Monday, December 31, 2012

Apps Birthday Party

Ok, so this year's birthday party's theme was a little.....shall I say....CRAZY? It all started last year when I found some Angry Birds card games and plush zipper pulls on clerance at our local Kroger. They were something like 75-90% off. I cleared them out. I thought Angry Birds would be a great birthday party theme for a 10 year old boy.

As the month drew near, Sky Guy found a new game that he got obsessed with, MINECRAFT. He was so enthralled with that game, I wanted to include it in his birthday party theme. So Angry Birds and Minecraft.....how do we tie it all together? Ok, I got it....Smart Phone Apps! Then I decided, I might as well add another of his favorites to the theme, Fruit Ninja!

So Angry Birds, Minecraft, and Fruit Ninja it is! I found plently of party ideas online for Angry Birds and Minecraft, but a big goose egg, 0, for Fruit Ninja. So if you are searching for party ideas for Fruit Ninja, Minecraft, or Angry Birds, I hope this will help make it easier on you! Here is what I came up with:

Gift Bags:

Fruit Ninja:

1.) Print out a picture of the Fruit Ninja Sensei, cut & tape or glue it to a paper goodie bag (I used colored paper goodie bags, you can use plain paper lunch bags if you want).

2.) Apple Sauce "On the Go"
3.) Plastic Fruit filled with powdered candy (found at Party City)
4.) Ninja Headband (made easily out of scrap felt my mom had, just cut a long strip, that's it. The boys loved them!)

Angry Birds:

1.) Free printable Angry Birds Faces, print & cut & tape or glue on to paper bags.


2.) Angry Birds Card Game or


3.) Angry Birds Plush Zipper Pull


4.) "Wood Planks" aka Caramel Candies

Minecraft:

1.) Cut out squares out of black construction paper, glue or tape onto green bags to make "Creeper" Goodie Bags.


2.) Printed out a screen shot off of Minecraft for the "Inventory" sheet. Added the words to explain what is included in the bag.
3.) "Wood Blocks" - Caramel Candies (later told that it should say "planks" instead but too late for that)
4.) "Spawn Egg" - Playdoh Egg left over from Easter (you can pick these up cheap after Easter).
5.) "Coal" - Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies
6.) "Slime" - Lime Jello

As for decorations, here is what I did:


1.) Fruit Ninja Garland - Printed out the same picture (x2) of the Fruit Ninja Sensei and cut out and glued onto paper to make double sided and stapled it up onto the middle of the string and strung on the Fruit Balloons - different sizes and shapes of balloons (pack of normal party balloons and a pack of long balloons you can twist into animal shapes).
(1) Pineapple - yellow party balloon inflated and cut out leaves from green construction paper, tape on to balloon (2) Pear or green apple - green party balloon inflated to a small size with construction paper leaves taped on (3) Strawberry - red party balloon inflated to a very small size with green construction paper leaves and a green chenille stem / pipe cleaner to make the stem (4) Grapes - I used purple, you can also use green party balloons inflated to a very small size, several of these to make a bunch of grapes (I tried to make them from a long balloon twisted into "bubbles" but just couldn't get it right, but I've seen it done online and it's cute and the grapes as smaller) - green chenille stems twisted into a spiral to make it look like vines (5) Bananas were the long balloons, inflated w/ hand pump and twisted to look like a bunch of bananas (6) Orange - orange balloon inflated to a small size with green construction paper leaf (7) Apple - red (can use green) balloon inflated to a small size with green construction paper leaf (8) Watermelon - green party balloon inflated to a very large size with green construction paper leaves and green chenille stem twisted to look like a vine.


2.) Angry Birds Plush Toys - set out Angry Birds Plush Toys that you already own, makes a cute decoration


3.) Angry Birds Plates - print out free printables Angry Birds Faces, cut out & glue or tape on to colored plates. We used these to decorate a wall.


