It's Pahty Time! Whoo Hoo!

Let me start this post by saying if you don't have any interest in kids birthday parties then come back in a few days when I'm bound to post something about sewing. Or read ahead to hear about how I don't have any interest in them either.

Oh good, you're still here. Also, this is a long post so settle in and enjoy as I go into great detail on how I stress about the tiniest details when it comes to birthday party planning. 

Rocco has a Summer birthday and every year he gets the shaft. Finally this year he asked if we could hold a birthday party before school lets out so that all the friends he made this year can attend. I love planning a party but hate throwing a party. Especially with other people's children in attendance. I'm sorry, I like my kids, others not so much. Oh joy, this is looking like a lot of fun.

Since Rocco has his birthday in August I've been brainstorming since then. I kind of gave him license to pick a theme, but not really, because I don't do commercial themed parties (ie: Cars Movie, Thomas the Train, Oh my God Monster Trucks actually was proposed). So Retro Space it is! Good thing Rocco is obsessed with planets and knows an extraordinary amount of trivia related to outer space. 

Let me tell you the fantastic ideas that are out there in reference to this subject. If I had the party budget of Torie Spelling, hold on to your seatbelts, I would be a feature on Martha Stewart. (do any of you even get the reference to Torie Spelling? I watch a sh*tload of reality t.v.)

I'll just show you some photos of the highlights of my low budget party and at the end of this post I will list some of the great ideas I found/read about, but couldn't do because either I was on a budget or that I didn't want the other parents to give me that look. Oh ya, that look that says "Holy crap lady, he's seven years old for crissakes!" 

We held the party at a park for two reasons. 

1. Not at my house. No way, no how. Hello! You've seen what lives on my floors. That would mean I'd have to clean before the party and then clean again once they left. That would be twice in one week for cleaning and I didn't sign that contract thankyouverymuch (love you Chef!).

2. Rocco had to have a pinata. Most planned party venues don't want the mess.

 I found these fantastic invitations from letterspacepaper that come blank so you can run them through your printer at home. I've used invites from them before for two other birthday parties. I love the high quality card stock and they have quite a few great designs. I believe they will also print them for you if you prefer.

In the gift bags I gave glo sticks, "moon rocks", robot stickers, astronaut crayons, Dollar Store "comet balls" (that's what was actually printed on them) and the best part... a music compilation of some of our favorite children's music.

Oh how we love good kids music. When Rocco was little, before we knew he was blind, he was developmentally delayed and a super late talker. Listening to kids music would entrance him and you could tell he was concentrating on the stories being told through music. My particular favorite is Justin Roberts (he has a new album "Jungle Gym" being released 6/8/10 OMG I am so excited!) His style is I guess kind of folksy with great storytelling. I am not kidding I know the words to every song he's ever written. I'm telling you that means a lot because my own personal music taste is definitely nothing like this. I just lurve his lyrics and lovely storytelling. I think I'm going to drag the Chef and the kids to San Francisco to see him perform this summer. O.k. enough about him. Back to this darn party.

I used iron on transfer paper to make a t-shirt for me and Luca to wear. Rocco had this cute astrobot t-shirt already. I thought they were cute, but apparently most of the parents didn't get it because they all kind of looked at us weird. Do you get it?

We made a pretty cool cake...

 Got the idea online somewhere.

I found these adorable thank you cards at paper source. This is a great site for blank colored cardstock cards in various sizes. Love them!

 

Things we didn't do but I thought would be fun...

* Homemade tub of moonsand with tin foil balls as moon rocks

* Refrigerator box decorated as a rocketship

* Saturn ring toss

* Pin the spaceship on the planet

* If held indoors make one room dark with glow in the dark activities

* Astronaut costume and cardboard cutout background to take a photo of each child dressed  up and send as thank you's

* Seltzer rockets

And of course there is a cool place to get all things space related online. The Space Store.

The party turned out great. Glad it's over. Now I can start to stress about the next one.

Needless to say there are tons of great ideas to make a great astronaut/space party theme. I could go on for days and I won't. Yourwelcome.

Have any other great ideas to add to this theme? Just leave me a comment. Maybe one of my readers will use some of these ideas when planning their next birthday party.
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