Superhero Training Camp

Big Girl J turned the big 5 Wednesday, we celebrated her birthday on the Saturday before her birthday since Easter is this coming weekend. I was about 1 hour from printing the invites for the party to be Easter weekend before I noticed a sign that prevented that mistake! A few months ago, or 7, a friend posted on facebook about making superhero capes. That got my wheels turning, Big Girl J is very into superheros, all of them, so why not? I turned to my creative spot, google. I found a variety of people who spent way too much money, and others who probably could have tried harder. I hope I found a happy medium, because I put in a lot of effort, but tried to keep the cost down.
I went to the local flea market and found some comic books. I got four different ones, found the 'perfect' frame or strip from each. Scanned them in the computer and blocked out the word bubbles. Then I wrote in my own information about the party. I even had Robin saying ,"Holy 5th birthday Batman!" I was giggling the whole time I was coming up with the wording. I know the kids didn't get it, but I hope the parents enjoyed that part.
I had RSVP cards that needed to be returned to me that told me who the superhero was, what color cape they wanted (there were only four options) what their super-power was, and if they were bringing a sidekick (sibling.) I made capes for the hero's and sidekicks. The super-power was just something fun for the kid and parent to come up with. My favorites: Turning people into princesses and the other, being very sneaky.
I made four capes out of one yard of basic cotton fabric. I chose my colors so the fabric markers would show well, since the craft project was to decorate your own cape. I wanted something easy ans would require dry time, glue or more sewing. I used fancy fun fabric for my girls, fancy fun fabric is not fun to sew. I am very glad I picked the cotton fabric for the other 30 capes I had to make!

I glued jewels and pre-decorated theirs, since it is Big Girl J's party. Her cape had J5 and Little Miss O had O2.5 logo. The jewels didn't last long, but it didn't have to, they loved them for the day, and still do, now that they got cleaned.
We played a couple games, first was pin the mask on the superhero. A few nights before her party, I had Big Girl J lay down on a brown paper cover cardboard, so I could trace her. I can't free hand a stick figure! Then I painted in the rest and cut some basic masks from a template I found using my creative source, google.

I made two more superhero masks without eyes holes for the blindfolds rather than something else.

We also did a villain punch, we ran out of time, so the villains were faceless balloons, but it didn't matter to these little superheros. It took only minutes for the villains to pop. We just hung them from the tree and let the kids go. Since all the kids got to keep their cape and mask, I decided against having winners in these games, and no prizes or bags for the kids to take home. Another annoyance at other parties, cheap toys that break or make too much noise!

I don't think all the kids got to play this game, the late comers had to for go punching villains.

Then we had surprise visitors, Superwoman and Mr. Incredible! I did not ask my friends to do this, in fact I was only aware that one of my friends was going to do this, then at the party I learned she found an outfit for her husband and they would be doing this together!
They came in through the back gate, fully dressed, and taught the kids to stand like a superhero, then how to fly. They all lifted bricks to show off strength, and tried to build a wall to knock down. However, some kids were unable to wait for the wall to be built and it was knocked over quickly. I am certain that is what really made the party, and it is not what I planned, I just have really good friends!

I made the cake, of course. However, there aren't very many unique ideas out there on the Internet, so I kept it basic, for my sanity. I also wanted to keep with the generic superhero theme, the party was not based on a particular superhero, rather the kids and what they wanted to be.

My great friend, who was superwoman helped me out by bringing snack food. My goal was to keep it simple and not feed everyone, since I was 33 weeks pregnant. She brought 'Mighty Meatballs,' 'Archenemy Pepperspray' cream cheese stuffed sweet peppers, 'Kryptonite Swords' a tasty Caprice kabob. The first chocolate cake I made fell apart, not wanting to throw out a good cake I made cake pops out of that disaster, and called them power pops. They were all a big hit!

I was told there were many children leaving the party requesting the same theme for their next party, made me feel good, but I know a big part of what made it a success was the superheros who came and taught the kids how to act like a superhero!