Mickey Mouse Pirate Party

Mickey Mouse Pirate was my son's choice of theme for his 4th birthday party.  Since his baby brother was expected to arrive three weeks before his birthday, we decided to have his party hosted at Pump It Up so that the organizing, setting up, cleaning up, catering and entertaining the kids would all be taken care of.  All that was left for me to do was somehow tie in the theme.

So here are what I made:

Invitations (sort of) - to hand out to the kids to establish the theme.

I love to use Trader Joe's brown paper bags in ANY way I can!

I copied the idea from : http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/60/d6/96/60d69669c1b3ebed7befd682c28d93a1.jpg. I am unable to find the original post, only the link to the image from http://www.pinterest.com/explore/bag-lunches/.

The words on it were made up with help from my brother and my husband.

Pirate Hats and Eye Patches - for the kids to get in character.

For the hat, I used freehand drawing and made a template out of A4 paper.  I sealed the sides and the top and found that it did not fit my son's head.  I was wondering what size the paper should be for the hat to fit.  I made another trial one with 9x12 inch card stock, stapled the sides and left the top open - this made the hat one-size-fit-all for adults and kids alike.

Here is how I constructed it.  I took 9x12 inch card stock and folded 1 inch along the length.

I took 2 such sheets with folded edges facing outside and folded them in half lengthwise.

I placed the template on top for reference and cut out the curved shape.

I opened it up, stapled the sides at the bottom and left the rest open.

I cut out circles and glued them to the front of the hat to give it a Mickey Mouse touch.

And that's all there is to it!  I realized you could make hats like this for any theme with just a little imagination.

For the eye patch, again I used freehand drawing to create a template and cut out the shape from a foam sheet.  I made holes on the sides and threaded a 1 mm elastic chord through them and secured it with knots.

Here is how it looks!

Treasure Chests - for party favors.

Here is a find that I treasure:

http://www.hgtv.com/video/paper-treasure-box-video/index.html

I made treasure chests of smaller dimension and used rubber bands to keep the lids closed.

My son also wanted pirate ships, so I made Origami boats to serve as thank you notes.

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-boat.html

 The Party Room

I got balloons and serve ware in black, red with/without white polka dots to represent the theme.

Popsicle Easel And Origami Box

This has been due for over a year now.  There are two things I wanted to share from the last birthday party of my son's.

The theme of that party was Arts and Crafts, so when I was looking for ideas for DIY projects and came across easels made of popsicle sticks I got very excited.  I intended to make those to use as place card holders for the food items.  If you look it up, you will find many many links on how to make it.  It is pretty simple.  But what I had a problem with was gluing the stick that goes in the back to hold up the easel.  I was not enthusiastic about not being able to collapse the easel once it is built as it would be space consuming to store and also I feared it might get undone or break off of the front.

Thankfully, I found a video that gave a simple alternative that met my needs.  Unfortunately, I forgot to save the link to that video and I am unable to find it now though I have searched for it far and wide.  That is why I am hesitant to share a link to any other video as the credit must really belong to the actual video that I got this idea from.

But the pictures below should give you an idea how to do it:

The other link I wanted to share is this:

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-box.html

I made origami boxes to pack M&M as party favors for the kids.  I made the same to use as lids for the boxes and since I used paper to make them I was able to squeeze the box enough to get the lid on it.  But if you were to use stiffer material you might have to use squares a tad size bigger to make the lids for a better fit.