Pirate Birthday Party

I had the best time planning a PIRATE PARTY for my four year old's birthday! His request was, "A pirate party and a pirate boat cake with a giant cracken trying to eat the boat." Am I the only one that didn't know what a cracken was until having boys??

I pulled out all of our Halloween Decorations for the party, including this skeleton wreath.

OPENING ACTIVITY: I knew the kids would all come at different times, so I wanted an opening activity that we could start while we waited for others to arrive. We had three stations - a face painting station, a tattoo parlor and a pirate dress up station.

STATION ONE: Pirate Face Paint. The boys got to choose their favorite color eye patch and a mustache/beard from these options. The girls got to choose their favorite color eye patch and a color of lipstick they wanted. A lot of kids wanted battle scars on their cheeks as well.

STATION TWO: Each kid got two tattoos. I cut up an old towel into 2 inch square pieces to dip in the water (in bread pans) to press on to the tattoos.

STATION THREE: Dress up in Pirate Attire. I found the vest and belt fabric from JoAnnes. If I were to do the vests again, I would do a straight line slit instead of the v-neck collar. The kids put on the vests and tied the red belt around their waists. The necklaces are from the dollar store and you can print the paper hats in my Pirate PDF. We measured the hats before stapling the paper together in the back.

After everyone was dressed up, we took a quick picture and I told the kids about the Pirate Adventure we were about to go on. We hoped to find a hidden treasure map! The banner and decorations are from Hobby Lobby. We got in our pretend pirate boat and "sailed" to the back yard. 

After we ran out of cannons (black balloons), we started to look for the treasure map. We thought of all the places it could be hidden. Could it be in a cannon? The kids started shaking their cannons and tried to pop them by sitting on them. I gave the birthday boy the cannon with the treasure map. He popped the cannon and we opened up the treasure map inside. It showed a path with an X that lead by the side of the house. 

We opened the gate and sure enough there was an X. We lifted up the box and underneath was a treasure chest! I bought the treasure chest piñata at Hobby Lobby and filled it with chocolate gold coins, salt water taffies (jewels) and inflatable pirate balls. I gave the kids each a treasure box (from Amazon) to keep their candy in once the piñata was open.

Afterward, we let the kids play in the back yard. They played with the obstacle course items, on the play ground and in our treasure sand box. I filled the sandbox with jewels and plastic coins (found on Amazon) and each of the kids could take some home with them. 

   

After playing for a little while, we came inside for cake and presents. 

TABLE SET UP:

The birthday banner, tablecloth, napkins, compasses and plates are all from Hobby Lobby. I found the net from The Dollar Store and the other items I already had at home. 

THE CAKE:

I used two store-bought chocolate cake mixes and made them in two round pans. It says to make one cake mix and divide it between the two pans, but I used about the entire box of prepared cake mix per pan. After both cakes cooled, I cut the left and right sides off the cakes (to make it into a boat shape) and used the side pieces to build up the back of the boat. I used one batch of the Wilton Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe to frost the layers and sides of the cake and it was perfect. It frosted easily and didn't set up very fast, so it gave me a lot of time to decorate. The waves are made from blue store bought frosting. And the cracken is made from store bought fondant. All I did was roll the fondant into the shapes I wanted - fondant is like play dough and much easier to use than I expected. I left the cake in the fridge overnight and took it out just before eating it.