Minion Birthday Party!

My now 3 year old is OBSESSED with Minions. Whenever we asked him what he wanted for Christmas, his answer was always “MINIONS!!”. So, of course he had to have a Minion birthday party!

MINION INVITATIONS:

I made these invitations (using Microsoft Publisher…nothing fancy here!), one clipart from a Google “minion clipart” search, and this font (LasVegas-Jackpot) . I set up the invitation as a 4” x 6” because I like to print them at Wal-Mart & have them in hand within the hour. The boarder of the invitation was a bunch of repeated blue & yellow stripes laid behind everything and later cropped to the 4” x 6” size. Obviously I put in the birthday boy’s actual name & our actual address & phone number, but you get the idea.

**I’ve been trying to make their birthday parties more about the fun rather than the presents. We do a little family birthday party where we give them presents, but when it comes to their friends…all they really want is to play & have cake! That’s why I put *no presents necessary*. Hopefully makes it less stressful for the parents too!

I did a lot of Pinterest & Google searching for ideas for kids 3 and younger to do. I love teaching my boys preschool, so I wanted to do some activities like that. So here we go…

THE MINION PARTY FUN:

First, color. It was a great “gathering” activity. While we waited for everyone to show up, they colored as many Minions as they could (and played after they were done).

The next project was painting a puzzle. My little man LOVES puzzles almost as much as he loves minions. I was going to have the kids make something similar to this Minion footprint on their puzzles, but that was a little too much work (we did a practice run the night before).

So instead I just gave them some paint & let them do whatever they wanted on it.  They had fun with that!

 

Lunch came next. I made some pizza & while it finished cooking, I gave the kids some bananas & some stickers I made with my Silhouette.  They dressed the bananas up to look like little Minions & then they got to eat them and/or take them home with them.

This is the clipart I used & imported in my Silhouette program (couldn’t find the actual link anymore, SORRY!!):

MINION CUPCAKES!

Inspired by Betty Crocker, I made these Minion Cupcakes. Not much needed aside from the cake; blue cupcake liners, yellow frosting, big marshmallows, & black gel (or frosting). I was also planning on making a cake for our family part (again, Betty Crocker inspired), but it stuck to the pan. So I opted for Minion cake balls!

MINION GIFT BAGS:

I have a ton of these brown gift bags, and since I couldn’t find yellow bags ANYWHERE in my town, I went with these. I again made some stickers to go on the outside & put some fun Minion stuff inside.

1. Minion stickers (I made, using my Silhouette & clipart like THIS)
2. Minion tattoos
3. Minion Fruit Snacks (any grocery store)
4. BANANAS!!(candy, of course, with stickers to go on another banana at home)
5. Their painted puzzles

MINION DECORATIONS:

Lots of blue & yellow – streamers, balloons, flag banners, etc! The streamers, we put up. Nothing else to it. The blue balloons stayed blue balloons, and the yellow balloons were dressed up to be minion heads! I used goggle & mouth clipart & taped them on. The flag banner was a matter of yellow, white & blue cardstock paper, but into triangles & flags, with Minion stickers on top (taped to some yarn). Pretty easy to make.

Overall, super fun birthday! This kiddo is now 3 & still as crazy as a Minion!!

Pirate Party

Our little G turned 4 this year and was talking about wanting a pirate party at least 6 months before his birthday. So I made his wish come true (as best as I could, anyway!). I like to have the kiddos help when it comes to their parties, so we started it off with his invitations. I looked online for examples of pirate party invitations and then made up my own. He put on some pirate stickers and stuffed the envelopes and wrote all his friends names on the outside.  

Then just to have even more fun with it, I made him a bow tie & suspender set and did a little photo shoot with him. He LOVES his pirate bow tie!

Then came the party. I ordered some inflatable pirate swords from Oriental Trading and used those as a gathering activity. While we waited for all his friends to show up, they colored their swords with sharpies (parents stayed close to keep the markers from ending up on their clothes!!).

They were beyond happy to just play & “sword fight” with each other for hours! They also got eye patches & pirate hats (from Oriental Trading and PartyPlace), they didn’t stay on long though. I made his shirt using a black black shirt from Wal-Mart, and cut the heat transfer vinyl using an image from Google images (search “pirate skull”).

