The naturalist at the center showed the kids some of the rescued animals they care for; including a snake, rabbit, and a ferret. She also had items available for them to touch and explore like a turtle shell, deer skin and a snake skin. Then we all went outside to look at the eagles and hawks and to play some animal themed games. By the end of the hour session everyone was more than ready for pizza and cupcakes!!
Invitations and thank you notes I created myself using GIMP software (it's free!) and printed out on cardstock via Vistaprint. I drew inspiration from this invitation I found on pinterest. The thank you cards I made to match the invitation and made up the saying inside based on what a ninja turtle might say ;)
I was surprised at how difficult
it was to find paper goods. Maybe
because the cartoon is so new that products haven’t made it into mainstream
party stores yet, but I couldn’t even find them online when I was trying to
order ahead of time (me being the planner that I am). I finally found all of the paper goods at Target
less than a month before the party (phew!!)
I even found masks on clearance!
Double score!!
My son may be one of the few kids
on earth that does not like cake.
S(hocking, I know) He prefers fruit
or crunchy snacks over sweets. For his
school party I sent in an array of crunchy snacks for him to share with his
friends, but for his party I felt like we needed a traditional cake or
cupcakes. But since I wasn’t sure if he
was going to eat any, I figured why not save some money and try my hand at
making cupcakes this year. So off to google and pinterest I went in search of a vanilla cupcake recipe. If I
was going to make them, then I was going to do it from scratch. I settled on Magnolia’s Vanilla Cupcake
recipe. Very easy and turned out
delicious! I even added some candy bits
into the batter to make it more of a ‘funfetti’. I then decorated them to look like ninja
turtles – which was surprisingly quite easy.
I tinted the icing using green gel food coloring, the candy eyes were
store bought, used fruit by the foot/fruit roll ups for the eye masks and used
black gel icing to draw the mouth. I used these
as my inspiration (from pinterest of course).
For the favors I knew a long time
ago that I wanted to package whatever it was that I gave out in a pizza
box. Because ninja turtles love…..what
else, but PIZZA! Our local pizza place
was nice enough to give me the pizza boxes for free (yay!) and I created the
label in powerpoint, printed out and glued onto the boxes. I found inspiration for the
label via pinterest but decided to recreate the design myself so that I could
print in a larger size than the seller was offering.
I loved the idea of giving out a
single item to the kids. In the long run
it probably cost about the same or minimally more as a goody bag full of lots
of little stuff but honestly, the little stuff typically gets thrown away by a
lot of parents a few days after the party (I know I’m guilty of it). Finding 20 of the same t-shirt in varying
sizes proved a challenge, but I ultimately found them online at The Children’s Place. Boys got Ninja
Turtle t-shirts and the girls got green shirts with hearts.
All of the ninja turtles who
attended had a fantastic time and most of all the birthday boy had the best 5th
birthday!! The joy on his face that day
made all of the preparations and time I spent planning completely worth it.
Happy Birthday my Big Man!
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