Minecraft Mania

So this sweet thing is six.

He got your typical six-year-old presents for his birthday.  You know, video spy glasses, a Minecraft sword, Legos, a Shark book, and ... an accordion?!

An odd request I thought.  But his face was pure joy when he started playing it.  I'm not sure where I'm going to find an accordion teacher around here...

The common theme in his requests this year was Minecraft.  He, like most boys these days ages 5-35, are loving the game.  Me?  Not so much.  I won't let him have it.  I'm so mean, huh?  It's just got too much of the stuff that is so common these days ... violence, zombies, and such.  So when Maya came home and informed me there is a similar game I could get called Exploration with all of the cool building and spacial capabilities of Minecraft and none of the gore, I relented.

He, of course, wanted a Minecraft party for his birthday.  I thought that it would be pretty simple as all things are square!  Little did I know that there are no Minecraft party supplies out there on the market.

Once again I had fun making it up as I went with a lot of inspiration from Pinterest.  I started by picking up a few of those bite-size brownie bites from the grocery store to take to his class.  I had them add some grass frosting to the top.  These were perfect for kindergarteners who don't need a huge cupcake at school.  I just printed a few stickers and stuck them on some hors d'oeuvre forks and took them to his class.

Because his birthday fell upon a weekday during our Spring break, we opted to have his party a week later when all the kids had returned from their break.

Because the day turned out to be a rainy, miserable day -- all 14 of those who were invited came!  He had a few classmates come, a friend from preschool last year, and the neighborhood kids.  All in all there was a good age range of kids, which I actually liked better than a house full of kindergarteners!

THE FOOD:


I got the square bowls and the grass tablecloth from Party City.  Both are reusable.

I kept the food simple.

I downloaded the card labels from Pinterest and resized them to be a quarter page rather than a half page.

The only item I purchased from the internet were the labels for the Jarritos, Dublin, and Topo Sabores colorful soda. I got them off of etsy because I was too lazy to make them myself, they were reasonably priced, and I liked them.    Here is the link.

Maya helped me craft the perfect cake.  It was super easy (I don't do difficult food).  Just a German chocolate cake with grass icing.  I shoved some Minecraft figures in it and cut it into squares and called it good.

I also cut licorice sticks in half and put them in square jars I got at the dollar store with some TNT labels wrapped around them.

THE GAMES:

I found a fun game online that I modified a little bit.  It's a crafting game, where they could earn different resource squares by knocking down a Creeper or Enderman with a bow and arrow.  They then could bring their squares to the crafting table and turn it into a prize.

I made the Creeper and Enderman from styrofoam floral blocks I got from Dollar Tree.

As I mentioned before, it poured rain the day of the party so we had to move everything inside.  It isn't the greatest picture, but it gives you an idea of how we did it.

I made the crafting table from a square box and a little bit of black tape.

I modified some signs I found online to fit my prizes.  I used the Fixedsys font I already had on my computer.

I just filled the treasure box with square resource blocks that I printed on my computer.  I had the right amount for each child to get one of each prize from the prize table.

The balloons came from amazon.  I searched to include the link but I guess they are no longer available.  Like I mentioned before, finding Minecraft party supplies is difficult.  I got the Minecraft bracelets and stickers in a 12-pack bundle on amazon that came from England.  I included diamond bracelets I got at Michaels for the girls.  The keychains I also purchased on amazon in a pack of 10 for a huge savings.  The coal came from the Christmas clearance section in Walmart, the gold bars are wrapped Trident gum packages, and I printed the bookmarks from link of my Minecraft Party Pinterest Board.

All prizes were put into these goody bags, but they didn't hold up to the kids playing and running around.  I would get something more durable than paper bags next time.  I put vinyl names on them using the Minecrafter font.

I set up a brewing station where they could make different potions and blow up some TNT. 

They could add drops of Mio flavor drops to create different drink potions.  Each was labeled with different powers.  I made a little graphic backdrop to illustrate the idea.

The TNT was seltzer water.  Inside my torch I had Mentos they could drop in and it reacted immediately to "explode" the TNT.

The kids loved this.  After we exploded all the TNT, Dave brought out the water bottle rocket and they launched the empty bottles in the air while I prepared lunch.

Our last game was the piñata.  I made it from a square box and white tissue paper.  It was actually quite easy and didn't take long.  I made it into a Minecraft ghast.

After I made it Dave thought it was too weak and kept adding layers of duct tape to it.  We had a few 5th Grade baseball players wail on it.  Each kid got several hits before it finally gave in.

Whew!  It was a really fun party to plan.  I had several kids tell me it was the best party ever!  What I like to hear.  The birthday boy loved it so much, but had to go into several timeouts to control his craziness.  Oh well, ...not everything can be perfect!