Kids pirate party food, Car's Red fire truck cake decoration, The gruffalo cake, gifts & favour party ideas

Big Red Car's Fire Engine Truck Party home made Birthday Cake Idea

Car's Big Red fire truck engine birthday cake

kids party decorated cake with mini flame fire sweet cup cakes

Car's party home made cake

 This cake was so easy to make but looks like it took hours. It is basically a big chocolate cake with mini cup cakes round the edge. What makes it look fantastic is the graphics / image of Car's Red fire truck which i printed off the net & backed it in cardboard. I printed off lots of fire flames & mounted them onto cocktail sticks & covered a glass with flames so i could put a tee tree light inside, this gave off a nice red glow. I got the happy birthday candles from coles & sparklers. The sweets i used are sugar coated strawberries also from coles, they worked great as they look like little flames.

The Gruffalo kids birthday cake idea

Hand made from rolled icing sugar & food dye The Gruffalo kids birthday cake

The gruffalo walking in the forest birthday cake

AHOY THERE, SO YOUR THINKING OF HAVING A SHIPMATE PIRATE PARTY!

My son was turning 2 years of age so i thought what a great theme for a little boys party & it was. My son & his little friends had great fun pretending to be pirates & i had great fun making all the pirate swag for his party. There are so many things you can do for this theme that are so much fun and a lot you can make for next to nothing.

PIRATE PARTY INVITES

First of all you need to set a date, time & venue & decide on who to invite. Once you have all that information you can set about designing your invitations, pirate style. I used a basic word programme to write the basic information about the party & a small pic of the birthday boy then printed off copies of the basic template. I had a little fun with the words i used like, ''ahoy there'' & ''come & join us to swob the deck''. I also added that fancy dress was welcome which the kids loved & it all added to the party atmosphere on the day.

Once all the invites were printed off i set about brewing a very large pot of tea, once it had cooled I used the tea bags to stain the paper, giving it that old map look. Once they had dryed i used a lighter to burn the edges ( best to do this outside as its a bit smelly). Then the fun arty bit, i added hand drawn images like what you would see on a classic pirate map. For example the classic x marks the spot, the pirate ship, sea monster, bucket, compass, palm tree & the dotted trail lines. I also was lucky to find some pirate stickers in a bargain shop which i used on the map too & in the party favour packs.

These are very cheap to make & you don't even need envelops! I just rolled each invite up into a scroll and tied with a red ribbon.

Burnt & T-bagged pirate map invite

PIRATE PARTY FAVOURS / party bags 

I made these little party bags up for the little pirate shipmates to say thank you for coming and so they could take home a few treats/memories from the party. I handmade a lot of the goodies inside & packaged the bags myself which saved a lot of money and gave them a more personnel feel.

I purchased some sweets, pirate stickers from a discount shop & the all important gold chocolate coins put them all together with the handmade goodies i made. I packaged the whole lot with clear cellophane & used gift ribbon to tie the top.

I used a old wooden basket to put them in for the party which gave it a old pirate ship feel.

I left the bookmark & flag popping out the top which made them look more interesting 

This is the felt pirate finger puppet i made

A close up of the pirate bookmark made with a Lollie stick & felt fabric

BIRTHDAY PIRATE HANDMADE CARD

I handmade a birthday card for our little boy. I always think it is more special  to give a card that you have made yourself & you can keep it to show them when their older. Another great idea which i will be doing is making a scrap book of the whole party so make sure you keep some decorations, take lots of pics so you can include them in your scrapbook. Then you can look back at those infant years together when they are all grown up.

Handmade from brown paper, colour pencils, felt tips & paper        



                                                                                         

LET THEM EAT CAKE! PIRATE BIRTHDAY CAKE & PARTY FOOD IDEAS

I used small flag cake toppers & blue butter icing to emulate water

The cake.
I also baked some cupcakes & decorated them with the rolled icing using a star cutter. I made the cake stand from cardboard simply by cutting a round base & bottom from a sheet of cardboard with a cardboard strip around the edge to give it height & then decorated with paper. I placed chocolate gold coins round the edge to give a bit of sparkle.

