Remember my Lego Star Wars invitations? Well the party was GREAT, and I’m FINALLY blogging about it. It was SO much fun and turned out just great. I didn’t quite get everything done I wanted to (I never do it seems) but at some point you always have to stop and go with what you’ve got! **update – find the Lego Star Wars printables here**
Because our children attend a charter school (for kids on the autistic spectrum) over 20 mins away we’ve had bad luck getting guests to show up to our house for parties. A lot of their schoolmates live in the other direction and sometimes even farther away than us. So we decided that having another party at our house would be futile, and so I picked a park right next to the school and set the party date and time for just after school got out on a Thursday. We ended up with about half the class so it worked out great!
I had fun laying out the food and the table but then just as it was time to take pictures the sun peeked out over the gap in the pavilion and lite up the table just WRONG! So the pictures are all full of bright red reflections from the tablecloth, and shadows and bright lights. No matter what I do I just can’t get good pictures to save my life of my pictures! GAH! Someday I’ll get it all right!
My favorite part of the overall decor was my Lego block carbonite Hans Solo! No one else at the party was nerdy enough to appreciate it fully. I cut it out of vinyl with my new Silhouette machine. And I love love LOVED it! And the first of my themed food… Leia Rolls! I opted not to put the frosting on the cinnamon rolls so you could see the roll design, I didn’t want to cover up what made them look like Leia’s hair! On to the rest of the food!
You can also see my table layout. Again, I’m still figuring out how to best get amazing, and pretty, party layouts. Clearly I need to play with more height next time! In fact I cut out the backdrop and the pendant banner I made because they just looked TERRIBLE! Super high, with all this space between the table/food and them… Bad bad BAD!
I had SO much fun coming up with food that fit the theme of our party! Pixie sticks for Light Sabers was the obvious choice (that or candy dipped pretzels) but did you know that they are SUPER hard to find these days? I went to 7 different stores! SEVEN! I choose to go with pixie sticks for speed, in the end it might’ve been faster to dip all the pretzel sticks in chocolate! And Chocolate candy rocks for Space rocks! All the images for the labels are from screen shots of the various Lego Star Wars games! Some where harder to find good pictures of than others, so making the labels took DAYS longer than I thought it would.
The favorite food of the adults by FAR was my white chocolate Padme Popcorn! Good thing I made a HUGE batch of it! My favorite title is my Wookie Balls (get it? No? Well it’s funny…)! Here is one of the area’s I ended up falling short. My PLAN was to make homemade hostess coconut covered Snowballs , but in brown of course (get it? Big brown coconut covered balls? GET IT???). I ended up just getting donuts holes, fast and easy, but not quite a fun.
MY favorite food to EAT was the Hoth Pops (if your not a big geek like me it’s the Snow covered planet!)! I have to admit I’m not a cake ball fan (shhh don’t tell anyone) but I DO love oreo balls, so that’s what I made! I covered them in white chocolate and, not that you can see them, edible sparkles (I was SO glad there was leftovers, I made about 50 and I probably ate HALF of them)! Then I used chocolate gold coins for my Boba Fett Bounty!
I used Nerds candy for Space Dust, I kind of wished I could’ve found something less colorful, but they are the perfect size and so fun to eat! And Sour Patch Kids for my Edible Ewoks. These were the kids favorites. I have a picture of one little boy with a plate FULL of these, about 1/2 an inch THICK. And it wasn’t his first plateful!
I LOVED the Yoda Soda, it’s sprite and lime sherbert mixed together. It is SUCH a lovely color, and I have to say it tasted pretty darn good. One of my favorite parts of the party prep was my C-3PO H2O. I had this idea to spray paint the water bottles Gold. My husband said it wouldn’t work, but I had high hopes. They turned out LOVELY! Just lovely! I am SO in love with these. I think I’ll have more spray painted water bottles in the future! They worked great, and of course when you take the lid off you have nice non-painted plastic for drinking. My kids LOVED drinking the special GOLD water. But my oldest did tell me I should have named it C-3PO oil, because he wouldn’t drink water- silly me!
And the centerpiece my Lego Millennium Falcon! I kind of wish I’d had another hour to spend on this, but I always feel that way when it comes to my cakes. They are NEVER good enough for me and my vision, but it’s recognizable, cute and the birthday boy loved it. THAT’S what really matters in the end. And of course it tasted GREAT! He picked Strawberry, I am SO glad I finally have an AMAZING strawberry cake recipe. It’s taken years, but I’m really in love with it now!
