Cordelia Rockets to Five!

I have lots of thoughts about the fact my daughter is turning five- many of which I am sure I will talk about in another post- but right now I am a little amazed that (with the help of my amazing family) I have successfully thrown five themed birthday parties! Every year my husband says "no more" and every year in my exhaustion I agree....but I just love a good theme! 

This year Cordelia requested an outer space party- and with the help of pinterest (check out our board here)  my sister Shauna and I set to work.  I always figure parties break down into five categories: Invite, food, games, decorations, and the favor.  The invite (the first picture in the post) I made and included Cordelia's favorite planet Pluto (a dwarf planet is still a planet.....)

The Food! 

Shauna came up with most of the food ideas- she is becoming excellent at coming up with themed party foods! We had:

Rocket Dogs served with optional sun spots and mars magma

 (pigs in a blanket on sticks with mustard or ketchup) 

Asteroids (crock pot meat balls)
Space Crunch (veggie tray)
 A watermelon carved like a rocket (with added fruit)

Space shaped Goldfish

Saturn's Rings (Funyuns)

Meteors (orange cheese puff balls)

Yogurt dipped star cookies from Trader Joe's

Moon Rocks (Rice crispy treats shaped like rocks)

Alien Marshmallow Pops 

Galaxy Cupcakes (mini and regular size, with a star shaped one for the birthday girl)

Rocket Fuel (Water- because we gave the kids enough sugar to ruin the rest of the day) 

The Games

I am not big on directing kids at parties- I mostly want to let them run around and act crazy, so our games are pretty unstructured. We had a meteor toss.   

A coloring book- which seems to work well for the kids who want to scope out the activity before they dive in. 

"Pin" the rocket on Pluto. 

 

Brendon made a cardboard rocket ship that really was the main event! 

We finished off the party with a Pinata- which turned out to be indestructible. After the kids beat at it for awhile Brendon had to cut it open and make it rain candy- which turned out less than ideal because Cordelia got hit in the head with a piece of candy and it hurt pretty bad (she recovered ok with the help of a piece of candy) 

The Decorations 

Behind the food table we hung black table cloths and decorated them with tons of silver stars and a solar system that Cordelia painted.  On the table we added purple table cloths with multi tone purple tulle (to kinda look like a nebula).

Cordelia, Shauna, and I made paper rockets to put up on one of the walls, we hung tons of paper balls from the ceiling, and my mom bought Cordelia lots of star balloons. 

One of my favorite decorations was the future space travel posters- designed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and given to the public for free download here. I am in love with these and I was thrilled that my sister made us super fancy quality prints - I kept them to hang up at home when the party was over. 

The Favor

  

Our favor was much more simple than in years past but this blue sparkly galaxy play dough was still a huge hit!