Sunday, May 27, 2012

Army Camouflage Party


ARMY PARTY


This year we made the brave (or perhaps silly) decision to throw each of the boys a birthday party. The first off the rank is our middle boy who is turning 9, and has a keen interest in the military, so the theme was a bit of a no brainer. Some of you may have seen my post for his birthday last year where I made him an army tent cake, although it was just a small cake as it was only for our family.


For party planning, I spent a day googling and found some amazing parties from fellow bloggers, which provided so much inspiration. I then googled a little more for the supplies, and found a couple of great online stores which provided me with everything I needed to throw the "greatest party of all time" (according to my son!)


For the invitations I created a camouflage themed postcard style invitation on Purple Trail which I printed at home. I then used this design to make the food labels too.






For the decorations I purchased 2 metres of camouflage material from Spotlight, and my wonderful husband made a timber frame which we stapled the fabric to before screwing it onto our old timber outdoor table. 







For the food, I made some two tone green and brown jelly (lime and cola), and we had a great time giving them all fantastic military names:


  • caramel shrapnel (caramel demitasse sticks) 
  • camo coloured lolly pops, 
  • platoon party pies and sabotage sausage rolls
  • marble cupcakes (green, vanilla and chocolate),
  • caramel cracker bombs (caramel popcorn)
  • chocolate bombs (maltesers)
  • liquorice bullets
  • missile mixed lollies
  • ration honey soy chips
The decorations were all things I found around the house, I had some bamboo toy boxes which we turned upside down to serve as the cake and cupcake stands, some little tin buckets to hold some of the food (I lined these with aluminium foil because we have been using them to hold our colouring pencils) and the lids of some green and black Ikea boxes.



I did purchase some ammunition boxes from our local Army disposal store for decoration, but these will go on display in the birthday boy's bedroom now!



The children all received their own ID tag, water bottle and binoculars along with their little goodie box (filled with a couple of chocolates, toy army man, tank and a couple of tattoos.




Then the cake...well this was a bit of a last minute design which to be completely honest was very much about EASY, EASY, EASY!! (I already had 2 wedding cakes, a 50th birthday, and an engagement cakes ordered for that day) I had a friend offer to come over and help, and without her I would have been up until after midnight so I am eternally grateful.

For entertainment we hired the local Laser Skirmish company who host backyard parties. He was absolutely amazing and the children had so much fun; he kept them completely entertained...it was fantastic. It was a little pricey, but as everything else was really reasonable we were able to splash out - and it was so worth the cost.

  

Thank you for reading,
Jo



Suppliers

Invitations - Purple Trail
Backdrop - Spotlight
Cake - Coco Jo
Laser Skirmish - Laser skirmish CQ