Preschool Pirate Party

Avast, Me hearties!

Jack, had his 3rd birthday this weekend and his mum asked me to do some entertaining and make some cupcakes.

So I hopped onto google images to find some cake toppers to print out and put in the top to dress them up.

After looking at plenty of suitable printables websites I found the lovely site Cottage Industrialist...lovely craft ideas which the site owner is generous enough to publish lots of printables for free.

When I found out Jack's Auntie Louise had made a big pirate ship cake I wanted to create its own mini armada to go with it so these printables hit the spot. The sails are fantastic with the faux high seas.

The cupcakes were made using a vanilla cupcake recipe from 'The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook' which, I might add, never fails to turn out perfectly. Topping the cakes is a basic chocolate butter icing piped on using a large star shaped icing nozzle from Lakeland.

These are the pictures of my attempts...

Cupcake 'boats'

Cottage Industrialist has a few different printables to match the ingenious cupcake wrappers, bunting, envelopes, invites and thankyou notes all with the nautical theme.

To go with the cupcakes, which are huge, I also made some smaller toddler friendly sized cakes for little mouthes.

I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes using the same recipe as the cupcake boats in Skulls cupcake cases then iced them with Baby Blue coloured water icing and topped with a sprinkle of hundreds and thousands and a chocolate coin.

Buried treasure cupcakes

So even though the party was a toddler party I brought along some additional items just to make the table look abit more "piratey" as Jack said when he sat down :)

I used some knarly 'old' black cloth that I originally bought from Toys 'r' Us last halloween but you can find this in any party or costume shop. Added to that is a foam skull, an old brass candlestick found in a charity shop and the treasure chest from the pirates treasure hunt. A good helping of pirates pieces of eight were added as table confetti.

The tableware is all from the Skulls theme to co-ordinate with the cupcake cases.

  

We ran the usual pass the parcel which had the obligatory too many layers and a jelly baby in each layer.

A twist to the usual pass the parcel is to place a piece of paper in each layer with a fun command such as 'clap 3 times', 'shout ahoy!' etc instead of sweets.

A pirate themed bouncy castle was also hired for the little ones to bounce around to their hearts content. As there was a mixed age range of kids it was great because the littleones were too young to concentrate on playing games continuously for the whole party.

Make a wish!

All in all a great time was had by all and the little finishing touches really made things even more special. All very little details that anyone could do, especially when armed with google, you never know what you might come up with!

Why choose a party theme?

Choosing a theme for your party can help when choosing games, activities or which professional children's entertainer to hire.

A theme doesn't have to be complicated or tied into a popular character from films and television. You could find inspiration in all sorts of ways.

Does your child like to dress up? You could use a theme for the costumes - prince and princess, occupations and animals are all great choices.

You could ask the children to arrive at the party dressed up and either DIY some face painting or hire a professional face painter to paint the kids faces to match their costume.

Arty crafty children might like a party around a simple concept such as their favourite colour. This can easily be applied to the party food, particularly cupcakes.

Sporty children might like a party that has lots of activity, sports, races and parachute games.

Once a theme has been decided it makes choosing activities, food, entertainment and party bags much easier as you can focus your research.

The earlier you can choose a theme the more organised you can be and a greater number of venue, entertainment and food options would be available to you.