As promised (yes, I know it was about a year ago) here are some details and pictures from the Superhero birthday party we had for our 4 year old last August.
Our son only made two requests for his birthday party: 1. "I want a superhero birthday party." and 2. "I want a bouncy!" Superheroes are HUGE in our house so it was a very easy decision to throw him a superhero party and a very easy theme to put together since he knows and likes just about every single superhero. I mean seriously, my four year old can name every superhero, tell you their real name (Batman = Bruce Wayne), tell you if he wears a cape or not, etc. etc. etc. And by the way, this has not changed as he is quickly approaching 5 years old.
The Invitation
The invitation is important to me. I don't do an evite; I much prefer an actual physical invitation mailed or handed out. It sets the tone for the whole party. I searched Pinterest, Etsy, Ebay and several invitation websites before deciding on
this awesome invitation from The Patty Cake Press. I wrestled at first with the fact that this invitation only had Batman on it but since Batman is my son's favorite superhero, we decided this was the best one. (And let me just say that I loved working with The Patty Cake Press and recommend them!)
The Decorations
We have his party every year at one of the local parks. This year we opted for the air conditioned room at the park which means a large room with tables that need centerpieces. I printed out comic book covers on cardstock and glued them to bright colored gift bags filled with bright colored tissue paper. And I hit the jackpot when I found at Michael's an entire selection of superhero coasters made of chipboard. It was easy to stick a wood skewer into the center of the coaster and stick them coming out of the bags.
The Food
I am particularly proud of the snacks at the party, all of which were superhero themed.
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| The whole food table with city background |
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| Batman's Batarangs - my grandmother baked bat shaped sugar cookies that were DELICIOUS! |
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| Captain America's Shields: Special Edition Oreo cookies with red and blue frosting |
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| Penguin's Minions: gummy penguins |
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| Wonder Woman's Lassos: licorice strings |
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| Green Lantern Rings: green light up ring pops (I had everyone I know searching every store for these. My grandma and Aunt saved the day when they found a jackpot of them at one store!) |
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| Kryptonite: rock candy sticks (I had some white rock candy sticks already so I used green food coloring to "paint" them green. Worked like a charm!) |
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| Radioactive Spiders: gummy spiders that Mom found in Spiderman's colors - Awesome find!! |
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| Green Goblin's Pumpkins: pumpkin shaped lollipops that had a green light-up stick. |
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| Super Fruit Fuel: an awesome fruit bar - my grandma knocked it out of the park when she offered to bring "some fruit" for the party. |
We also had Lays, Doritos and Sun Chips in coordinating bins with Superhero pictures glued on.
The Activities
As the kids arrived, we gave each one of them a superhero cape and mask to wear. Each kid could spend the whole party dressed as a superhero. I made the capes myself out of t-shirts and bought foam masks on Ebay. I spent every lunch break for about 2 weeks prior to the party ironing the hems and felt stars on the handmade capes. (Supermom??)
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| Boy capes - black with a blue star |
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| Girl capes - light pink with hot pink star |
For weeks I spent every evening freezing my son's small superheroes and villains into blocks of ice. We hid the blocks of ice all over the grassy hill outside the party room. Then we gathered all the kids and told them that Mr. Freeze had frozen all the superheroes and villains. It is their job to go find them to rescue them from the ice. What fun!! (Suggestion: if you plan to do this activity, I recommend that you ask each kid to find and bring back one block of ice and then you give them a small prize or their party favor. This is a way to track that each kid was able to find one block of ice. We failed at this so some kids ran out and found multiple ice blocks, leaving some kids without. So, we had to quickly take some of the ice back out to the hill for kids to find again.)
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| Mr. Freeze has frozen everyone in ice. You need to go rescue them! |
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| And off they go! |
My mom found an awesome stand-up of a superhero lifting a car for the kids to use for a photo op. Each kid took their turn poking their head through while we (and their parents) took pictures of them.
We also had temporary tattoos of Superheroes for the kids. My wonderful sister-in-law (who was very pregnant at the party!) sat and helped any of the kids who wanted to get a temporary tattoo.
And of course there was the Superhero bouncy as requested!
The Cake
As you will see in an upcoming blog post, each year I work very hard on H's birthday cake. It is a labor of love for sure! This year I made the mistake of showing H some superhero cakes on Pinterest. He immediately decided on a four tiered cake (YES - you read that right - 4 TIERS!) but quickly told me he didn't like the Spiderman tier. He didn't want the Spiderman logo but instead wanted Spiderman's eyes. It was my brilliant (note the sarcasm - not brilliant at all because it meant A LOT of extra work!) idea to make the layers of cake of each tier color coordinated to the superhero. OY VEY!
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| This cake was EPIC! And by far my biggest cake accomplishment yet! (And for those of you superhero nerds, I didn't realize until after the party that I was missing a blue ring on Capt. America's shield. Luckily my son didn't notice!) |
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| This is a terrible picture and doesn't even show the top tier of Batman which was yellow and black but it is the only picture that shows the colors of the cake inside. (Bottom tier: Capt. America - red and blue, 2nd tier: Spiderman - red and black, 3rd tier: Superman - red and yellow, top tier (not shown): Batman - black and yellow.) |
My son, husband and I all wore Batman shirts. And can I say that my family rocks - my parents wore Spiderman shirts and my brother and sister-in-law wore Superman shirts. It was not planned for each group to wear a different superhero shirt. We are just that awesome that it didn't have to be planned!! I love them!!
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| Me and my awesome hubby! |
What a successful party!! The kids all had a blast! But more importantly, our son had a blast!! And he even got a Batmobile as a present from my parents.
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| A "real" Batmobile - huge hit with the 4 year old for sure!! |
When I asked our son last week what kind of party he wanted this year for his 5th birthday, he quickly answered "Superhero." (He hasn't quite learned yet that his Mommy is crazy and crafty and desperately needs a new birthday party theme each year.)
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