Gabriel's Good Tidings: Monster Birthday Party

A few weeks ago we celebrated half a decade with my oldest baby! I cannot believe how fast these five years have passed by. I was miserably ill my entire pregnancy with him.... morning, noon, night, midnight sickness lingered the entire nine months! We moved to a new state and a new career for my husband when he was only two months old.... a move through the snow, ice and other horrendous weather conditions. Then, when he was 19 months old, we brought home a baby sister, who he lovingly welcomed into our family. Just six weeks after that, we moved across the country to our current city of Orlando. The first two years involved way too many moves, but he has always been an amazing kid to "go with the flow" and keeps us laughing and smiling all day long!

We had this party at a local park. I paid to rent a pavilion for four hours, and timed the party to start one hour after the pavilion rental began. This gave me one hour to set up and transform a park pavilion into a monster home! I had lots of good help and it was all worth it for this birthday boy.

He requested a "Monster Birthday Party". I always let my kids pick a theme -usually I give them three choices and let them pick one - and then I take over the decor and food and other party planning. With an October birthday, monsters abound in the stores for Halloween, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind. I wanted bright colors, silly faces, googly eyes, and fun textures.

The inspiration piece was a stuffed monster that I found at a local consignment sale, Boutique For A Week. (If you live in Orlando, make sure to stop by their spring sale- it's the cleanest, most organized sale I've ever seen!) This fun monster had the bright green, yellow, blue and a punch of black that I was dreaming of. And, it was only $1. Amazing.

I sat this phenomenal find on top of the cupcake stand that my father made. It's a wooden circular stand with four "level" for cupcakes. We'll use it year after year for parties, and I may even use it at craft shows when I sell items from my Etsy shop. I was inpsired by this photo I found on Pinterest, and originally planned to add fur and googly eyes to the stand, but then decided it was better without.

My mother-in-law and "Mimi" (my husband's grandmother) graciously made the cupcakes. They were delicious!!! And, they looked perfect. The edible eyes came from Target, but similar ones can be found here on Amazon. The cupcake liners were from the Little Monsters Printable kit from MyGrafico.

For other food, we had a veggie tray, chips & salsa, and pretzels with spinach dip. I also served fruit in clear plastic cups, which I had done at another birthday party a year or so ago. It keeps little hands off the fruit bowl, keeps it from getting too mushy, and makes for a great display. I rarely serve fruit any other way!

For the table runner, I bought a roll of wrapping paper from Target. After the picnic table was covered with a white plastic tablecloth (from Dollar Tree), I taped down the wrapping paper. I also used my green shag rug from my kitchen to put under the cupcake stand. It gave the illusion of monster fur. (Don't worry, I washed it the morning of the party and didn't use it as a rug again until after the party.)

For the decor, I made monster boxes - 28 of them! This was, by far, the most time consuming part of party prep. I collected latex glove boxes from work (most of you know I put on my RN "hat" from 4 pm to midnight each night) and transformed them into monsters. First, I opened the box on the side and slid a piece of wrapping paper to form the "back of the mouth". I always used two contrasting wrapping papers to give more patterns and color. Then, I wrapped the entire box in wrapping paper. Most of the wrapping paper came from the Dollar Tree, but a bit was from Target, and some was just found in the box under my bed! After wrapping the box completely, I cut open the mouth (where you reach in to grab gloves) and taped it to the inside of the box. I glued googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and pom pom balls to give the monster a "face" and then added teeth to the inside of the mouth. Simple- even the birthday boy (and his sister) helped with some of it.

I strung fishing line through the monsters to make a "chandelier" of seven. I had four sets of seven monsters, one to hang above each table at the pavilion. I tied the fishing line to a beam directly above the tables.

On each of the four tables, I had coloring sheets (again from the Little Monsters Printable Kit) and a bucket of crayons. The buckets were from Target Dollar Spot, but I removed the fall colored ribbon and glued googly eyes.

I covered each table with a white plastic tablecloth and then cut a square table topper from wrapping paper.

For the food table, I made a banner with my 1" and 2" circle punch. I did a similar thing for my daughter's Pink and Purple Birthday Party 18 months ago. It's so easy when you have the circle punches. Of course, I added google eyes to this banner as well - the kids helped with that!

Couldn't leave the cups out of the decorations! They got googly eyes, too!

Since this party was at the park, I didn't plan many games or activities, but I did make this fun photo booth. I used foam board to create the frame, and then glued fur (from Jo-Ann's) to the frame. I printed the monsters on cardstock and added them to the bottom. The frame hung from fishing line at the perfect 5-year-old height.

I had a table beside the frame with fun props for the kids to use in their photos, and it was certainly funny to see them put the eyes over their mouths and other 5-year-old goofs like that!

For party favors, I made each child a monster snack bag. I didn't want to give more sweets, so I figured something useful would be perfect. If you aren't familiar with reusable snack bags, click on this link to learn more about the ones in my Etsy shop. The monster fabric was found at the Sewing Studio in Orlando, one of my all-time favorite sewing stores!