What boy doesn’t love ninjas! This was an amazing theme to tackle. There were so many ideas popping out of my brain that I couldn’t wait to put it all together. We recently had our spring break trip to Japan in April so the inspiration definitely came from that! And now that I had my theme, I had to decide what the details of this shindig would be. Teddy’s always always always begging for sleep overs, and while I loathe them ( I value sleep pretty highly ) he for some reason thinks they are super fun. So – a ninja sleep over it would be. Next up was keeping the number a bit smaller for this type of party. Two years ago when I did an army themed party for him I ended up with over twenty five kids. NO WAY was this going to be a sleep over with that many haha. Im crazy, but not that crazy! So we ended up with 11 boys, plus Teddy which was perfect. The damage done by this number to my house was within reason. 😉
Next up was deciding what kind of ninja party. Since he was turning 10, I couldn’t go too cutesy, and he didnt want ninja turtles, so in keeping with the Japan trip as my inspiration, I kept to a more asian theme. Red is Teddy’s favorite color. So that is what I started with.
The first thing I do — is head to Pinterest! I start months ahead of time adding all kinds of inspiration and then I build from that. You can find my Ninja Pinterest board HERE. If only I had even better time management skills, I might have even used more of the amazing ideas I have pinned there. Then my favorite part… the shopping. Between Amazon and Oriental trading company and Party City, most of my needs were easily met. I also have accumulated quite the party and craft stash… so that does come in handy! I’ll share what I am able to reuse in the next blog entry.
I searched Etsy for what kind of printable party pack would set the tone and I found this awesome seller HERE. She was great and even accommodated a few special requests I needed. I’d highly recommend her! I did adjust the invite just a little as I was having trouble with my home printer and couldn’t get the red right, so I added the sepia effect to it using picmonkey.com. The rest of the printables were used as they were created by her and I used Costco to print those all out.
Every kid loves getting party favors! I hate sending them home with plastic junk that just gets thrown away so I like to give them things that add to the party itself. This time around I scored at Walmart with Ninja T-shirts! These were even more than awesome as they glowed in the dark!
I also had pinned tons and tons of ideas for what kind of head gear I would do when I stumbled upon this genius idea. As I mentioned already, I am lacking time management skills so I needed something quick and easy. There was no time to get the sewing machine out this week. All I needed for these were 1 and a half inch wide white satin ribbon, a black sharpie and the Shanghai font. I printed out their names with the font and then just traced onto the ribbon with a sharpie. I heat sealed the ends ( just take a flame and carefully melt the ends so they won’t fray ) and be careful as the sharpie will bleed a bit. You can find the link to the original idea HERE. I seriously appreciated her blog!
Amazon was a score with these awesome foam swords, and the dollar store provided the blow up ninja shields. However, the dollar store wasn’t even worth the dollar as the blow up shields were crap and broke immediately. I was very please to find that the foam swords held up great and the boys spent a huge amount of time running around with them in the backyard.
I got the goodie boxes and filled them with tattoos, a dragon ring and squeezable ninja guy all from Oriental Trading Company and also candy from big mixed bags from Costco.
They also got a Ninja sippy cup and chopsticks to take home. These looked awesome on the table and cut down on wasted drinks as I put my big drink container out with water that they were able to fill up their cups with on their own all night. They loved this.
Once they all arrived, I had them change into their t-shirts and put on their bandanas and then it was time to eat!
Food and decor to be continued on the next entry!! Thanks for reading!
~ Ninja Mom Rhonda
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