NINJAGO PARTY!

My son Chase recently had his seventh birthday party and like most boys his age, he loves Lego Ninjago. He wanted to have a Ninjago party and I was immediately flooded with ideas. First was the invitation:

If you have Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements, this is super easy to put together using Google images, a photo of your 'ninja', and your text. For complete instructions, click here.

Since my son's birthday is in August and we have a pool, his party is always a pool party. Not many of the kids at this age are very interested in playing 'pin the sword on the ninja' or any of the other staple party games. Besides, it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to round up all these kids to play anything when there is a pool. So, wanted to do something that only took a minute and that didn't require all the kids to gather at once. I used a plastic pretzel rods container, printed a label, counted legos (427 to be exact) and filled the container. The child with the closest guess won a Lego Ninjago booster pack:

I primarily focused on the food and decor since no one wanted to waste precious swimming time with silly games. For a healthy option I made the 'Great Devour' out of 3 cucmumbers. I used a grape tomato sliced in half for the eyes and carved a tongue out of a sliced carrot (I secured this in the mouth with a toothpick). The kids NEVER touch the veggie trays but this one went fast! Funny how if you jazz something up the kids flock to it:

A simple creamy Italian pasta salad was topped with Chinese Noodles in lieu of croutons:

For drinks I typically put out juice boxes but this time I also added Ninja Water. I seriously could NOT believe that more water than juice was consumed by the kids! All it took was a roll of packing tape and some glossy photo paper. I only used the small 8oz bottles (a case of 70 was only approximately $5 at COSTCO). I printed these (I will post link soon) on glossy photo paper and cut the strips down. I was concerned about the colors running when the bottles got wet in the cooler so I flattened a strip of packing tape over the label and fastened it to the bottle over the original label:

For a sweet option aside from cake, we made 'sushi'. I had a coupon for a box of 50 Rice Krispy Treats at COSTCO so I didn't make those myself. I got a tub of Swedish Fish and a box of Fruit by the Foot, cut the Fruit by the Foot down to 6"-7" strips (do this before taking the tape off the back), and folded them in half so that they are 6" x 1/2". I placed the fish on top of the Krispy Treat and wrapped it with the Fruit by the Foot. This stuff is sticky so it secured to itself easily:

For decor, I borrowed a large Lego sorting container from my friend. These retail for about $40 at Toys R Us and when you dump the Legos in, it automatically sorts them by size. I will be investing in one of these. :) For now, I borrowed the giant head and simply wrapped a red square table cloth around it to resemble the red ninja:



For the balloons, we converted them into ninja heads. This part did not work out as well as I intended but I know what I did wrong. For one, my printer was not working properly so a lot of my preparation time was consumed by troubleshooting it and ultimately ended up buying a new printer. With that said, I bought self stick address labels, printed the ninja eyes on them and stuck them to the balloons. What I SHOULD have done was just print the yellow face part and NOT use transparent labels. I didn't realize I bought transparent labels until I printed on them and at that point I was out of time and couldn't get back to the store for the right kind. We did this on black, blue, red and white balloons. To save money, we blew them up ourselves and just put some on top of vases, taped them to walls, etc. The rest were just all over the floor in the basement (playroom) in case some kids came inside to play.

Here is the cake. I do decorate cakes. If you live in the Philadelphia area and are interested in ordering a specialty cake, please contact me! To be honest, I was very pressed for time and this poor cake suffered some shortcuts but I am still pleased with the result:



For the favors, I searched high and low for the colored Chinese take-out containers. Many people told me they were at Target in the dollar section but my Target was wiped clean of them. As I mentioned, I was running out of time so we stopped at a Chinese restaurant and for $5 they sold me 25 authentic containers! I slapped a Ninjago label on each and stuffed them. We made chocolate covered pretzel rods, paired them, tied them together with a red shoestring licorice and attached a tag to the bag that read 'Congratulations, young master! You have earned your nun-chucks'. I found a candy store at the King of Prussia Mall (Sweet Factory) that sells Lego candy. Some of it borders the base of the cake (above) and the rest of it was distributed amongst the loot containers. We also added one fortune cookie and a pair of chop sticks:

Happy birthday, Chase!!! I'll do anything for my little man. My first, truest love. <3