DIY Superhero Birthday Party
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Birthdays are a big deal in our house. I love to decorate, bake, wrap, and do everything within my power to let the birthday kid know that today is their day!
So when the pandemic started, I knew that I would be doing most of my planning and prepping with the use of Pinterest, online ordering, and good old fashioned leg work - the trifecta as it were.
I also knew that it would pain my little guy’s heart to not get to see his friends or family for his birthday, so we set up lots of virtual renditions of “Happy Birthday”. What a time to be alive!
Lately, my son has been very into superheroes, the concept of running super fast, saving cities, putting bad guys in jail, etc. so a superhero theme was obvious. Armed with that keyword, I scoured Pinterest and found the following inspiration from Sarom INspired, The House Made Home, and Momo Party respectively.
Then I went to the drawing board for what was realistic and appropriate for my family. I knew I wanted to have some fun activities for a superhero party at home as well as great decorations to set the scene. I settled on Spiderman web target practice (chalkboard web and silly string), a [toddler] life size jail, and superhero dress-up for the whole family as our main activities. Luckily, all of these elements can be used as decorations for a superhero birthday party , helping my bottom line.
I also froze some mini Incredibles figurines in ice the night before. I told my kids that only they could rescue the Incredibles from their icy prison, equipped them with a bunch of kitchen utensils and a cup of warm water and scooted them out back to get to work. They had so much fun figuring out how best to get them out!
I started collecting Amazon boxes, which are in no short supply at my home. As I collected them I would cover them in kraft paper and draw windows with a Sharpie. These would serve as our city for our heroes to save. I also slowly started cutting out letters to spell BOOM KAPOW ZAP as a banner and small red and yellow triangles from foam paper I had leftover from [many] Halloween costumes. Add a few paper poms and a tiny allegiance of Marvel characters, and the decor was nearly done!
PRO TIP: Anything that you can do gradually, do it. This would not have been fun to do all at once.
As for the piece de resistance, the jail, it was incredibly simple! I did have to sacrifice a Christmas tree box, but it was worth it. I just eyeballed the size I wanted the opening for bars to be and shaping the opening with box cutters. Then I cut strips of black paper and taped them inside the opening. I covered the whole box with kraft paper and taped black letters spelling out ‘jail’. I did this last element the night before his birthday since it would be hard to hide in our home, and it took about 45 minutes total.
The majority of my evening was used setting up a large balloon display of the number 4. I used gaffing tape, black balloons, and all the hot air my husband is full of to assemble it. After having done this, I would recommend two things - 1) Line the back of the display with construction paper in the same color as the balloons (so that you don’t have to cover every square inch of the wall to make it consistent) and 2)only use one color of balloons. This project was another example of eyeballing it. I placed the larger balloons first to establish the shape of the number and then filled in the holes with smaller balloons as needed.
All that was left was a cake! My son had been requesting a robot cake like he had the year prior. My theme-centric mind was not crazed about the inconsistency of a robot cake and a superhero party. I opted to make two cakes and create a robot vs. superhero cake. I placed the final products on a piece of foam board that I decorated to look like a comic book.
All in all, this was an extremely affordable party. All the links for items that I bought are below. I had all the paper products already.
And just in case you’re at a lost for gifts for a four year old, Magnatiles, small Nerf guns, an initial baseball hat, and this pool float with an attached water gun were his favorites!
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Gaffing tape (this wasn’t my favorite product to work with, but it did get the job done)
Silly string for web target practice