And the back of the cake… The park was sunny and warm but we did have a wind come whipping through the pavilion where we were set up and I didn’t think we’d be able to pull off candles. But with the help of my dad holding his jacket on one side and someone else holding a plate on the other we were able to get the candles to work JUST long enough for him to blow them out!
When you think six high functioning autistic kindergartners at a party you automatically think “how am I going to keep them occupied?”. I knew by having the party at the park that would keep them occupied for a few mins, but these boys don’t have a long attention span. SO I came up with some fun hands on crafts.
The first, and by FAR the most popular was decorating their own light sabers. I went to my FAVORITE store (Home Depot) and bought some 9 ft long foam pipe covers. I cut them down to 3 ft each and then covered the bottom 6 inches with some SHINY aluminum Duct Tape (not the brand duct tape, but tape for ducts… Then I had Duct tape (the brand) in 4 different bright colors (red, yellow, green and blue) for the boys to decorate their own light sabers with! At the beginning everyone went with one color, but after my dad created his own multi-colored light saber it was all the rage. We soon had stripes, spirals, etc…
I used my Silhouette to create Lego Star Wars Temporary Tattoos for all the kids! love love LOVE them! The kids did too! My son has been using up the extras over the last 2 weeks. I’m down to my last 3, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have to make more once they are officially gone!
For a sit down craft, for the quieter attendee’s, I had Galaxy Play dough. I found it on Pinterest a few weeks ago (LOVE that site) and thought it would be PERFECT! I made homemade BLACK play dough (salt) and bought a ton of different colored glitter. Then I let each child have a handful of the play dough and picking their own glitter colors (or some of EVERY color) they got to knead the glitter into the dough! Then I had containers for them to take their new, shiny, galaxy play dough home with!
And of course it wouldn’t be one of my kids birthday’s without a homemade pinata. I made a death star pinata! Using a punch ball to get the perfectly round shape, and after a few layers cutting out a circle, filling the pinata, and putting the circle BACK on, but inverted I created a Death Star. My mistake with this one? I sprayed it with metallic silver paint and then when I went to draw a bunch of black detailed lines onto it with my sharpie it wouldn’t write! GRRRRR! It was so shiny and glossy the pen wouldn’t work on it! So it was a pretty bland/plain pinata. I should’ve gone with a matte grey… NEXT TIME!
A HUGE treat for my sweet birthday boy is that his kindergarten teacher came too. She is just amazing, I can’t sing her praises enough. She had a class of 13 autistic boys all year (and it’s all day kindergarten) and she was absolutely incredible! I love that she was right there playing light sabers with the boys the whole party. I wish she was moving up every year with my sweet little boy, but alas, I have to leave her for the future kindergartners to love! I can count on one hand the number of people that TRULY “get” and love my son, and she is one of them.
So a totally fun and successful party! My parents ended up being in town and my sister and her family came too, so we had a great turnout, plenty of food and craft supplies and everyone had a great time. Success!
All Lego Parties
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BluBabesCreate
Oh wow! I wish I was the birthday boy! At a garage sale recently I picked up a Star Wars thermos and book from 1977. Both really cheap!
Angela
Wow! Your cake is amazing & I just love the C3PO water. The spray paint idea was genius. Visiting from Somewhat Simple!
Angela
bingecrafter.blogspot.com
Ashlee
Thanks! I felt it was a stroke of GENIUS myself 😉 My kids called it golden water and enjoyed the leftover water bottles for a few weeks afterwards!
Tracy
Hi Ashlee,
I’m a fan of your blog and this project is AWESOME!
I’d like to invite you to share your creations sometime at my weekly linking party as well. I am really trying to grow my party to include lots of creative projects just like this one. Thanks for the consideration and here is the direct link if you’d like to check it out :). ~ Tracy
T.G.I.F. Linky Party
Ashlee
Thanks! And thanks for the invitation! I actually haven’t linked up to any parties in over 5 months. It’s just one of those things that got left back as I got busier and busier! But I’ll check it out!
