Syd's Star Wars/Boba Fett Party

I love the saying better late than never, because I am notoriously late, to everything. It's the thing I despise most about myself, yet find it impossible to fix. Syd's Star Wars party recap post is no exception here...almost 2 weeks later I'm sharing the pictures with you. But as they say, better late than never, right? The party really was overall a fantastic one. Syd had a great time, and I think most of our friends and family did too. The only complaint was by 2 picky eaters and a hot dog mix up (one got a cheese filled bratwurst and the other didn't get a hot bratwurst). Just two complaints about hot dogs out of almost 50 people, and I'd say that's a pretty wildly outrageous party in my book. I'll take it.

Syd from the outset wanted a Boba Fett party.  Not a Star Wars party, but a Boba Fett party, he was very clear on that.  He is the most obscure Star Wars character of all and it's impossible to find any party related supplies with just Boba Fett featured.  To make matters worse, Syd requested that there be no "bad Star Wars guys", which means no Darth Vader, the usual Star Wars back up character.  If the kid had been turning 4, I probably wouldn't have been so attentive to his wishes, but since he was turning 5, a milestone in my book, I did my best to follow his rules ;)
Let me take this time before we move on, to tell you that neither of my children have yet to actually see any of the Star Wars movies.  He has a few books people have given him, but for the most part the kid's knowledge and obsession of Boba Fett is completely of his father's doing.  The Boba Fett action figures on the table?  Those are Art's.  Yup. This is what I'm dealing with here.  Full on Star Wars geekery.  That's okay, I know many of you ladies out there can relate.      

I racked my brain for weeks trying to figure out how I could compile some sort of overall decor scheme out of just Boba Fett, especially when I really didn't have an overall color scheme.  I had a creative mental block up until about 2 pm the day before the party.  Inspiration finally at that point hit me and I decided to tie it all back to neon, because I'm sure Star Wars pretty much invented neon, right?  Had I had more time I really could have got wild and ordered neon straws, neon balloons, neon sanding sugar, the works. But I decided to chill just a bit and work with what I had.

Overall the party was all pulled together with the following elements:

• NEON cardstock bought at Target for $4.49 - all food labels were printed on this, in a basic black Star Wars font and were customized to the food we were serving.  We thought up the names the night before and printed them out on our printer.  The cardstock was also used for the Happy Birthday banner, which I simply held together with neon artist tape I had from Neon Week.
• We printed up a few cool looking Boba Fett pictures and taped them to picture frames (we were really scrambling at the last minute to get everything pulled together so we didn't even have time to put them in the frames.  We just taped them on with some neon tape and it worked fine). 
• Boba Fett figurines were set out on the table.
• I used an entire roll of silver glitter wrapping paper from the Paper Source as the table runner, tying in with a spacey star theme.
• Black balloons were outlined with some neon artist tape.  Not sure why I did this, I guess to sort of make them look like planets?  It was a last minute add on and it ended up looking cool.
• The kid's take home item instead of a goodie bag (because remember I really don't like goodie bags), were homemade light sabers out of pool noodles.  These took forever to make, at least 4-5 hours, but they were worth it and were very easy to do.  The kids used them all throughout the party and especially in the pool.  Best addition to the party by far.
• I debated for about 10 seconds about having a Boba Fett pinata custom made for the party, but then decided to just get one of those generic star shaped pinatas that they put the themed paper plate on in the center; the cheap way to incorporate the pinata into the theme.  The one we chose most resembled an actual star and had a whale on it, so we just printed up some Boba Fett pictures and taped them over the whale.  Worked out perfectly!
• The Jedi Juice was just lemonade tinted with yellow and green food coloring.  I saw lots of recipes for fizzy Jedi Juice using Sprite and green sherbet, but I didn't want a bunch of 5 year olds running around crazy after drinking soda.  They were already crazy enough ;) The light sabers were just chocolate covered pretzel rods rolled in sanding sugar, teh closest to neon colors I had on hand, and the Galactic gummies are just Star Wars gummy snacks sold at our local Ralphs, already in pre-printed Star Wars packages. The cake just had a picture of Boba Fett and a spacey color scheme.

 

I'm taking next year off from the birthday party hosting circuit, but if anything, despite all the work, I'm glad I was able to give each kid a great big birthday party before this 3rd baby was born. I hope they both remember these great big parties next year when we're sitting at home just the 5 of us singing happy birthday over a store bought cake ;) If you'd like to download your own Star Wars printables, I've included a link to the Photoshop file so that you can customize your own food labels and Happy Birthday banner to any thing you want. I've also included the link to the free fonts we used in case you need to download those as well. You must have a copy of Photoshop to customize the labels. I hope some of you put them to good use one day! Besides the homemade light sabers, the food labels were also a big topic of conversation. My 8 year old nephew saw them and said "Those are quite hilarious Auntie." Props from an 8 year old boy and smiles from my favorite 5 year old boy? I'd say that is pretty cool and definitely makes it all worthwhile! ;)  
Get your customizable Star Wars Food Cards here

Make sure to download the free Star Wars Fonts here

This post is sponsored by Disney Baby. I'll be joining the Disney Baby blogging team next month, and look forward to sharing these kinds of stories (projects/ideas/etc) with you over there! Stay tuned for more details!