We went the Minecraft route for Tommy’s birthday party this year. I was determined not to have a bunch of boys sitting around playing on various screens on a sunny day so we opted for party games that were inspired by Minecraft. After a lot of google searches and scouring Pinterest (see my party ideas board), we finally came up with enough activities to fill up 2 hours for 8 boys.

The first project we worked on was the piñata. Tommy saw a ghast piñata and wanted that. I was happy since it looked pretty easy – we basically copied the version from I Choose Awesome. I used old tissue paper to cover a shipping box (covered in white paper first), and while I was on the phone Tommy added the face using pieces of construction paper. I was quite proud of myself for letting go of my perfectionist tendencies – he was happy to have made it, the boys were going to be whacking it with a stick, so what if the face was a little askew!

I tried making a Minecraft pickaxe but only managed to make two since they were so time consuming. The kids did enjoy painting though. One axe didn’t survive the party and I still need to take a photo of the other one. The only time we used them was for our blow up the TNT game (combining two of Tommy’s loves – Minecraft and Mythbusters!).  We did the diet coke and mentos experiment, using diet coke bottles that had been decorated to look like Minecraft TNT – putting my stash of cardstock to good use:

This was a big hit:

We played other games like: zombie wiffle ball with water balloons and throw a pie (or water balloon) at the creeper. Both games were the brain child of my husband, being more in-tune with the minds of 9 year old boys. He dressed up as a zombie and let the boys throw pies and water balloon at him. What a dad! He filled over 200 water balloons and thought up many creative ways to use them!

My favorite dad-craft is the creeper he made:

Another idea I found on Pinterest was: Digging for Diamonds. This was really just a way to kill some time. I put a little candy in the bottom of a plastic cup and filled it with various juices over the course of a few days, freezing it after each addition. The object of the exercise was to dig down to the candy. Plus it’s like a popsicle.  Another food-related game was inspired by a post about a messy-boy party – we made jello cubes and asked the boys to try building with them. If you’ve ever tried to stack jello you’ll realize that this is pretty much impossible but the boys had a lot of fun trying to do it!

And then of course, it devolved into a giant mess (good thing we set them up with paper plates and a disposable tablecloth!):

The boys had a blast with all the activities – they got to hit stuff, break stuff, get messy and play with water balloons – what’s not to like?

For goodie bags I decided that I wanted to make shirts for the boys – the stenciled shirt from Instructables looked super-easy and fun. Unfortunately there were no green shirts in the craft stores! I did manage to find one so I made one for the birthday boy. He wore for the party but had to change mid-way through because of a water balloon incident 😉

Since I couldn’t find green t-shirts I was at a loss for what to do but Tommy suggested that I make Endermen using black t-shirts. Problem solved! Until I actually tried to make them and found out that the light colored fabric paint didn’t work so well on the dark shirts. Plan B involved using dark t-shirt iron-on transfers that I had from another project (yay for old crafty projects!). After some technical difficulties I did manage to finish all the t-shirts (Tommy on the far right is wearing the craft-fail version):

I made labels for the bags using a Minecraft font – Minecrafter, and a clear sticker sheet. The boys seemed to like that touch, along with the extra water balloons in the bag:

Oops! Almost forgot the food! There’s a million pins on Pinterest with suggestions for food but I went pretty simple – creeper brownies, chocolate chip cookies and watermelon. The creeper brownies used avocado frosting (Alton Brown) to get the green color (I just can’t bring myself to use food coloring) and liquorice for the face.

Afterwards, the entire family needed a nap 🙂