Simple Pirate Party

I just keep taking these unintentional breaks from blogging, don't I?  Real professional, Beth.  But people, it's summer!  We've had family in and out of town and I'm pregnant.  All priorities have shifted to the most important.  Eating, sleeping, and relaxing.

I have been busy with projects though.  Just haven't been taking the time to blog about them.  Sue me, ok!

Today, I'm going through some of my archives and sharing a:

Said b.day happened months ago, but oh well, right?  Have I ever mentioned that Superman and Ezra share a b.day?  You can't really top giving your husband a child for his birthday, right?  I'm sure Rumplestiltskin would agree.....

Anyway, it's fun and Superman is a good sport about letting it be a bit more about Ezra.  He's sweet like that.  :)  We had a little family party for both of them and you know I had to rock a pirates theme for my pirate-lovin' son.

But here's the thing, I don't throw a party anymore unless it's relatively simple and inexpensive.  Therefore, it looks a touch boring, which is why I almost didn't post about it.  I mean, the world of pinterest-perfect parties makes a gal feel a little inadequate, ya feel me?  Regardless of the lack of elaborate decor, fancy food, or clever games we had a nice little party, so I thought I'd share it with other simple minded {and I mean that in the best sense} folk out there.  :)

So basically, it went something like this:

For decorations, I used a plastic white table clothe that I had on hand and I put a fishing net on top.  I purchased this net from amazon. I plan to use the net as decor for Ezra's room.  {And by the way, the net truly does smell like fish...so that's fun.  And authentic, I guess.}  I made the banner out of blue jute twine {Target} and black scrapbook paper from my stash and wrote "happy birthday" with a white crayon in the most pirate-esque way I could. :)  The ship wheel is from Hobby Lobby.  I purchased it on sale 2 years ago, so I'm not really sure if it's still around.

Since I can't find the perfect cupcake stand, I just used two of my plates and turned a drinking glass upside down as a temporary stand.  It's sounds ghetto, but it worked.  The gold coins on the table were also purchased from Hobby Lobby in the party section.

I have a weird addiction to buckets in the Target Dollar Section, so I always have some sort of bucket on hand to hold utensils, napkins, straws {etc.}  {Straws from Hobby Lobby}

For food, we did cake and ice cream.  Real fancy.  And as you can see, I still can't decorate cupcakes, but I'm working on it.  Lila helped me make little "flag" cupcake toppers out of colored toothpicks and black washi tape.  We also stuck some chocolate gold coins in random cupcakes.  Oh and I think I popped some popcorn at one point to represent "pirate gold."

The treasure chest cake is tiny. Let's just get that right out there.  It's so little it made me laugh.  It's not supposed to be so small if you use the original tutorial, but I shrunk it down because I'm lazy.

Superman loves kit kats, so it was perfect for him and I filled the inside with gold chocolate coins and sixlets.  As it turns out, the brown sugar "sand" was the most popular commodity with this cake.  All the kids were sneaking little handfulls throughout the party.  Sugar high!

For games, we had an array of different ages here, so while the adults chatted, the kids got to make treasure maps.  Later, we used tinfoil and molded it into "pirate hooks" on each child's hand.  And then they used the hooks to play pirate tag.  I didn't take pictures of this part, but it would have been a blur anyway.  You know, because kids don't sit still when they're about to be "tagged" by tinfoil pirate hooks.

After that we opened presents.  So there we go.  A simple pirate party using stuff we had around the house.  It doesn't really belong on pinterest, but it's true to life in this household. :)