Cars

Our son wanted a cars theme party for his 8th birthday. We bought some of the decorations from a party store and made others. I used a black plastic table cloth on the table and white duct tape to make a road. We used checkered flags and orange cones down the center to add to the theme.

We stacked chocolate donuts to look like piles of Luigi's tires.

The main cakes were actually cupcakes decorated to look like Mater from the movie Cars. I made the cakes in regular muffin tins and also in mini muffin tins. Frost one regular size cup cake with chocolate frosting to be the main body. Frost one mini cup cake to be the bed of the truck and one mini cupcake turned upside down on top of the regular cupcake to be the top of the truck. We used m&ms for the lights and eyes and white gum squares for the teeth. The tires on the truck were Junior Mints. We tried various different chocolate cookies and candies to find the ones that looked like the best size for our cupcakes. We frosted the windshield with white frosting and added eyes. It was hard to get the frosting smooth but the boys loved the shape and eating them.

We used car theme stickers for an activity inside before going outside for the race activity.

We set up a race track outside and each child had a cardboard box that we spray painted to look like a car. We put black paper plates on the sides for tires and printed out faces for the front. We had a few races and prizes for the winners and then the boys just played with the cars and had a lot of fun just running around with them.

The party was a lot of fun and our son loved it.

Dragon Party

My son just turned 6 and he wanted a Dragon Party. Not a Dinosaur party, Not a How to Train Your Dragons Party, Just a Dragon Party. We found a lot of ideas with the other two parties mentioned and incorporated them into our focused on dragons party.

I bought a cardboard castle for the kids to color and play in for the party. If I do this again I will have them color before the party so it is ready during the party but they had fun just the same coloring and playing.

I also bought cardboard dragons that could be colored and put together to play with. 

I made little dragon wings for each person out of felt. This was fairly easy as well. I just cut felt in graduating strips and sewed it together. There are ties for the wrists and you could make ties for the neck as well or maybe velcro for safety but I just pinned the middle part to their shirts.

I bought dinosaur mask from Oriental Trading and we used the ones that looked dragon like and went with the wings.

We bought a dragon pinata from a party supply store and filled it with candy and toy dragons.

 The Cake was the highlight of the party. It was so easy and turned out great.  It was designed to be a volcano and had dragons around it. The kids loved it. The best part was that it actually erupted.

I bought two premade angel food cakes and stacked them together and then cut them to look like a volcano shape. I frosted them with chocolate frosting and then drizzled yellow and red frosting around the top edge to look like lava. I put a small jar inside the tube cake and added some baking soda to the jar before the party. Before serving I poured vinegar colored with red food coloring in the jar and the reaction with the baking soda cause the volcano to erupt. The kids loved it. I was concerned that the baking soda and vinegar would make the cake taste bad so I made cupcakes as well. However the cake did taste fine and the kids werent turned off by the lava at all.

For the cupcakes, I baked red and yellow cake pops and added one to each cupcake cup before poured the chocolate cake batter on top of them. I baked them as usual and frosted them with chocolate frost and then drizzled the red and yellow frosting lava on each one as well. When the kids bit into the cupcakes they had a surprise of either red or yellow "lava" inside.

The party was great fun and my son was happy that it was all about dragons. The activities were coloring the castle and dragons, playing with the castle and dragons, the pinata and being a dragon with the wings and masks.

It was very easy to do everything and I will do the cake again. Could be used for a dinosaur party, science experiment party or many other things. I hope you enjoy our ideas and feel free pin them or share them with others, linking back to our blog of course.

Duck Dynasty Party

My son wanted a Duck Dynasty Party for his 13th birthday. My first action was to look online for ideas that others have done. I found NOTHING! I was shocked! How could there be no Duck Dynasty party ideas? So We had to make them up ourselves. We asked around to other family members that also love the show and we came up with more ideas than we could use. I am going to post the ones we did use with pictures but also list the others we thought of so if the other ideas fit your family better you could switch them out.

First, Decorations: That was fairly easy although not readily available. We wanted hunting camouflage, not military but mostly what we could find was military. We made it work for the plates and napkins.

We ordered a Duckaholics sign from Duck Commander and also a beard for our son.

We found pet toys in the form of ducks, beavers and skunks to decorate around with and bought camouflage netting to turn our play structure into a duck blind.

Of course everyone had camo clothes and fake beards. That was fun for everyone. The little beards were bought from Party City.

Activities: This is where it really got fun! Once we started thinking of the shows and the different things that are done on the show, the ideas just kept coming. I am just going to list the ones we thought of and then talk about a few of them.

Donut Eating Contest

Beaver Hunt (scavenger hunt style)

Frog Hunt (egghunt style)

Beehive Pinata

Redneck Water Park

Making Duck Calls

Lawn Mower Race

Trust Fall

Shooting Games

We did the Beehive Pinata. I simply blew up a large balloon and covered in with paper mache and then with streamers and fulled it with candy. Very easy and great fun for all.

Frog Hunt: We bought light up frogs and hid them around. Since we were pretending to eat frog legs for dinner they had to catch the frogs first.

Make Duck Calls: This was very easy and the kids loved it. You take a drinking straw and flatten one end of it. then you cut that end into a point. place the pointed end in your mouth and blow. It makes a sound similar to a duck call and the kids love making noise. You can experiment with different angles and lengths of straw to make different sounds.

Donut Eating Contest: Lots of fun and these kids ate way more I thought they would. The littlest ones at 7 donuts and would have eaten more. 

Now for the FOOD:

I made camouflage cupcakes for the cake. I made one chocolate cake and one vanilla cake. I added food coloring to give me two shades of green and two shades of brown. then I layered the batters in the cups and baked them. very easy and they turned out camouflaged. 

I frosted them with green frosting and topped them with camouflaged ducks we ordered from Oriental Trading.

For the birthday song We changed it up a bit and sang "Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday to you...."

Of course, We had Sweet tea in a cup like Uncle Si.  And below that is our menu for the evening.

We didnt really have duck so we cooked chicken instead and made chickens wings to be our frog legs.

And of course we ended the day with a family dinner because it wouldnt be Duck Dynasty with out that.

I hope this gives you some ideas and you have a great Duck Dynasty party as well.