Beth@Wiccan Make Some Too
Love the whole party! My son & all three of his kids are huge star war & Lego fans. Following your blog now.I would love for you to show this off at my Wickedly Crafty Saturdays! http://wiccanmakesometoo.blogspot.com/2011/07/wickedly-crafty-saturdays.html
Ashlee
Thanks for the invitation. I actually haven’t linked up to anything in over 5 months now! I am thinking about starting up again though. I’m so glad you liked my party!
Cristy
Love your Millenium Falcon Cake, I made a very similar one last winter for my son’s Star Wars Party, except I used actual legos to emboss the fondant and it worked out well, but not quite as perfect as yours 🙂 your pictures look awesome.
Ashlee
Thank you so much! Yours turned out very well! Esp for your first time working with fondant? Way to go, the carving was very well done.
Joy
Love all your ideas and love that you are a crazy mom like myself who goes ALL out for their kid’s birthday parties. SO MUCH FUN!!
Ashlee
Thanks! I DO love to go all out for parties. I have a few in que for Friday flashback for the parties i threw BEFORE I started blogging. My most overboard is probably the Destroying Angel’s 1st birthday. I thought she might be my last and I went WAY overboard!
Affordable Insurance
The food, the decorations, the cake, everything is amazing!!! Love the whole party!
Ashlee
thank you so much! It was an incredibly fun party to put together, and the day of was fantastic.
Carrie
Looks amazing…my 5 year old nephew would be extremely jealous!!
Ashlee
thank you so much! I am really happy with how it turned out! All the guests and the birthday boy were happy so it was a hit! I’m so glad you liked it!
Qing @ Coolest-Baby-Shower-Ideas
Your boy is so cute. He must be so exciting for next birthday, feel a little bit sorry for him, but I think he will also enjoy the girls birthday, Because you are awesome at it.
What plan for you birthday? I think you will plan it at LEAST a month , right? ^_^
BTW , We’re hosting baby shower Cake Contest, do you want to be our Judge? Let’s have some fun together!
Ashlee
Thanks, he is pretty darn cute. We’ll see, I’ve had years I break down and do more than two parties, but it get’s expensive!
Mandy K
I love this whole party! My son is turning 5 in a couple weeks and this was the theme he had picked. I had no idea what to do, but you’ve helped so much. 2 questions: would you be willing to share the food labels you made? And second, how did you carve the legos in the fondant? I’ve been doing our cakes for a few years and I have no idea where to start with this! Thank for your great ideas!
Ashlee
I’m glad you and your son like the party! It was a blast. I hope yours turns out as fun as ours did ! I really did throw it together in just under 2 weeks. Once it was over I thought of a few more fun food titles and ideas I could do, but I was really happy with how well it turned out!
Like I told the other commentors because of copyright issues I can’t sell or share my labels with the images on them. BUT I’m happy to take the images off and send you the circles and ovals without any pictures and you can add your own. I got all of mine off google images. I used photoshop to put mine together so I can send you a photoshop version of my food labels or a Jpg file if you don’t have photoshop.
For the legos I used a circle frosting tip around the right size (I think 8 maybe??? I don’t have my tips right next to me right now) and cut out all the circles and used clear vanilla to attach them to the squares and rectangles to make them look like legos. Does that help? All with fondant of course.
Lea
I am in total awe of your cake. You are a true talent. Please replicate your Star Wars cake for my son’s 5th bday on Saturday 😉
Ashlee
HA! If I didn’t have a wedding cake this week (my cousin, so all my family is in town too, hard to make it to all the events AND make a fabulous cake) I would totally come over and help you (if you lived close) Good luck, I’m sure the party will be a huge success!
Mandy Kurschinske
I’d love just the labels, please! I can add my own images.
The pointers for the cake helped a ton, I think this is going to be so much fun!
My email for the labels is ellabellabottoms@gmail.com
Ashlee
sure! I sent them to your email, as jpeg files. If you want photoshop files instead or don’t get them let me know!
Kathryn
Loved your cake ut I am not a cake artist so I used your c3 po oil. and your wookie dougnuts and the light sabers. You saved my 8year old boy bday party. Thanks for posting.
Ashlee
I’m so glad you were able to use some of my party ideas! that’s the most flattering thing I’ve ever heard. I hope your party was as fun as ours!
