This weekend was Oscar's Birthday party. We always do the kids parties at home, as we can't afford to hire some flashy venue and a ready made party - just fork out loads of dosh, and sit back and let somebody else do all the hard work.
Anyway, he wanted to have a Star Wars party, as he is obsessed with it, so I checked out some ideas on the internet, and away we went. The whole thing was done on a minimal budget.
We played Star Wars music through the party, I borrowed a CD from a geeky freind.
Game One - Asteroid Hunt. I have a pack of plastic pirate treasure coins and red paper bags, so I wrapped the gold coins in tin foil and pretended they were asteroids, hid them around the house and then they had to hunt for them.
Game Two - Lightsabre Skills. I collected kitchen roll tubes for weeks before hand which I then painted some red and some green, attached rolled up black card at one end for the handle and decorated with circles of shiny paper for the buttons. Blew up some balloons and they had to keep the ballons in the air as long as they could.
Game Three - Harness the power of the Galaxy. Collected jam jars and cleaned them out, removing the labels. The children put sequin confetti stars in the jam jars and then put in different shades of glitter. I then filled the jam jar to the top with water and hey presto! An instant galaxy snow storm!
Game Four - Jedi Training (obstacle course) I don't know how many of you are avid star wars watchers, but in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke goes to vist Yoda on Degoba to start his jedi training, part of this consisted of running around a swampy jungle with yoda strapped to his back and hurled insults in his ear. So we recreated this scene, just without the swamp and the insults. I very quickly made a soft toy Yoda from felt and gave him a little jedi jacket (see above) and in the game, the kids took it in turn wearing a little backpack with Yoda stuffed in the front pocket, and then they took turns doing an obstacle time trial. Originally it was supposed to be outside, but as it rained that day, we quickly changed it to indoors involving chairs and stairs!
Game Five - Pass the Thermal Detonator. Just like Pass the Parcel, but a bit more exciting at the end. I made a Thermal detonator shape using a balloon blown up just a little and papier mache'd over it with newspaper and wallpaper paste (approx 50p from Focus). When it dried I decorated it to look like a thermal detonator and put a R2-D2 key ring (approx £2.50 from Legoland) inside it with loads of shredded tissue paper. Then I sealed it up and wrapped it up like a normal pass the parcel would be, with the corresponding number of layers to children ratio, with a sweet in each layer(this is vitally important). So as you play and everyone has had a go and removed one layer and had a sweetie we are then left with the thermal detonator. The kids then had to pass it around really quickly incase the bomb exploded, and then when the music stopped, whoever had the bomb had to quickly rip it open before the bomb went off!
Food - For their tea I made the kids Chicken Nuggets and chips. This is my staple party fare. I don't know many kids that don't eat either chicken nuggets or chips. It's easy to do, you just chuck it in the oven. There is no hours of preparing sandwiches before hand (which they never eat) and wasting money on loads of sickly part food only to have loads left over because you over estimated and had too much left. Afterwards we had jelly and icecream, with as many different sprinkles and toppings as they like, again, not much waste. Spare icecream goes back in the freezer. 3 pints of jelly all got eaten, and only cost a couple of pounds. Drinks where lemonade with a touch of green food colouring (yoda soda) and blackcurrant/orange juice (jedi juice).
After tea, to work of some of that sugar we had -
Destroy the Death Star - I made a huge pinata using a large punch balloon as a paper mache mould. It took about three days to dry out completely. I then filled it with loads of sweets I bought (massive tub from Costco - £3) and more shredded tissue paper etc. Then sealed it up and decorated it loosely to look like the Death Star. During the party, it was hung menacingly above their heads, but at pinata time it was lowered and then they took it in turns to beat it with a plastic lightsabre! I must say, as my first ever pinata making, it was quite a bit sturdier than was neccesary. Alex had to help them out a bit with a Stanley knife, or they might still be at it now. When the pinata came apart all the kids dove on top of all the sweets like a pack of hyenas.
Party Bags - these consisted of the following
Star Wars Colouring Sheets downloaded from the internet.
Lego Star Wars Stickers downloaded from the internet, cut out and fed through Willow's sticker making machine.
Their Galaxy Snow Storm
The Light sabre they used in the game,
Some balloons left over from lightsabre skills game,
The sweets from the pinata.
Slice of Darth Vader Cake.
The cake I made using the tin I hired from the cake shop at the top of my road. I had loads of icing left over from making Willow's birthday cake so I just used that. Unfortunately, this was turquoise as she had a dolphin cake, but luckily I had some black food colouring so I painted that over the top.
Altogether I paid out the following
Balloons £1
Key Ring £2.50
Wall Paper Paste 50p
2 bags of Chips £2
2 tubs of ice cream £1.40
jelly 70p
juice £2
lemonade 60p
Sweets £3
cake tin hire £3
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