Pokémon Party!

So Ben, my eldest son, is somewhat, hmm... Passionate, about Pokémon.

I, probably because I'm his mother, have no idea most of the time what on earth he's talking about, who the characters are, what their powers are, who they turn into, or what they look like... But he certainly does! And he likes telling me all about it anyway... :)

Well, it was his 9th birthday party this weekend (far out, where has the time gone!), and Ben had been planning this party for at LEAST 3 months... My goodness, details of location, food, even what he wanted us to get for him (it didn't help that the toy catalogues all came out a few weeks before his party), would change at least weekly... Many mornings he would rush into our room with a piece of paper scribbled with such elaborate and outrageous plans... I think at one stage he had the whole suburb invited to his party, which was running from 9-3, starting at a park 15 minutes away, playing some games, swinging on the swings, eating cake, then going to the local pools for some swimming and lunch, then going to the movies, followed by a trip to Lazer Zone, finishing with everyone back here for a play on the trampoline! I had very quickly decided that it was going to be ME who organises his party... After explaining to Ben we would be having it at home, I told him that he could choose a theme... Which was quite obviously going to be Pokémon. So the actual planning begun...

The date was chosen, and it was time to write the final list (out of about 20 that had been 'lost'... I think I accidentally washed one of them, too, oops!) of who to invite, and to design the invitations :)

Invitations: I found an awesome Pokémon font site and was able to write what I wanted on the invites in a Pokémon font! How cool. Ben chose the image to go on top, and the invites eventually ended up looking like this ->

Food: The food we served was pretty much just your normal party food. Though, as per Ben's request, we added mini croissants (with my new Tupperware croissant maker) and mini burgers. I chose to give the kids poppas to drink with lunch, so that there was no confusion as to "is this my cup? where's my cup? Who is drinking from my cup?"

Craft & Games: As a creative person, I was really excited about the crafts and games I could organise! First, the kids started with a 'Make-Your-Own-Poké-Ball' craft! It was simply the middle of a white round paper plate (cut prior to party), with a black line and black/white spot in the middle (also added prior to the party). I provided crayons, pencils and stickers. All the kids needed to do was decorate one side of the line, and they had their very own (2 dimensional) Poké Ball! All the kids (even the girls!) enjoyed this... Plus, they all looked great, and the kids got to take them home :)

The Make-Your-Own-Poké-Balls prior to the party:

And after the kids had decorated them:

Next up was Pokémon Bingo! With the help of Google images and Ben's Pokémon Official Guide, I found pictures of 25 different Pokémons (out of at least 1000 I'm sure), put them all into a grid, and also made slightly bigger ones that I could hold up when I called them out. The first child with a row of Pokémon's in any way won a prize (chocolate, of course)! Here's what 1 of the 12 different grids looked like:

And, because I couldn't find any little counters at shops (I didn't start looking until the last minute, though), and I REALLY didn't want to cut anything else up, I used M n Ms (I called them Pokémon treats) as the counters. The kids were all given a plastic shot glass each of these Pokémon treats to use to make a line. Then after the game was finished, they could eat them!

Another 'Pokémon treat' game we played was a guessing game... Inside (washed and cleaned) baby food jars were M n Ms and jelly beans. The children had a chance to guess the closest amount of 'treats' that were inside the jar, and the winners won the jars :)

During the party, I gave each child a Pokémon 'tail', which was simply a feather boa cut up and tied to a piece of elastic to go around each child's waist. There was light pink (for Mew - Ben's favourite Pokémon), light purple (for I thought 'Mewtwo'), yellow (for Pikachu - probably the most popular Pokémon ever), and blue because I liked blue, but Ben couldn't think of a Pokémon that had a completely blue tail... HOWEVER... At the party, the kids had worked out that Rattata was purple, and Feraligatr was blue! They were paying more attention to Pokémon Bingo than I thought! We then played some games with these tails and Pokémon names, including 'Once-I-call-your-character's-name-you-need-to-stand-up-and-imitate-it', which turned into a very loud but very fun game!

Another game (this one was actually Ben's idea) was Pin-The-Tail-On-Mew. I printed out an outline of Mew (that I had cleverly erased its tail from), and stuck it up on the wall. We used 15cm sized pieces of pink ribbon as Mew's tails, and I glued small pieces of paper to the ends, so the children's names could be written on them, and so we knew who was the closest.

Birthday Cake: I knew that 'Poké Ball's would work well on cupcakes for dessert. So with as-white-as-I-could-get and as-red-as-I-could-get icing, I iced each half of the cupcakes with the different colours, placed half a mini Oreo in the middle, then used chocolate fudge frosting to draw a line to separate the colours and thus complete the 'Poké Ball Cupcakes:

Decorations: While I was shopping for party decorations, I was a bit sad to see NO Pokémon items at any party shops. I saw a really cool Pokémon table cover on eBay, but I didn't want to buy it for it not to arrive on time... So I thought I'd see if I could find something closer... Maybe I should have just got it?

Well after visiting the party shops, I wandered around for a while so that I could make up my mind about what to do with the table then... Ben likes soccer, should I get a soccer table cover? ... Or just red perhaps? ... And THEN! I realised that if I got red AND white, folded them in half lengthways, get some black cardboard to cut into a circle... I could make a POKÉ TABLE!! ... So that's exactly what I did. It was cheaper than buying it from eBay, too... Total cost was about $6 :)

And here's the Poké Table set up for the arrival of Ben's guests
and the Poké Ball craft:

With some red, white and black cardboard, I had made big (well, the size of Ben's soccer cones) Poké Balls to stick up around our house, inside and out. Outside so that people would know where to find us, along with some red and white balloons tied together, and inside to add to the theme. I also had red and white crepe paper so made some small streamers to hang down from around the skirting along the hallway :) I also printed out many little paw prints that Ben and Tamara helped to stick around on the walls... It truly was a Pokémon themed house!

I've learnt a lot about Pokémon since I started organising my son's birthday party. I started paying attention to try and understand the things he tells me about Pokémon, and I even watched an episode of Pokémon!! (not that it helped with my comprehension OR understanding of Japanese cartoons)... Even writing this post, I learnt how to put a dash above the 'e' in Pokémon!! But, shame, now that it's over I'll just have to focus on other things... :)

And I've been informed that it's less than 3 months until my daughter's birthday, so that's a good place to start :)