Stop yer pillaging

Birthday party theme: Pirates (6th birthday, 2007) The most fun to do so far!










Invitations/favor: Invitations were delivered by corked plastic bottle (OTC). They had the message, sand, tattoo, and a cute not scary skull ring. The favor consisted of treasure boxes full of gold coins and peanut m&m's (gold pkg), tattoos, pirate pencils, notepads, stickers, pirate finger puppets, pirate beads for the girls, and of course candy.

Decorations: We had this in the evening, so by the end it was dark which added to the pirate ambiance. The kids also thought it was very cool to be able to play outside while it was dark. I made an authentic sized jolly roger flag for the front of our house (again cute, not scary). The backyard was perfect being on the lake and all, we just put up a few tiki torches. We also built a pirate ship for a game. Yeah, yeah, crazy huh? It was just going to be a piece of propped up plywood painted like one, but I couldn't stop there. So we built one durable enough to climb on with a hoistable jolly roger flag. The food/craft portion was held in the screened-in porch so it was decorated with red and black balloons and streamers. The food table and kids picnic tables had black table cloths with red felt table runners and gold coins strewn about. Of course the cake also worked as decoration.

Cake and menu: pirate ship cake, pirate ship hot dogs, fresh fruit tray (to prevent scurvy), buried treasure pretzels (there were m&m's at the bottom of the bowl), cheese and crackers (I guess to finish off the food pyramid), and of course root beer.

Craft/games: As the kids arrived we put on tattoos, pirate bandanas, and they each made an eye patch. I had pre-cut the patches, they glued on glitter, sequins and gold ric rac. We had 3 games:
1. "Who sunk my pirate ship?" -This is where the pirate ship came in. Each team had a different color of cannon balls (ball pit balls spray painted) to throw through in the port holes of the ship. The team with the most cannon balls inside when time is up, wins!
2. "Plunder and Pilage" -This game was a version of freeze tag, stealing bandanas and using gold coins to be unfrozen.
3. "Treasure Hunt" - They followed rhyming clues around ours and a neighbors yard to find the treasure chest. Inside were all the goodie bags for each of them. Some of the clues had riddles on them and because some kids couldn't read yet, other clues were pictures. The pictures were zoomed in very close so you couldn't see what the object was, just a small part of it.

This party was so much fun for the boys and the girls too, and I had so much fun preparing for it.