Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Rocco's 4th Birthday - A Ninjago Party

Whoop whoop whoop whoop...Sound the Octoalert! Oh wait, I meant ninjaaaa...go!

This year I was SO excited to do an Octonauts party - I had a lot of cute ideas AND Toys R Us had recently released an Octonauts compass toy which plays the octoalert sound. If you aren't familiar with the Octonauts, check out the show on Disney Junior and the books by Meomi. Or, take a look at their website here. The artwork is super cute!

Then, a month or two ago, Rocco tells me that he wants a Ninjago party instead because he didn't want his Ninjagos to be sad and that the Octonauts can "swim away." My heart just about stopped. I tried to sway him back to having the Octonauts party but was unsuccessful and deep down I knew his heart was in LEGO and Ninjago.

I didn't have a ton of ideas for a Ninjago party and am actually expecting my second child any day now so I guess in a way, Rocco was doing me a favor - fewer ideas means less work for me! Anyway, here's to keeping things simple!

For the table, I did the usual Ninjago eye balloons and favor bags. Each ninja has sightly different eyebrows but I had a tough time finding the right images for the balloons so they all look the same unfortunately. I'm not sure how people do it but I couldn't get all the balloons to face forward and "smile for the camera." The banner was just a simple banner that I made out of felt  -  I cut the letters out to look similar to the font from the Ninjago logo.



I wanted to keep the dessert options simple so I did "Dark Matter" Grape JELL-O, Great Devourer lime "venom" cheesecake bites, red velvet cupcakes, and Stone Warrior cookies. As tired as I am of making my usual Ninjago head cookies (which you can see here), I felt like I needed to make at least a few of them so I made mini Ninjago head cookie cupcake toppers. Rocco really likes the little Stone Warrior characters so I made a few of those even though they are a probably a little mean and scary looking for the average four year old. Surprisingly, a lot of people actually said they were "cute." The lopsided cake was store bought - I sprayed it with Wilton gold color mist spray and topped it with a Lloyd/green ninja cookie pop.

"Dark Matter" Grape JELL-O


Here's an image of Ninjago "Dark Matter" from the show below. I think it looks pretty close to grape JELL-O!



"Great Devourer" Lime "Venom" Cheesecake Bites


Stone Warrior Sugar Cookies


Lloyd / Green Ninja Cookie Cake Topper



The Lego food label stands were made out of two pieces of 1 x 6 plates, one 4 x 12 plate, two 1 x 2 brick pieces, and a Ninjago minifigure on the side. If you are planning on ordering individual pieces from the Lego website, you'll probably want to order at least three weeks in advance because the pieces ship from Poland.


The favor bags included a coloring book which I put together with some card stock and green masking tape, Lego shaped crayons from What's Your CRAYON on Etsy, a mystery minifigure, a ninja tootsie pop, and a gold origami shuriken/ninja star.


I saw these Lego fruit snacks online on the Walmart website but unfortunately wasn't able to find them anywhere. I think they would have been a nice addition to the bags.


Happy Birthday Rocco!