Evan decided he wanted another party at home and it had to be all about Skylanders.
We were leaving for Florida three days after his party and I had planned to keep it simple... Then two days before the party I stumbled upon a few cute Skylanders party blogs and started thinking and planning and reading and researching.
I learned all about Skylanders one night while all the boys were in bed and planned games around each of the elements of Skylanders.
We then took a day to hit the Dollar Stores and Big Lots nearby to find all of our supplies. The party was a huge success and Evan just loved it.
We always have two parties; one with all the kids friends and a much smaller one with all of their grandparents. That means we typically have tons of cake for a few days after since I make two cakes.
I had ordered an edible cake topper for Evan's friend party so I just made a 13x9 cake and frosted the whole thing white and trimmed it with some green frosting using my star tip. Easy peasy!
But I am most proud of my portal of power cake that I made for the grandparent party.
It was much simpler than I thought it would be too.
I baked two round cakes, stacked (and filled) them and frosted them in a medium blue color. I purposely swirled the frosting on the top in concentric circles trying to keep it fairly smooth. I then mixed up a dark gray frosting coloring using Wilton's black Icing Gel (I find all my icing gels at Michael's). I then piped long lines around the whole cake and using the star tip made a boarder around the whole top edge of the cake. I then piped a second row of stars following a patter of piping three stars and skipping two or three stars. That gave me the uneven portal look. We had some Mega Block sets and I used those Skylanders to top the cake since my son was really worried about putting real Skylanders on the cake and having them work on the Wii after (if you use real Skylanders I would recommend putting was paper or cling wrap on the bottoms of them).
Now on to the party set up.
I bought some cute Skylanders' masks and we put together some goodie bags.
I found plain blue bags at the dollar store. We put some stickers and a cup in each bag but left them mostly empty on purpose. As they played various games they wold be putting objects in their bags to take home.
I bought a happy birthday banner, balloons, some cheap Skylander toys, puzzles, and mega blocks sets off of Amazon.
Food included chips, some Skylanders fruit snacks, and some blue Hawaiian punch to drink. We kept everything as blue and green as we could to go with our color scheme. They started out the party by picking out a Skylanders mask to wear and chasing each other around the yard.
I planned a bunch of games; one game for each Skylanders element: air, earth, undead, fire, life, magic, tech, & water.
I read a bit about each Skylanders character and based our game on one of the Skylanders moves.
I know it sounds pretty time intensive but I'm not kidding when I say I pulled every one of these party games together in under 3 days.
- The Kids had a silly string fight using Warnado's Whirlwind power (air element). It was a lot of fun and with I chose blue and green in keeping with our color scheme.
- I found these grow capsules and filled some small dishes with water (water element). The kids could use Slam Bam's Arctic Explosion and watch the capsules "explode." They each put their new creatures in their goodie bags.
- This game was fun and messy. We found some sticky hands at the dollar store and with two per pack it was very reasonably priced for a party of 12. I also found a few gem packs and mixed in some small beads. We filled a large tray with the beads and gems and gave each kid a sticky hand. They stood around the lid in a cluster and each used a hand to grab up as many beads and gems as they could. We called this game Wrecking Ball's Tongue Grabber game (magic element). They got to keep any gems or beads they gathered and add them to their goodie bag. We kept finding beads and gems in our grass for quite a while after the party.
- For Trigger Happy's Pot of Gold (tech element) we found some plastic coins (we couldn't find gold ones which is what I was really hoping for) but we ended up buying gold spray paint and just painting silver coins gold. I know I'm nuts. It's a bit over the top and each year I swear I'm not going to go over the top again... but I do. Anyway, my husband and I scattered the coins all over our yard. The kids went around and searched for all the coins. They got to keep the coins and the one with the most coins at the end got a prize.
- For Cynder Shadow's Reach Rescue (undead element) my husband and I spent a few hours blowing up balloons slightly and putting some Skylander's temporary tattoos inside the balloons. I made sure we only used one picture of Cynder and showed all the kids what Cynder looked like. They had to pop the balloons and whoever found Cynder won a prize. Even if they didn't find Cynder they each got to keep a few temporary tattoos so they all won a little something.
- We called this game Stopping Ignitor's Incinerate (fire element). What better way to stop an incinerate move than throwing a bit of water on it? Played much like an egg toss game my husband and I filled a few water balloons and broke the kids into groups of two. The team with the last surviving water balloon won the prize.
- For Terrafin's Earth Swim (Earth element) we had each of the kids plant a seed (in the Earth!). They each got a small pot, a few seeds and planted their seeds in some potting soil. We then watered the seeds using the water left from Slam Bam's Arctic Explosion. They put their plant with their goodie bags.
- Our last game was Stump Smash's Stump Crusher game (life element). We blew up green balloons and tied them to a string. We then tied one balloon around each child's ankle and told them the object was to stump crush each other's balloons. The last child with a balloon remaining was the winner. It was a lot of fun and even though a few kids had their balloons pop on the ground and not by another player they still enjoyed it.
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