TMNT - Avery's 3rd Birthday Party

This year we celebrated Avery's birthday with a small family party at home.  It was just our family, my parents and my brother's family together for dinner, cake and some fun in the yard.  For the theme of the party, I went back and forth with Avery for quite some time.  He has several "loves" these days including Batman, the Ninja Turtles, the color purple and more and every time I asked him what he wanted he gave me a different answer.  Finally I showed him some different cakes to go with the possible theme options and we were able to settle on the purple ninja turtle.

So, on the Saturday (day before) Avery's birthday everyone came to our place and we had a Cowabunga! Good Time!  As always, I wanted the party to be memorable but also easy and while I think I did okay, I probably could continue to strive for simpler.  Eric even laughed at me as I prepared that morning and said, "I just love what you consider a 'simple' party."  Oh well...I tried.

Decorations:
I did keep the decorations VERY simple.  I used some store bought decorations that I had gotten from my sister-in-law after a Ninja Turtle party that she had and combined them with some balloons and crepe paper that I already had at home.  For the table, I just decorated with a  Dollar Tree green table cloth and put a blue runner down and some paper pizza toppings I made for a party game.  I also placed the traditional Migrin party M&Ms on the table and since it was a TMNT party, I decided to go with the varied green mint M&Ms (which were DELICIOUS!) instead of peanut.  For the chairs, I found six foam turtle shells at the dollar store which helped enhance the TMNT setting but also worked as a take-home goody for all six of the kids at the party.

As you can see in this picture, I also decorated the table runner with some edible ninja turtles that I made with granny smith apples, some white and black frosting and a red Fruit By The Foot, which I paired with individual sized caramel dip for the kids to take home and enjoy later.

Finally at the table I couldn't help but decorate with a little "Ooze" that I found at Target for $1.  ...afterall without the Ooze there would be no Ninja Turtles...right?

Side Note: Something to ALWAYS keep in mind at Target.  Being that Halloween is coming I found some store-bought slime in the dollar bins, but that was not the slime I purchased.  I've had this happen to me a few times, but they always like to get you with those dollar bins.  At the back of the store in the seasonal section they had more slime which was also only one dollar.  However, these slime containers where about three times the size of the ones in the front of the store....that's how they get you!

With the way our dining room is set up, I always like to set up and decorate a little cake table along the South wall of our home where our dining side table resides.  For this party I decorated with the store bought decorations and crepe paper.  Then I had a cheap (albeit far-fetched) idea to cover the table in newspaper as the turtles' best bud is reporter April O'Neal.  I doubt anyone but me would put that together, but it made for free decorations AND easy clean-up! ;)  For the final touches of the cake table, I added some green confetti paper that I already had and plastic and foam ninja weapons that I also found at the dollar store (Halloween is a such a great time to find goodies at Dollar Tree!) along with a few pizza boxes.

My nephew Micah admiring the edible Ninja Turtles

Dinner:
Food dinner, I again kept it simple...VERY simple!.  Since it was a Ninja Turtle party, I could think of no better food to serve than pizza.  Thus, we offered a vegetable salad, a fruit salad, Dominoes pizza and some green "ooze" Jello jigglers (which the kids polished off in record time!).  I did take a little extra time to attempt to carve a turtle shell into the watermelon to server the fruit salad, but as I was running out of time I made it rather hastily and it did not turn out great.

My little birthday turtle waiting for his dinner.

Avery & Hudson enjoying some dinner conversation.

Gabe sharing his grapes.

Fun:
Since it was around 90 degrees on this day for fun we simply requested that all of the kids bring their swimsuits and then we provided the kiddie pool, squirters, hose and sprinkler for a good (and VERY wet) time.  I also made a pizza game for the kids to play after everyone had dried up and had dinner.

Little Gabe LOVED playing in the water.

Love this action shot of Avery

Cheese!

Gabe showing me his MUSCLES! 

Bat Turtle?

This is what a pouty Batman looks like.

Micah was mesmerized by the slime.

The other boys had a lot of fun playing with it too!

Gabe looks like he has a sinister plan in the works!

<3

As I mentioned the only "fun" that I actually planned was a pizza game that I made.  For the game, I found a PDF online with a pizza crust and toppings.  Then I printed multiples of each and then cut them all out.  I also decided to laminate everything and cut them out again so that they would last after the game and the kids could make 'pizzas' for fun whenever they want.  When it was time to play the game, each kid grabbed 10 toppings to put on his pizza.  I assigned a number to each topping and then rolled the dice.  Every time I rolled a number I would call out the assigned topping and if they had that topping they could put it on their pizza.  The first to finish their pizza won, which turned out to be a tie between Hudson and Avery.  For the prizes each of the boys got one of the ninja weapons that I purchased from the dollar store.  I had two Michelangelo nunchakus (I probably should have just bought 6 of these as it turned out they ALL wanted this), two Donatello bo staffs and two sets of Raphael sai.  The winners got first pick of the selection and we played until everyone had one.  It was a fun, easy game that was fair for every age...although I do think that Asher, Caleb and Micah were a bit surprised that the three oldest came in last!

The adults helping & supervising the game.

When the pizza game was over, I required a quick photoshoot with all of our ninjas together.

Presents:
After the pizza game, Avery was able to open up the presents that he had received from his grandparents and cousins.  All of the kids were very excited to watch and interested to see what he would get and what they might get to play with.

Oooooo...a Batmobile!

When it was time to open up the gift from Grammy and Gramps Migrin (who couldn't be at the party but had mailed a gift), Eric FaceTimed with them so that they could watch Avery open it up.

Gabe was in awe of the phone and got right in front of the phone to get a good look at Avery's grandparents.

Part of Avery's gift from Eric's parents was this pig.  They located it in the shipping box with an 'X' on the outside so that when the box was pushed it Oinked.  They boys thought it was hilarious...and now we have to hide the toy from Emma because she is pretty sure that the toy is for her!

Avery was blessed with several great gifts but I think my own personal favorites were the cards that he got from his big brother and his cousin Caleb.

From Caleb (Front): "Hugs and Keses I Love You"

From Caleb (Back): "Hava a grat Bithday.  Hava a great time bieg 3. <3"

From Asher

Dessert:
After water fun, dinner, a game and presents it was finally time for dessert, so we all headed back into the house for cake and ice cream.  Since the cake was going to be a Ninja Turtle, we had to have vanilla frosting.  I let Avery decide if the cake would be chocolate, vanilla or vanilla with chocolate chips and he chose the latter.  Since Avery "loves purple" and had chosen the vanilla cake mix, we also decided to die the cake purple for a surprise on the inside...which made for a pretty interesting cake.

Three!

Video: Happy Birthday to Avery!

This guy loves having everyone sing to him!

Puffy Cheeks!  <3

When the cake was demolished, the party came to a close and everyone headed home, but not without  the edible turtles and a pizza box take-home for the kids.  The pizza boxes are probably my favorite take-home goody to date.  They were very cute decorations and very cheap to put together.  We got some take-home boxes from a local pizza company, I put a few printed decorations on them and then we filled them with a few Ninja Turtle fruit snacks, some dollar store stickers and some coloring sheets that I found online and printed.  All together I think each box cost me about $0.75 to put together!

So...that was it.  Another party finished.  Another year in the past.  Several more memories to treasure with a lifetime left to make!