Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Birthday Party

My baby is getting ready to turn 5 in a few weeks.  I literally can not wrap my head around FIVE.  I just keep turning it over and over in my head wondering how it has went so fast.  (And then I read this by Katie and this by The Nester and I basically just sob because it never stops.  Parenting is so lovely and strangely hard. #bittersweet)  Anyways, back to the point at hand - Ninja Turtles!  When my nearly-5 baby was nearly-4 he desperately wanted a TMNT birthday party.   Because I take a long time to process my thoughts and am a terrible blogger who doesn't post things anywhere online in a timely fashion this post is a year late.  But somehow it feels ok to share this party in honor of his upcoming birthday, which I know makes no sense to anyone but me.  #thatsok

I love, love, love being a boy mama.  I love the loud, dirty, wrestling around, skinned knees-ness of boys.  But one of the things I struggle with HARD are characters.  Oy, the characters.  And boy characters pretty much all follow the same themes - they fight, they defeat bad guys, they have super powers &/or are weird.  So when TMNT came up I fought it.  I am fighting the good fight for all of us character-disliking mamas out there - and I am epically losing.  Bleh.  So when this came around as the toy/character of choice I decided that I would be ok with the fun-happy-silly turtles of the 80's, not the mean, aggressive, grunting TMNT of 2014.  (I'm hoping that I'm not the only mother out there who has grossly over thought this.)

But I digress.  So, how about if I actually talk about the party?  After over-analyzing if we should do this theme or something else I knew that our kiddo would love it the most and we went for it.  Honestly I had no idea how to make it fun.  I wanted it to be interactive and not just a lot of cutesy decorations. I decided pretty early on that I needed a few basics to do this party.

Pretty simple, right?  This party was very easy to set up.  We created a maze that had Turtle silhouettes on foam core at the entrances.  The maze was made of plastic electrical conduit that was cut in thirds, Dollar Tree pool noodles, and crepe paper streamers.  The whole maze cost around $20.  We had clothes line poles at our last house and we hung balloons at varying heights from the clothes lines.  That was the biggest hit of the whole party with the kids!  At the entrance of the maze we set up a tub with foam swords (also from the Dollar Tree) and DIY TMNT masks.  We didn't have many girls at the party but I can attest that the boys LOVED the swords and fighting the balloons.  Those things didn't stand a chance!  If you are throwing your own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle themed party this is the one thing that you have to do!

I wish that the pictures of the yard weren't so blown out.  But that's what happens when you have to shoot in full sun, you get the harsh sun/shade shadow.  To do the maze take your 10 foot electrical conduit and cut it into 3 pieces with a saw.  Then take a rubber mallet and tap them into the ground.  Slide your pool noodle over the tubing and then wrap the paper around streamers around different sections of the noodles making 'walls'.  Seriously, the possibilities are endless with this idea.  For the turtle silhouettes I picked up the black foam core from the Dollar Tree (#unofficialsponsor) and had my friend from Sprinkle The Kindness make me the turtle silhouettes.  She also cut the letters for the Happy Birthday sign behind the cupcake/gift table.

The rest of the party was just as simple.  I did paint the TMNT peg dolls for the cupcakes, but those were mostly for me because I thought it would be cute (my son declares that he 'hates peg dolls') and I wanted to do them.  For something similar you could look for something on Etsy or just use smaller figurines.  I had grabbed the green 'Pizza' banner after Christmas because I had a sneaking suspicion I would end up doing a turtle party.  I used some striped washi tape to spell 'Pizza'.  I used a scrap piece of wood to make a 'Mutagen' sign for a batch of green punch.  

And that's that!  If you are planning a TMNT themed party what are your plans for the day?  

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Looking for more birthday party inspiration?  You might enjoy these too:

Reading Themed Birthday Party

Little Mister Birthday Party

TMNT Pinterest Inspiration Board

Valentines Day Family Party (2014)

Well I couldn't help but start this blog post with that picture because seriously, those faces.  See these little baby munchkins?  These are the kind of pictures that grab at a mama's heart and never let go.  This was our Valentine 2 years ago (yep, I'm that kind of blogger - late!) when H was just a few months old and our Davis was 2.  BABES.  Chris and I got this picture and knew we'd better stop while we were ahead because this was just too perfect.  I found this free 'LOVE' PSD overlay on Pinterest and the simplicity of it was too much to resist.  