I kept lunch simple and made pizza. While they ate, I set up a treasure hunt for them to find the cake!

I didn’t take any pictures of the treasure hunt, but they each got a pirate telescope (as seen HERE) & in the end had to “walk the plank” to find the treasure. A March birthday in Montana is hard because everything is inside, unless we want to play in the snow & freeze! I was going to set up the plank on the steps outside so they would actually have to JUMP off of it, but that didn’t happen.

The cake! I frosted it white & used my Silhouette machine to cut out a skull & swords stencil, laid it on the cake & sprayed it with black spray food coloring. I topped it off with black sugar sprinkles & some hand made chocolate swords (Little G’s favorite color is green!).

He asked for a pirate cake with swords on it, and he got it!

When they left, the kids kept their pirate hats, pirate swords, eye patches & telescopes. They also got a little goodie bag with suckers, pirate stickers & pirate tattoos (Oriental Trading!). [Stickers made on my Silhouette machine.]

Such a fun Pirate Party for this little 4 year old!

Monster Birthday Party!!

This little guy had a monster party this weekend for his 2nd birthday. I’m working on becoming a better party planner or party “thrower” for my kiddos. Thank goodness for Pinterest!  I probably should have broken this post up into each DIY project that went into making this party, but I didn’t. Scroll down for lots of fun ideas & how-tos!

[bow tie from The Baxter Boy, Monster shirt - DIY below]

First came the invitations. I found THIS on Pinterest and did my best after that.

[our personal info is censored, in case you were wondering what that mess was under the date!!]

Monster Party Invitation how-to:

1. Take a picture of the child with a large blank space in the photo – use a wall or, in my case, a bed sheet!
2. I don’t have a photo editing program, so I used Power Point to make the invitation!
     FONTS – Highland Perk & Ice Age
3. Add some cute monsters all over the invitation. I almost drew my own monsters and scanned them in to use on the invitation, but instead I just searched on google images.
4. Print photos. I used Wal-Mart to print these invitations, cost less than $2 for all of them.

Then came the party stuff.

I made a monster shirt for the birthday boy to wear to his monster party! Again, I love my Silhouette. Super easy to make shirts, especially at the last minute.

 
Note: DO NOT wear white shirts for birthday parties. It is now nicely stained with pizza sauce, frosting, playdough, etc. Oh well!

Monster Shirt how-to:

1. Buy a solid/blank shirt (Wal-Mart & Target usually have good deals for the littler kids, Joanns & Michaels has good deals for the other kids/adults).
2. Find Monster clipart on google or wherever you like to search.
      *import image into Silhouette studio
3. Cut vinyl. I used these colors:
      *Cyan Blue, Yellow, Red & Green.

I converted some party hats & sippy cups into monsters with just some googly eyes & a hot glue gun (inspired by THIS). How-to: add glue, add googly eyes. EASY!

 
[the googly eyes & hot glue can be removed from the sippy cups with a little effort, or you can give them away as party favors!]

After everyone showed up, I gave them a coloring page of a monster without any eyes (find it HERE). First they colored it, then they got a little tub of playdough and had to find the googly eyes hidden in it. They glued them on their monster coloring page and made some really crazy looking monsters!

 

We had a mid-morning party, so I served them lunch. We had monster mini-pizzas and some veggies (sliced carrots & peas). The mini pizzas are just a few simple ingredients & cook in less than 10 minutes. This picture shows the easy steps:

Monster mini-pizza how-to:

1. With a can of Pillsbury biscuits (or store brand!), roll them out flat & spread out on cookie sheet.
2. Add sauce – I use Ragu
3. Add cheese
4. Add Canadian bacon (or pepperoni) & top with an olive slice – to make the eye
5. Cut a sharp teeth mouth from cheese. I thought this would turn out a lot better after it cooked, but it was just a blob of melted cheese, so you could skip this step if you want!
6. Cook according to directions on the biscuit can.

Kids love them (despite the very unenthusiastic face of little G mid-bite)!!

