Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Epic Angry Birds Party

The Plan

My Superhero loves Angry Birds.  We actually don't have the game at our house (He would drive me insane if we did.), but he plays it at Grandma's.  With his sixth birthday coming up, there was no doubt what kind of party he wanted.  This was his very first themed party with school friends and everything, so I wanted to make it special.  Unfortunately, most of the time I was preparing for it, I was seriously doubting my own sanity.  Who hand paints 16 balls to look like Angry Birds and Pigs?  A mommy who is absolutely crazy about her little boy, that's who!

I purchased the invitations, along with plates, napkins, cups, a table cloth, a couple party favors and thank you cards at Zurchers online.  They also have supplies at Amazon, but after obsessing and analyzing the prices, I found Zurchers was a bit less expensive (and I'm all about saving money).

My Superhero and I filled out the invitations and mailed them.  At his insistence, we went immediately to the post office to mail them to his guests.  My kiddos love to receive mail, and it was well worth it to send the via the official mail truck.
 
I had a fantastic idea for the party, and when I get a fantastic idea, I can't settle for anything less.  So the next few weeks were filled with much obsession, online ordering, and late nights.  And the end result of my insanity . . . absolutely fabulous!

The Decor

I put so much effort the rest of the party, I wanted to keep the decorations simple.  I found these great FREE Angry Birds templates online (HERE)  I printed, cut them out, and taped them to balloons.  I added a few crepe paper streamers and I was done.  It looked great, especially with the cake and table decorations. (More on the cake later.)

The Epic
My Superhero has a fantastic imagination.  It's one of my favorite things about him.  For his birthday, I wanted to do something that would appeal to his imagination.  So, as his guests arrived for his party, I put  all the presents in a box.  When everyone had arrived and he wasn't looking, I had Daddy sneak the presents out.  Then I handed my Superhero this note:
I gave a few guidelines:  Pigs were dangerous so we all had to stick together and only fight one pig at a time.  I then gave the kids their weapons.
Yes . . . to both questions.  Yes, I did paint those all by hand.  And yes, I am CRAZY!!!  I obsessed over finding inexpensive playground balls.  After scouring the internet, I found them at esportsonline.com for $2.95 each, which was by far the cheapest price I could find.  They are 8 and 1/2 inches and were the perfect size.  To paint them, I used the same templates I used for the balloons to trace the outline on the ball, then I used primer, paint, and finally sealed it with a gloss.  (Note:  the painting didn't stand up the the activity as well as I would have liked.  Some of the paint on the balls chipped off.  They still served their purpose and the kiddos absolutely loved them, but I would have liked for it to stay better.  If I did it again, I think I would try to paint them without primer, as the one ball without primer seemed to hold up the best.  If anyone else has an idea for how to get paint to stay permanently on a textured ball, please let me know!)

Each kiddo got an Angry Bird.  My Superhero got the only bomb bird.  Bomb bird is his favorite, but since I couldn't find a black ball to order, I painted one of the blue balls black.  All of the kids were thrilled with their Angry Birds, especially when they found out they were going to get to keep them as a party favor! :)

(Note:  You can purchase playground balls that are already made to look like Angry Birds.  They are just really expensive.  But, if money is no object, take the shortcut and check them out on Amazon!)

Then, we went outside to get those pigs and rescue the Birthday Boy's presents!

The Battle

Pig #1
Ready, Aim, Fire!
Special thanks to my brother for parking his car right in back of the pig and providing a convenient block so the Angry Birds couldn't escape! :)
 
After the pig was knocked off and defeated, the kids found a note that he'd left.

Pig #2

 After Pig #2 was defeated, the victors found another note.

Pig #3  
My favorite!  Love the pig trying to steal the car!

Pig #3 successfully vanquished, the kids found the scariest note yet.

Cue the Pinata

The King Pig
Yes, I did make the pinata.  I think a homemade pinata is something a parent does for a child once, and that's it.  It was such a messy project that my boys, who are normally thrilled to get messy, wouldn't even help me.  You can find a lot of tutorials on making a pinata online, so I don't think I'll go into details here.  What helped me probably the most was this site. HERE  If you want more info, just ask.

The brief summary is that I used a punch balloon from the dollar store, newspaper strips with a flour and water mixture.  To make the nose, I used cardstock as the base.  I painted it with a primer before painting it green.  I had a hard time deciding how to hang it.  After the first layer, I tied the thing up with ropes and then put other layers on top so it would hang from the ropes that were now inside.  It worked great!  I also found different opinions on how many layers to use.  I did four, and it was just about perfect.  
The pinata pre-paint.