4.) Minecraft Garland - Construction Paper Minecraft Characters: Minecraft is all about square and rectangle pixels, so making these is easy! We made ours double sided and just rested it on the string for display. (1) Lamb - white construction paper, smaller tan or off white rectangle or square for the face, black eyes, pink nose, darker shade of pink mouth. (2) Creeper - Green construction paper, black eyes, nose, & mouth. (3) MINECRAFT sign (for those who didn't know what these characters were from we printed out the logo for Minecraft and glued it on a piece of construction paper). (4) Chicken - White construction paper, black eyes, yellow beak, red thing under the beak. (5) Steve - brown construction paper, black hair, white eye balls w/ blue eyes, darker shade of brown for nose, black mouth. (6) Pig - pink construction paper, white & black eyes, lighter shade of pink for nose w/ black nostrils.


5.) Giant Creeper - This was Sky Guy's idea and his project. He used sheets of green construction paper, taped them up on the fridge/freezer, and cut out black eyes, nose, and mouth for the face. I think it turned out great!

SNACKS:


1.) Fruit Ninja - Bowls of fruit (pineapple chunks, grapes, apple slices *soaked in pineapple juice to keep from browning*, and strawberries) and a small bowl of tiny "ninja" swords to use as toothpicks to pick up the fruit with. (found the sword toothpicks at Walmart, they are really more like pirate swords but they did the job and were cute)
2.) Angry Birds - Angry Birds Cheese It's Crackers
3.) Minecraft - Minecraft "world" made of squares & rectangles of "water" (blue jello jigglers), "sand / beach" (rice cripy treat squares), "Rocky Land" (Little Debbie Brownies w/ chocolate chips), and Grassy Mountain (Little Debbie Brownies with shredded & dyed green Sweetened Coconut).

Now that's all the pictures I have to share of the party. However, we did have games planned. We used big moving boxes (and some smaller boxes) to create an Angry Birds scene out in the backyard. We had a red playground ball we planned on taping an Angry Bird Face onto for the kids to throw at the boxes and knock them down. We ran out of time and didn't get the face on the ball. We were also going to put Sky Guy's plush piggies out in between and on the boxes, but didn't get to it.

We also planned a "Fruit Ninja" Game on the trampoline. I had Hubs blow up as many big party balloons as he could before passing out from lack of oxygen. He took them out and put them all on the trampoline. The plan was to have one kid at a time get on the trampoline (it has a safety net around it so we thought it would keep the balloons in) and the kid would then try to sit on and pop as many balloons as they could in 30 seconds or a minute. We were going to play it by ear to see how it went. If they did, they would become an honorary "Fruit Ninja". If they didn't pop any, they could take one off the trampoline and use a "Ninja Sword" aka sword toothpick, to pop the fruit and become a Fruit Ninja that way. Didn't want the little ones crying or feeling left out b/c they couldn't pop the balloon. BUT before the guests arrived, almost all of the balloons popped or blew away. So we didn't get to do that game either.

That was okay though b/c the main event was a Scavenger Hunt. We broke off into 3 teams and took the kids around the neighborhood. I didn't want them bothering the neighbors so we did a picture scavenger hunt, where they had to take a picture of the things on the list instead of knock on doors and ask for things. This was really fun and the kids and adults seemed to really enjoy it. The weather was PERFECT so it was really nice to walk around for 45 minutes in that weather.

After that we came home and had cake (ice cream cake) and opened presents. Then each kid picked out what theme they wanted for a goodie bag and went home happy. It was a fun birthday party.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

New Blog

I decided to start a new blog. I switched my old adoption blog over to a new one a couple years ago I guess it was. When I decided I wasn't just blogging about adoption stuff. Then I went private with my blog recently and stopped blogging months ago for personal reasons. Now I decided I wanted to start blogging again, but still have the same reasons for keeping the other blog private. So, I am not blogging on my private blog, and I will be blogging on this new one. I couldn't come up with a good blog name that someone else didn't already have. So, I named it "some people think I'm crazy". I thought it was a silly title and true enough, I am "some people" sometimes, and perhaps you agree with me. But anyways, welcome to my new blog! I will be sharing things on here about my life, my children (though not their names or faces), homeschooling, deaf school, adoption issues, fun times, good memories, bad times, and everything in between. Oh yeah, and we like our dogs a lot, so there will probably be pics of our dogs. Like these: