We Partied Hard!

This weekend we went all out for our pajama wearing, Star Wars loving little man...

We didn't decide on the "theme" for this party until I was designing the invitations. That's kind of how things work in my head [and how things roll at our house!]-- get started on something and see where it goes. The picture for the invitations was from Halloween, and then I did a little googling to find out Star Wars lore [I grew up in a house with all girls, and I still haven't seen a Star Wars movie in its entirety].

Once the invitations were sent, I had to come up with something to do at the party! Thankfully, there are tons of great ideas out there for Star Wars themed parties. Plus, we are dealing with 4-yr-olds, who mercifully aren't that picky as long as you provide something fun. I've learned from past parties that it's good to have a little activity for when the kids trickle in -- otherwise they get restless and "things" start happening. We filled our kiddie pool with sand and hid marbles in it [sidenote: it's kind of hard to find marbles! whoda thought? I bought the last packs from Toys "r" Us]. The kids loved this activity. It's got all the right themes going for it: digging in the sand, discovering bright and shiny little treasures. I highly recommend it -- they did this for a good 20 minutes at the beginning and then we rehid the marbles later on.

Then we had a light saber hunt...

They found them and started beating each other with them...which is why we went with FOAM sabers! They are actually pool noddles cut in half. They loved these too.

We turned on the bubble machine and they whacked bubbles [how cute is princess Leia?!]...

Next up -- cupcakes topped with light sabers [pretzel sticks dipped in melted white chocolate and rolled in red sprinkles -- mmmmm!]

And Yoda Soda [I think one mother was appalled surprised that I was serving soda. What can I say except that it was green and didn't have caffeine and it goes with the theme! I brought her kid some water.]

And just in case they didn't get enough hitting, we had a pinata...the death star. It's actually a soccer ball upon which I added silver tissue paper. It looked a little like a disco ball, but they didn't seem to mind.

Along with their sabers, they all left with a goodie bag filled with Star Wars Pez [I found some at Toys "R" Us and on ebay], M&Ms [has nothing to do with Star Wars -- boxes of 25 bags were BOGO at Publix] and a Star Wars yoyo.

When I asked him that night what his favorite part of the party was he said "Opening the presents." Oh well!