Jake and the Neverland Pirates 3rd Birthday

Description

Jake and the Neverand Pirates Birthday Party for 3 year-old twin boys.

Design Inspiration

Pinterest!

Decorating Style

I like to reuse and re-purpose decorations while also adding DIY touches mixed in with with store bought supplies.

Project Details

The pirate theme is fun and easy to bring to live. I like for guests to experience the theme as much as possible without being too matchy matchy with the decor. I also try to reuse and re-purpose old party decorations and mix in a few diy projects. I started the planning process by diving into my boxes to see what we use and shopped Dollar Tree, Five Below, and the Target Dollar Spot for party decor. We lucked out and there was a lot of nautical and summer decor hitting the stores that we were use. We also mixed in some generic pirate decor with store-bought Jake the Pirate decor.

One of my best friends designed all the invitation and stationary. For the invitations, she did a treasure chest with a fun lock that had my boy's initials. The chest opened to a Jake and the Neverland Pirates cartoon scene with all the party information.

I think having a couple of simple diy statement pieces makes a big impact without spending a lot of money. As guest arrived to the party, they followed a treasure trail through our driveway. I made this using black and red duck tape and it took me about 10 minutes.

Instead of umbrellas, we used two diy sails in our patio tables: one for Jake’s ship Bucky and one for Hook’s ship Jolly Roger. These sails were really easy to make. Each sail required two 8ft tall wood posts and about 1 yard of fabric. We used the cheapest wood we could find at Lowes. The stripped fabric we used is from Ikea. The yellow circle for Bucky’s sail is made of some scrap yellow fabric I already had. The crow’s nests are made out of a couple of sand buckets we already had, one of which I spray painted black. The skulls were printed, took forever to cut, and about second glue on. The total for this project was less than $25.

The birthday cake table is usually the biggest focal point at a birthday party. We wrapped two columns with burlap (which has now been used in at least 4 parties). We used 3 green cardboards to make the leaves for both trees. For coconuts we used 6 gold balloons leftover from another party. The total for this project was about $3.

The fishing net on the wall is actually a spiderweb from our Halloween decorations! The “Happy Birthday” banner was designed by my firend. We also added some “gold doubloons” made out of gold cardboard and a few sand toys.

I made the treasure chest to mirror the invitation. It is made out of a diaper box wrapped with brown shipping paper from an Amazon shipment and black construction paper that had been sitting in our basement for years. We used it to hold the party favors (Jake the Pirate shields I found at Dollar Tree and Jake the Pirate bubbles I found at Party City). The frame is old from Ikea and it is holding a picture of the boys meeting Jake during our recent trip to Disney World. The “Ahoy” sign is a Target Dollar Spot find. The Jake the Pirate plastic tablecloth is from Party City.

I had a a Hawaiian inspired menue. We grilled bacon-wrapped chicken skewers with pineapple and I made Asian seashell pasta salad. We also had cannon balls (frozen meatballs in teriyaki sauce), seaweed dip (spinach-artichoke with pita chips and carrots), and fish n’ chips (potato chips and Goldfish). My husband also carved an amazing sharkmelon that we filled with watermelon, blueberries, and pineapple.

Party games are another big opportunity to bring the party theme to life. We had a few stations of games set-up for the kids: the Fountain of Youth (a water table we already had), Tic-Toc the Crocodile (this alligator seesaw I found on Craigslist), Walk the Plank (made out of a few pieces of scrap wood my husband screwed together a couple of hours before the party started and the kids were attacked by an inflatable crocodile as they walked their way down the plank), Dig For Treasure (Mardi Gras beads we already had as well as coins and trophies from Dollar Tree hidden in a turtle sandbox I found on a curb on my way home from picking up the boys from school one day), and Pin the Treasure Game (from Dollar Tree that was too small but served its purpose). We also had a Jake the Pirate ship tent that was a birthday gift for the boys and lots of bubbles.

After playing some of these games, the kids got “gold doubloons” (pirate plastic coins from Party City) for solving “Pirate Problems”. If you have ever watch Jake, one of the characters has pixie dust that Tinker Bell gave her to use “only on emergencies”. I decided it would be fun to sprinkle pixie dust on the kids (fine blue glitter). The kids absolutely loved this and went crazy “flying” around the yard. But the fine glitter got stuck on the kids sweaty heads and I am sure the parents now hate me and will never come to one of our parties ever again.

inally, no birthday party is complete without a piñata and cake. We used a pirate ship piñata from Target. After two rounds of having each kid hit the thing I had to tear it open! Maybe next year they will be strong enough to break it!

The cake was made by another friend. I made the sail using skewer sticks and some scrap fabric from the bigger sails we made. The Jake and Hook figurines were part of a birthday present.