Out of every thing i made for the kids the popcorn cups , jelly cups & cup cakes went down the best.

There are so many different cakes to choose from. I went with a pirate face becuase it was so easy to make. All i used was a basic round baking tin, rolled icing & food colouring. The rolled icing is so easy to work with, you can cut out any shape you like and then paint with the food colouring after. I used a paint brush which made it easy to get a neat edge.

A few of the different cake toppers i made. The blue sparkle paper looked the most effective which you can buy from lincraft in A4 sheets. All i did was cut out the flag shape & stick to a cocktail stick. The gold choc coins looked great & you can find these in sweet shops or online.

Another thing that went down very well with the kids was mini water bottles & they made less mess. The table cloth was another bargain from a best for less discount shop.

blue jelly cup

outdoor kids zone with bubble machine from the early learning centre. This was so fun for the kids they loved chasing the bubbles but if you are going to use one attach it high up so they can't knock it over & get two sets of batteries as they only last about 2 hours but defiantly a star of the party. I used a old sheet over our washing line which gave a sail effect & made a boat out of cardboard.

PIRATE ACCESSORIES & OUTFIT

get the pirate look for less & add a bit of originality.

You can buy these beads from ebay & make yourself a pair of earrings or hair grips to wear for the party 

A brooch i brought from ebay gave my dress a pirate look without having to buy a new outfit.

This was an old t-shit that had a whole in it so i cutout some red felt in the shape of skull & cross bones, backed it in pirate picnic fabric & stitched it on

Discount shops are great for pirate goodies & the kids loved playing pretend pirate with them.

PIRATE GIFTS

small canvas painted background with felt pirate

I have written a post on how to make the cute felt pirate rabbits & they made great pass the parcel presents 

I dotted a few of these around as table decoration

Also made from felt, they are as big as a little finger which makes them even more adorable

bag puss one eye & ship mate

Hola girl door hanging

These were great gifts for pass the parcel all handmade from felt. Pirates for the boys & ballerinas for the girls or hair clips.

PIRATE DECORATION
I wanted it to be colourful so i used as many different colours as i could or you could go for black, red & gold but as my son was only two the more colour the better.
One of the first things i wanted to do was a backdrop for the food table as a kind of collage of celebration for him turning two so i used a big notice board & set to work using old magazines, brown paper, scissors & sticky tape. I also dug out some pictures of him when he was a baby. 

I pined a lot to the board so i can reuse the pictures in a birthday scrapbook of the party

Sea monster with 3.D tongue

Pirate map printed of google image

 handmade cardboard treasure chest

Made from a cardboard box the kids loved playing with this, i put some pirate gold inside

bbq stick paper bunting, great for sticking in plants

Pirate props, i dug out my sons boat & the two little ship mate dolls i got from London. The cushion i made myself & the fabric was from 'wrapped in fabric'

Printed of google image i added the waves & clouds to make table decorations

another google image of a parrot i added to a shoe box lid to make it into a jelly cup tray. I added fun feathers to its hat.

 Pirate bunting 

Easy to make & you don't even have to own a sowing machine. With it being a pirate theam you can get away with a raw edge. If you have any old sheets to tea towels you can use the fabric from them or go shopping in a craft store because they always have a cheap off cut bin. Below i spelt out my sons name & have put it in his room for decoration after the party.

I used felt fabric to cutout skull heads & hand stitched them on. You can use ribbon to attach your bunting to or rope for a pirate sea effect

This was made from net with bunting sown on the bottom. I put sweets in here for the party

Another thing i found worked well was old lemon 

& orage nets, crape paper to hang as steamers & brown paper can be transformed into bunting with just a pair of scissors. If you have any stamps with letters on you can stamp them with happy birthday.

Crabs made from cardboard & a red beer box

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Have fun with your party & i hope this has given you some fab ideas xx