is, but I thought mine was actually a bit too sweet.  (Or maybe I loaded it on too thick!) Maybe next time I'll use their frosting recipe.

Red Velvet Pokemon Ball Birthday Cake

The recipe makes a 3-layer cake.  I frosted the whole thing with white buttercream, then used the larger star tip (#21) to pipe the bottom border, the red area on the top and the white area on the top.  I drew the black lines and the name on with a #7 round tip.

The birthday boy with his cake.

The birthday boy took one bite of the cake and exclaimed "Best cake ever!"  That's some high praise coming from a 10-year-old boy!

Blowing out all 10 candles!

Judging by how much cake the 13 of us ate, I think it must have been  pretty good.

Triple Layer Red Velvet Cake with Buttercream Frosting