The same year as we did this picture, Davis hosted a Valentines party.  He was just old enough to kind of grasp the idea and he was ALL IN.  At the last minute he even put on a sport jacket on his own free will.  I can't make this stuff up people.  This kid was born with the hospitality gene because he loves to have people and arrange parties and stuff.  It's adorable and hilarious. 

We basically decided about a week before Valentines day to host this party so we didn't do invites and it was all pretty basic.  Which is just about all you need for a little family stuff Valentines party.  We cut up some paper hearts and I think we made a simple banner.  We decided on some minute-to-win-it games that were really fun (men get into competition no matter what the game).  

These pics are pretty rough - I will never paint a room yellow again.  This was the first room Chris and I ever decorated and we chose the paint at the store (mistake).  I don't think it read bad in person but it did make the room a lot harder to photograph.  Of course not using some sort of external light while photographing at night in a yellow room *probably* isn't a recipe for success anyways, today I'm going to blame the yellow paint.  ;)

Pretty basic set up - a light dessert bar with a chocolate fountain.  The dining table was set for games.  We did a few games with conversation hearts, including one that seemed to be a hit where you were paired together and had a minute to stack as many hearts together as you could.  The other fan favorite was trying to fly an airplane into the heart 'target'.  Sarah got a pretty great action shot of that one below from her phone.  I love how serious all of the men are!

I kind of remember thinking right before people walked in the room that I should take a few pictures of the set up.  Oops.  So this is what I have to show for my efforts.  (Yes I know I photograph details for a living.  You can totally tell in these pictures can't you?!)

That's my main mister there in the middle.  Love that guy.

My little mister was such a great little host that night!  After the party his dad made sure to take some pictures of the two of us (Happy Valentines to me!).  I adore these, he looks so proud!

What are your Valentine plans?  Do you ever do silly things like this with your family?

Reading Themed 2nd Birthday Party

Davis LOVES books.  He had a favorite book at 6 months old.  So when we started thinking about his 2nd birthday party we decided to base it on his favorite thing - books.  Our alma mater, William Jewell College, has an adorable little schoolhouse on it's campus (the Dale Patton Schoolhouse) that is available for rent.  It was the ideal setting for the birthday party.  It's also when we discovered how great it is to host events not at your house!  

I decided on a red, white and blue color scheme.  I was thinking primary colors would work well - unfortunately Davis's birthday is a few days before July 4th so as I was buying all the things I was really afraid it was going to look like a big USA bash.  It turned out ok but it definitely makes me think twice about what colors I use for his birthday from now on.

We read two books during the party.  One was 'Little Blue Truck', which Davis was really liking at the time, and the other was an older book called 'The Traveling Coat'.  We made a book report for 'The Traveling Coat', but inadvertently made it WAY to hard!  I'm pretty sure that most of the guests gave up by the second question!  (Also washi tape makes everything more fun.)

I pulled together 2 banners for this party.  The one above is the easiest thing EVER.  We strung a piece of jute twine across the room and then used clothes pins to pin open vintage Golden Books.  Easy and adorable, just what I like :)  The other banner was a pennant that I quickly sewed together.  When I make pennant banners I use premade bias tape from the sewing department and stick the pennants between the fold as I'm sewing, no pins required.  The banner across the chalkboard was made with navy bias tape and vintage book pages from a book I found at the thrift store.

The party was at 2 in the afternoon so we served a handful of snacks.  I was very worried that we wouldn't have enough food but it ended up being the perfect amount.

My main mister and I waiting for our birthday boy to arrive.  I was about 5 months pregnant in this picture and look how tired I look!  Even though I look a little rough and we're dressed like an ad for USA it was a wonderful day spent with our family and friends celebrating our oldest little mister.