Ashlee
this month only on my Facebook page I have a free download of my Star Wars Food Labels for anyone who “likes” my fan page! http://www.facebook.com/imtopsyturvy
Amy {The Idea Room}
So many fun and great ideas for Star Wars lovers! My boys would love to have a party like this! Great job!
Ashlee
Thanks so much Amy! It was such a fun party to throw, and my sweet little boy was thrilled. He’s already going on and on about all the party ideas for his next party, Lego batman…
Ashlee
This month on my Facebook page I have a free download of my Star Wars Food Labels for anyone who “likes” my fan page! feel free to pass it on! http://www.facebook.com/imtopsyturvy
Tara Gruwell
I love all the details, but that cake is simply amazing. I thought it would be a good idea to put all the fabulous Star Wars ideas in one place and so I put together a linky party. I’d love for you to link up this amazing party: http://trophyw.blogspot.com/2011/08/star-wars-round-up.html
Thanks,
Tara
Ashlee
done
Ashlee
I added the labels to the site on this post http://ashleemarie.com/lego-star-wars-birthday-party-food-labels/
Darin DeVore
Do you have the time to email over the snack signage (jpeg or photoshop is fine)? They are insanely cool! Doin a party for my 2 boys soon. dmdevore@gmail.com
Ashlee
Because of copyright issues I don’t sell or share the signage with the lego images on them.. I’m happy to send over the labels with JUST the lettering and you can add your own images if you’d like. Just let me know if you want them still or not.
Ashlee
I know it’s probably too late for you but I added the labels to this post http://ashleemarie.com/lego-star-wars-birthday-party-food-labels/
Mere
This party is GENIUS!!! I saw the link on Pinterest and am seriously amazed at all the work you put into the party! I might steal some of your awesome ideas!!! 🙂
Ashlee
Steal away! Hope you have as much fun as I did!
Ashlee
I moved the labels for this party to this post http://ashleemarie.com/lego-star-wars-birthday-party-food-labels/
mayra solis
ok great ideas……..but i must know asap how you made that cake…….i have to make it for my sons lego party!!!!!
I love bday parties and coming up with different ideas ……but you surpassed me 🙂
jmij_solis@att.net
thanks
mayra
Ashlee
Thanks so much, I’m glad you like the party! When you ask about the cake do you mean carving the shape? I just printed off pictures of the lego ship from different angles to help. I started by carving the shape out of an oval cake. Then I frosted it and added fondant. After that I dyed fondant a few more shades of grey, got out some red and just started with one item at a time, I did the top pieces first so they could dry, then I started adding the side detail work. Once I put on the dried roof pieces I just kept adding little details until it was time to leave for the party. I would have loved another hour or two to really get some more detail in, but oh well! If you have a more particular question I’m not answering let me know and I’ll try to go into more detail!
Jennifer S.
Love, love, love your ideas! We are having the same theme in a few weeks. I am going to attempt your Hans Solo in carbonite for a banner….can then use in my son’s room. So, did you just find a pic and open in silhouette? Any tips you might have for the banner would be appreciated. So excited!!
Ashlee
I actually cleaned up an image of a carbonite lego hans solo in photoshop first, making it more black and white to help the tracing tool. THEN opened it in silhouette and played around with the trace tool… It was kind of a pain, but totally worth it!
Misty
Love all your party details! I’m going to attempt to make the same cake you did, for my sons 4th bday next month. I’m new to the cake world so I was wondering how you did the cake part if you dont mind sharing. Is it all cake or part rice krispy treats? Did you use a circlular cake pan for the main part? Was it hard to get the fondant to mold around the curvatures? Anyway whatever you dont mind sharing when you get a minute would be greatly appreciated by this newbie.
Ashlee
It’s all cake. I started with an OVAL cake. I hand drew a silhouette of the ship and cut it out of paper, then laid it over the oval cake and used that as my pattern to cut out the basic shape. Then using a knife I shaped the dome on top and around the windows and stuff… And the secret to getting the fondant to curve around easily is to use high quality fondant (not wilton) I love and use Satin Ice fondant. It’s the best I’ve EVER used, worth every penny. Let me know if you have any other questions! I’m happy to help. (always use a sharp serrated knife and I like to carve my cakes while slightly frozen, also I always work with really dense cakes for carving, NEVER a box mix, usually a form of pound cake)