Joe's Birthday Bash

Finally, here is how Joe's 5th birthday turned out. It was very Star Wars, and very non-girl.  I had a lot of fun putting this one together too, and many thanks to all the other moms who posted awesome ideas on Pinterest. :)

Kody has some mad skills with the cardboard cut-out art. 

 I bought army men at the $1 store and renamed them "Han Solo" for the sake of keeping it legit, and froze them in "carbonite"  (aka water with blue food coloring). The boys then each got a spoon on the back patio and the first kiddo to chip away all 5 won the grand prize: one of those foam animals you soak in water and watch grow (from the dollar store also).   :)

 Cans of silly string for the grand finale: Shooting Darth Vader. 

I found all kinds of cool printables online and cut out TONS of them and covered my sliding glass doors. We set up a nerf gun table with darts where they boys played target practice. The goal was to only hit the storm troopers on the sliding door, avoiding the good guys. As you can imagine, combining 7 boys with nerf guns was a big hit.

 Dessert: Princess Leia cupcakes, Yoda cupcakes and Death Star cupcakes (which was just a blob of frosting with an oreo because I really didn't have the creativity to pull that one off--but the Princess Leia ones turned out super cute!).

*I really dug the play on oreos as Princess Leia's hair here

Joe showing off his skills

 Chipping away at the carbonite

Jedi training with inflatable light sabers

Getting ready to silly string the poster of Darth Vader....

All in all, it was a great day. I can't believe they are FIVE. 

They enjoyed having their own parties with their own style, and they each got these cool new dress ups that have been getting a lot of mileage. 

Putting together 2 birthday parties left me wiped out though. I told all the kids I was taking the next year off. :)