Monday, August 25, 2014

"My House is Full of Sevens" 7th Birthday Party

We are big fans of  They Might Be Giants in this household. Our love began with Here Come the ABCs and grew with the 123s and the Science. The Seven song was such a big hit in our house that Jr. decided a couple of years ago that he wanted it to be the theme of his 7th birthday party. #7 shaped puppets? It sounded perfect to me and I was happy to make it happen (as well as a little surprised that he never changed his mind to Star Wars or Angry Birds as a party theme instead.)

Obviously this isn't a theme that has lots of ready made party supplies already out there so I had to get crafty. I used the AR Delaney font to get the perfect round 80s look bubble 7. Then I blew it up several times on the copier to get the sizes I would need for the invitations, puppets, and goody bags. I bought a ream of neon colored card stock and went to town cutting out 7s. I used blank, blue note cards from Target for the invitations. I used medium size 7s with small googly eyes. All invitation wording was printed on copy paper and pasted to the other side of the card.


I used the largest 7s for the puppets. My original plan was to have the children make the entire puppets during the party, but it has worked so well having the rocket ships pre-assembled for Deuce's party that I decided to glue on the large googly eyes on in advance. I thought a herd of 7s would look supper cute so I taped two pieces of of styrofoam to a piece of cardboard and wrapped them with paper to make a display board. (How convenient that we had a bag of styrofoam in the basement waiting to be recycled!) Here they are at the craft table. We also had the portable DVD player set up so the children could watch the music video for inspiration.



The smallest size 7 was used on the goody bags. I was tired of buying googly eyes at this point so I dumped out the hole punch and glued on white paper eyes and used a sharpie for the pupils. Simple. I debated whether or not to have the 7s 'talk' on the bag; in the end I decided they should talk, and they said, 'Thank you for filling up my house."


In the song the 7s repeatedly shout, "We want cake! Where's our cake?" and they devour a cake in the video. Naturally I had to decorate this birthday cake just like the music video. I had bought a box of red and blue velvet cake mix around 4th of July and used cream cheese frosting. I added a blue food coloring to it to make the piping around the top and bottom. I used a store bought gel icing for the swags and it ran . Boo! Otherwise I think it turned out cute.

#7 puppet photobomb


Shock and awe that the candle wouldn't stay lit.


In keeping with the 7 theme we had 7 layer dip and a 7 fruit salad.


And then we served 7-up in little cans to the children and 7&7 to the adults. Because what children's party would be complete without a bar? Good thing I have some vintage bottle crates for all my glass bottle display needs.



I couldn't think of any 7 theme activities so we rented a bounce house in which the boys could jump. The rental was for 4 hours, after the party was over we made our boys jump in it until it was time to bring it down. We wanted to get all our money's worth out of it! It was so much fun to jump in! It was huge though, I don't know whether we'll have space for one in the future if we do all the landscaping we have planned for the yard.
 
Little Miss decorating her 7 puppet.
 The important thing is that the birthday boy had a great time and enjoyed playing with his friends!