I thought I would post about if here also since my personal blog is private, and that way if anyone else out there is looking for ideas this might help them out.
First the invitation, I just took some images off of the internet and we made this up, and then just had it printed off like a picture. He was so excited to hand them out.
He didn't want a lot of decorations, and was very seriously about that so I just went with it and only put up a few lanterns. If he would have let me decorate I had some great ideas.
We put out cups of crayons, for the drawing and coloring that we had. Then filled the cups with a couple Oreo's and gummy worms. The cookies for the dirt and worms for the snakes. There as been a flu bug going around this area like crazy so I wanted to keep the passing germs to a minimal.
We printed up different Ninjago coloring pages off the internet and used the make up your own Ninja name and put that on the front to make our own Ninjago Coloring books. I also aged paper to make it look old so they could make their own maps to find the golden weapons.
I cut out about 12 skeletons and drew their faces on. Then spray painted paper towel rolls gold, then attached the skeletons to those.. I got the idea from HERE, she had some fun ideas.. Then we used the shurikens I made to play skeleton bowling. They each took a turn and would throw their shuriken and see how many skeletons they could knock down.
We also let each child take home a skeleton..
Sorry a crappy cell phone picture of the awesome shurikens that I made. I will try and post the pattern that we made up. I used a soft fleece, then just sewed to side together leaving a little hole to turn them. Make sure you cut the center hole first, before you sew. You can sew all the sides together and just flip from the middle but it makes stuffing it a bit tricky.
I used the tips HEREon how to sew the middle.. I made enough for each child to have one to take home.
THen my little man decided each friend needed a weapon, but he wanted them to be more like the new weapons they got when Lloyd become the spinjitzu master.. Ya I had to watch that episode a few times to even guess how to do this, since you can't but anything like them.
I already had a ton of fleece so I just used that again and did a few different colors. I have a pattern for the sword part, just not the handle, but that is pretty easy just ti figure out what size you want. Then sew the sword and handle together first, then sew the edges leaving an opening to flip the right side out. Stuff them shovel a skinny long dowel on, stitch the opening closed and your done.
There should have been a red or an orange color but I didn't have that on hand so I talked him into not needing it.. White was one of the favorite colors though..
I think they turned out pretty good, plus way fun to play with. Each child was able to go home with one as well.
We want to play the game pin the sword on the ninja so I drew Zane up, as requested by the birthday boy. We did him in his outfit also. I am the worst artist ever but I found a step by step on how to draw a lego ninja online and wow that really helped.. http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/11213/1/1/how-to-draw-zane,-ninjago.htm
We then played a Sensei Wu game which was to guess who had the golden coin. We used 3 golden coins and hid them with kids in the circle. Then the child we had leave the circle before would have 3 guesses on who had the coins. It was really fun, and everyone had to have a turn guessing..
Then on to something really fun but really messy. For ninja strength we had a board breaking game. Nathan was able to get a ton of styrafoam from work. So he cut those up into more board lengths then we put them in between 2 chairs. I think they could have played this forever..
Took a minute to clean up, they kids were great about helping getting all the big pieces off the ground. Then we just hurried and vacuumed real quick.
While Nathan vacuumed I started the skeleton bowling game.. so sad I didn't get a picture of the playing, but we set all the skeletons up and they took turned throwing their shurikens at them.
Then onto the pin the sword on the Ninja..
My guy somehow just walked straight up and got it on the right spot, and Nathan spun him really well..
We played Lego Bingo, cards from Here. I had bags of candy already ready for each one. Starburts are the perfect size for the squares.
I am sure there was some sword fighting, and we may have turned that into a freeze dance type of a game. That was really fun..
I also made some cute hats that went into the goody bags.. Just cut all the eyes and face part out, then used double sided interfacing to put the eyes on the faces. Then used double sided interfacing again on the face part and ironed that onto the hats. Then just zigzag the edge of the face part to make sure they didn't come off.
Sad the only picture I have is the one I took off of my phone. We had black, blue and grey hats. Well and one pink for my little girl
We also had candy, and some skeleton pens, and squiggly snakes in the take home bags. Plus add the shurikens and swords, and they had lots to take home.
It didn't cost me a lot to make this all since I had all the fabric and stuffing on hand. I also had all the beanies since Nathan had bought them last year on clearance.
Ashton had a blast and well thats all that really matters. I had to rush to finish everything, but it was a great and needed distraction to life..
I will try to post up the patterns for the few things I made, since it wasn't hard t o make them and everyone had so much fun with it all.