Then came my boys’ favorite part, the monster cupcakes. These were so fun to make. I’ve never been into decorating cakes, but I love watching Cupcake wars & the like. I didn’t make anything from scratch, I’m not that hardcore. But I did make the teeth, tongues, & mouths.

Monster Cupcake how-to:

1. Bake the cupcakes, from a box if you’re like me, and after they’ve cooled top with a thin layer of frosting.
2. Using a Multi-Opening Decorating Tip, Ready-To-Use Icing Tubes (I used blue, green & orange) and a standard coupler, start adding the monster “hair/fur”. I’m definitely not an expert at cake decorating, but I did one outer layer of “hair/fur” and then filled in the very center with it.
3. Stragically place the candy eyeballs.
4. Finish with the mouth & tongue or teeth using Airheads and black candy melts (see below for more details!).

This is how I did the teeth, tongues & mouths, and I recommend making these before you start decorating the cupcakes. I found some little cookie cutters to experiment with, the star & the gingerbread man worked the best. I used a bunch of different colors of Airheads & made teeth with the tip of the star cookie cutter, and tongues with the head of the gingerbread man cookie cutter. A finishing touch with the tongues is a little intend using a toothpick. As for the mouths, I melted some black candy melts and used a sandwich baggie to make a piping bag. On wax paper I drew different kinds of mouths, turned it over (so I didn’t pipe on the marker) and piped out a bunch of mouths. Once they dry, they are ready to use.

Final step for our monster party – Sing ‘Happy Birthday’, blow out the candles & chow down!

 

(I thought about doing more “monster” games and activities, but they are only 2 and mainly wanted to play with our toys.
So I let it be and they had fun anyway. You can find more of my Monster Party ideas on Pinterest.)

[bow tie & suspenders from The Baxter Boy]

 

 

{FEATURED ON}

DIY graphic t-shirts

After I made the boys these ‘hello’ shirts, I decided it was too fun (and easy) so I made some more t-shirts for them. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it, the Silhouette machine is amazing and so worth the money. You can do pretty much anything with it. I definitely used it to make these shirts, here’s how:

First I found some free images off the internet that I liked, saved them to my computer and imported them into the Silhouette Studio.

Then, after the image I wanted to use was saved in the design library, I inserted it on my page and traced it so that the Silhouette could cut the outline of it. To trace, I clicked on the “trace window” icon (top right) and then adjusted the settings until the helicopter was mostly/all yellow then hit “trace outer edge”. (You only really need to make the picture all yellow if you are using the “trace” method. When you are using the “trace outer edge” method, like I did, you only really need the yellow to be seen all the way around the picture so it can trace the outline…if that makes sense). 

Then I adjusted the picture to the size I wanted and then cut. I cut my pictures/icons/words/whatever out of vinyl so I could just stick in on the shirt and not worry about it moving when I painted. I’ve never tried it, but you could cut freezer paper and have the same effect (vinyl is just easier, so I went with that). After I cut them, I peeled away the areas I wanted to be painted on the shirts and stuck them on (using transfer paper of course).

Then I painted. I used fabric paint from Joann. I had to do a couple coats, especially with the helicopter shirt because it isn’t a contrasting or bold color, just a different shade of the shirt color.

And the finished products -

These dudes look great. Little G man’s shirts are still a little big (got them on a good sale that I couldn’t pass up, of course), but he still loves wearing them. And little B man is wearing his nickname shirt that I think is hilarious…inside joke I guess.

**This would be a really great idea for themed birthday parties. Next year, if little G man actually decides on a party theme (he went from fish to trucks to horses to pirates and everything in between for his party this year) I could easily make him and his little friends party favor shirts. Michaels and Joanns usually have their Jerzeys t-shirts on a pretty good sale and in youth sizes. I’m totally going to do it!

Project tools/details:

• Silhouette machine (gotta have a Silhouette!!)
• free clipart graphics (or hand drawn) from the internet
• GreenStar intermediate vinyl from USCutter.com (and transfer tape)
• fabric paint (and brushes) – I used Tulip brand from Joann’s
• blank shirts (go for the clearance shirts!)