Skylanders Birthday Party

Hey, Leslie's back today with another fabulous birthday party!


My oldest son turned 9 this weekend!  He didn't want many "toys" for his birthday this year and when my husband and I were birthday shopping, I felt a little sad because I feel like he is nearing a new stage.  Why do they grow up so fast?  Ok, enough of my boobing! 

This year, we did a family birthday party but he still wanted a "theme" (really, I don't know where he gets it from ; )    Last year was Angry Birds, but this year he and his brother are really into a game called Skylanders, so Skylanders it was.  I didn't go all out, but I thought if there are others out there whose boys love this game as much as mine, they might like a few of the things we came up with.

For the decorations, I drew the all important Skylander elements on the coordinating colored balloons.  I printed off coloring sheets of some characters here and then colored them while I finished up watching the last season of Parenthood.  (I love that show!)

I made some little confetti and/or cupcake toppers of the elements.  You can use them as well!  Here is a link to my file.  (If you print it, it will be a little pixely.  I took a black Sharpie and traced the edges to sharpen them up a little). 

But then, my son requested root beer floats and ice cream sundaes for the party, so I used them on top of the floats, but forgot to get a good picture of all the floats lined up. You get the idea:

Next, we had Skylander trivia.  The parents were out of the loop on this game... but the kids enjoyed it.  And, to save you time from looking up random trivia and learning more than you probably ever wanted to know about Skylanders... here is the link to our trivia!  Feel free to use it.

One last game idea:  you could take down the balloons and say the name of a certain Skylander character.  The kids have to run to the correct element that particular Skylander coordinates with.  I included a list of these under the link for trivia above.

Last, I made a little favor for the cousins to take home. I made them using a similar technique as described here (I use Glossy Accents rather than Diamond Glaze). Also, rather than use scrabble tiles, I wanted something bigger, so my brother cut these wood squares for me, which measured about 1 1/2" x 1 1/2". I found the graphics online, copy and pasted them into Word, printed them off and glued a character on both sides of the wood. Then I screwed in the key chain parts that I purchased from JoAnns. (If you want more details on how to make them, just leave a comment or email).
And yes, Tinker Bell is not a member of Skylanders, but there are fairies... so I figured my niece would rather have Tink than Terrafin!

Hope this gives you some ideas for a birthday party or a fun summer activity if you have little ones that love this game like mine!  (Or are mine the only ones???)