That pig took a serious beating.  Every kid was able to hit it multiple times, and they were finally successful in defeating it and retrieving the candy and the final note that was hidden inside.
 
The Fortress

As you can imagine, when the kids came around the corner of the house and saw the 'fortress' in the front yard, they were super excited.  We'd been saving boxes for a while.  I stopped short of actually painting the boxes (I'm not THAT crazy, and I ran out of time :).  We used the green playground balls I had painted to look like pigs (there were five pigs total).  My husband built the fortress after all the guests had arrived, so it was a complete surprise.

When I originally had the idea for this party, I told my husband that he had one assignment:

The Slingshot
Though he made me extremely nervous by waiting until the night before the party to put it together and test it, he came through and the end result was fantastic!  We found that a spider bungee like you use on the back of a truck worked the absolute best for launching the Angry Birds.  Let me know if you want specific instructions for the slingshot, and I'll talk my husband into sharing.  As you can see, it's a relatively simple design.


After the fortress was demolished and the pigs defeated, the kids were able to rescue my Superhero's presents that had been hidden behind the fortress.  We then went inside to open the presents and eat . . .

The Cake
I saw a lot of fabulous Angry Birds cakes online.  I am not a prize winning cake decorator.  I have never even attempted fondant.  It honestly scares me.  This cake was a bit time consuming but was very easy by comparison.  

My Superhero wanted an actual cake, not just cupcakes.  So the background is two sheet cakes frosted together.  The wood pieces are chocolate covered vanilla wafers.  You can buy some of these at a store, but, wanting to save a little money, I got cheap wafers and dipping chocolate and made my own.  

The birds and pigs are cupcakes.  Here's how I made them: 
The eyes are all miniature marshmallows that are slightly squished.
Pigs: green gumdrop cut in half for the ears, frosting snout and black frosting detailing for eyesballs, eyebrows, and nostrils.
Red Bird:  orange gumdrop cut in half and shaped slightly for the beak, black licorice bites for the eyebrows, black frosting detailing for eyeballs and beak
Yellow Bird:  orange gumdrop cut in half and shaped slightly for the beak, pretzel sticks for the eyebrows, black frosting detailing for eyeballs and beak.
Black Bird:  same as Yellow Bird.

After cake, the kids found that those naughty pigs had rebuilt another fortress. (Pigs are, after all very industrious.)  They went back outside to battle them again.

Party Favors
As the party ended, each guest was given a bag, along with their Angry Bird ball, to take home.  The bags are ordinary brown paper lunch sacks and those same Angry Birds templates from above that I used for the balloons.  I would recommend printing these on cardstock for this purpose, if at all possible.  Otherwise the little hats and feathers at the top tend to curl.

Each sack contained a sheet of Angry Birds stickers and a party bowout (purchased at Zurchers--see above).  It also contained candy from the pinata and some Angry Birds Food.
I saw somewhere online where you could buy gummy worms prepackaged as Angry Brids food.  I decided to make my own.  I made the label and then attached it to a ziplock bag with gummy worms.

The End
In the initial planning stages, I did a lot of research about Angry Birds parties.  Some of the things I saw were incredibly elaborate or terribly expensive.  Overall, this party was a simple idea and relatively inexpensive.  From what I saw online, a lot of moms are going to be stressing to plan an Angry Birds party just as I was.  I hope this helps.  If you have any questions about any of the activities, just leave a comment or use my Contact page


It probably goes without saying that the kids LOVED the party!  They got so wrapped up in the excitement of defeating those pigs!  The party as a whole was a fantastic success and worth all my hard work to see the kids have so much fun and watch the absolute joy on my Superhero's face.  However, nothing made me feel so good as when my Superhero told me his favorite part was when the pigs stole his presents.  That was when I felt successfuMy purpose when this party was to capture my son's wonderful imagination, and I had accomplished that.  He tried to talk his daddy and me into having the pigs steal his presents again the next day!
   
I won't lie; this party was A LOT of work.  In the end, as successful as I feel and as happy as I made my son, I'd be very pleased if I never saw another Angry Bird the rest of my life.  And how does my Superhero feel?  "Mama, I want an Angry Birds Party again next year!!!" 

4 comments:

  1. awwww, what a great mom you are!!! this had to be the greatest party for your son and his friends!!! LOVE IT!!!

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  2. Wow Amanda you did a great job. Loved it and your new blog.

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  3. When you were telling me all this, I never envisioned all that!! WOW!! You have quite the imagination...glad you can share this with other moms :)

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  4. OMG, my 4 yr. old loves Angry Birds, and he wants an Angry Bird birthday! Love all the ideas here! Found you on Pinterest, pinning so I can come back for ideas. Thanks!

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