Jackson’s Minecraft Birthday Party

Jackson turned 8 last Friday! It seems impossible, but it’s true. He wanted a Minecraft birthday party at the gym at which the kids take swimming lessons. Now, I know nothing about Minecraft, so thank God for the Internet! Pinterest was my friend. There aren’t any commercially available Minecraft party supplies, so I was going to have to make my own. However, it seems like tons of other crafty moms and dads were in the same boat, and generously shared their work.

For us, everything was based on the square shape and the colors blue (sky), green (grass), and black. Starting with the invitations:

That house in the third row? Jackson made it in Minecraft. He worked really hard on it, so I’ll throw in the screenshot:

The food was all based on foods found in the game:

• Cheese (lava)
• Punch, made of strawberry soda and orange sherbet (lava)
• Bottled water (water)
• Blue Jello cut into cubes (water)
• Bread (bread)
• Chicken nuggets from Popeye’s (chicken)
• Carrots (carrots)
• Pretzels (sticks)
• Apples (Golden apples)
• Melon (melon)
• Sandwiches cut into squares (“sand”)
• Cake (cake)

I got clear, square plates from Party City, and set up the food on green tablecloths. I set the actual eating table with grass tablecloths, also from Party City, though they’re available on Amazon as well. (Also, to tell the truth, I forgot the apples and melon at home, so we didn’t actually eat them.) I got square paper plates from Party City too. It’s so lovely that napkins are naturally square.

Catch My Party has some awesome party printables available. I used the banner. I also used some of the pre-made food placards, and I made my own food placards (Minecraft food placards). I wanted to use the water bottle labels, but I ran out of time. I also wanted to draw Creeper faces on the balloons, but, again, I ran out of time. Southern Revivals was also a huge source of inspiration.

I made Creeper treat bags by printing Creeper cutouts onto cardstock, then cutting them out and pasting them onto green lunch bags.

In the treat bags, I placed Creeper pins, Creeper marshmallow pops, Hershey’s nuggets (gold), sour watermelon slices (melon), and sticky men. (I put names on the bags because we have some friends with food allergies, so they got special bags. I didn’t want them to feel self-conscious, so I simply printed out everyone’s name in the Minecrafter font and stuck them to the bags.)

The Creeper pins were an idea from The Kitchen Magpie. I used perler beads. It took about an hour to make 2 pins. Some of them didn’t come out very pretty, but most were nice. TKM said to use Gorilla glue to stick the pins on, but that didn’t work, so I used craft glue. Unfortunately, the craft glue came off when the kids tried to put their pins on. Hopefully hot glue will work. I feel awful about giving out a favor that broke.

It wouldn’t be one of my parties if it didn’t involve candy melts. I made Creeper marshmallow pops. These things are so simple to do! The hardest part? Drying them. I must remember to get a florist’s block of foam to stick the lollipop sticks into. Max made me a makeshift drying rack out of a shoebox. I have never been able to find peanut-free candy melts, and we have two friends who are allergic to peanuts. Thus, I created two pops that used green food coloring instead of the melts. I dyed my fingers green for the rest of the day. Also note that you have to use decorating icing, not food marker, on candy melts. Food marker doesn’t adhere.

 

 

Jackson insisted that I make his cake, instead of ordering it. He wanted a cake that looked like grass, not a cake that looked like a Minecraft cake. I found a how-to on MamaBzz,which worked very well. I modified her recipe slightly. I used canned frosting, though I will say that the canned chocolate buttercream tasted better than the canned classic chocolate frosting. I also used regular Oreos, because they’re peanut-free. I found using about a dozen Oreos for both cakes was enough. You don’t want to use too many, because they will fall off the sides of the cake.

I used printables I found at Kara’s Party Ideas to decorate the cake platter (a 16-inch plastic square from Party City).

I didn’t have the chance to take very many pictures, although the ones I did take turned out pretty nicely. Here are two of the birthday boy, and one of  his little sister.

This year, Jackson asked for donations to the Cheetah Conservation Fund so he can help sponsor a cheetah. His friends were very generous, and we are so thankful. We’ll tell them that with these lovely Minecraft-inspired postcards I’ve made. Thank you postcards are the easiest things to make and print, by the way.

Oh, and I feel the need to give shout outs to a few people who made Jackson’s birthday even more special:

• Eva, my friend Pam’s daughter, who was an awesome baby-sitter and sandwich maker.
• Grandma Sandy and Grandpa Clyde, who got Jackson a new bike for his birthday.
• Great-Grandma, who got him a new helmet to go with that bike.
• Andrea and April, our lifeguard and helper at Delta Valley Athletic Club, who were on the ball, helpful, and authoritative.

It’s been a week, and so far, Jackson hasn’t even mentioned next year’s party yet.

Now, only 274 more days until Cassie’s birthday… (I’m thinking Princess Tiana).