Arr matey's - it be Captain Justin's 4th birthday

My baby boy became four years old last week - how did that happen? Four years old seems a turning point from still being a baby to being nine months before starting school - eek! To celebrate, Justin had a pirate themed party.

With the party being so close to Christmas I sent the invitations out at the end of November. I found an image I liked online and tweaked it, then printed it onto white paper, ripped and aged the edges (by wiping a "used" tea bag along the outside edges). The final touch was adding some glitter paint to the sword and chest and some stick-on jewels (a bargain from Poundland) to the treasure chest, then rolling the invitation up and tying it with some red ribbon before hand delivering to each of the guests.

For the first time ever we got outside entertainers in. It was a difficult decision as I like to plan the kids' parties to the n'th degree but I also wanted Justin to have a Tumble Tots party. Sophie started Tumble Tots (a gymnastics based physical play and activity group for preschool children and toddlers) when she was just two years old and Justin joined once Sophie started school and they both have had so much enjoyment from it. The ladies who run it took over the business about 18 months ago and I persuaded them that if they were ever planning to do parties then I was the perfect guinea pig. Thankfully they agreed and were happy to accommodate the pirate theme I was asking for. The brightly coloured Tumble Tot equipment provided a real WOW factor for the children as they arrived and they all had such a fabulous time. I even saw the most timid child giggling away at one point which was so nice and the party was an amazing success.

That left me the food, party bags and cake to organise. Over the past three years I have learned to be organised with Justin's birthday falling exactly two weeks after Christmas and this year I got the party bag bits and pieces and pirate themed plates/napkins etc in November - long before the madness of Christmas took over. 

I had won a £25 Party Pieces voucher for completing a post-purchase survey at the beginning of last year, so I used that to buy really nice bright pirate themed party ware.

I decided to be really simple with the party bags and got plain red paper bags which I labelled with a pirate name sticker and filled with a mini pot of playdoh, a box of pirate stickers (both from Toys R Us), a pirate tattoo, some gold chocolate coins and a pirate pencil and rubber. Total cost just under £1.50 per bag (including the bag and sticker) - hooray!

I am very lucky having a family who love to join in and Mr Snowball even went so far as to borrow a parrot costume from my niece (we had a couple of weeks of fun joking about the theme of the party: "I thought you said it was a Parrot party!".

 Even my dad joined in, and with the beard looked the part of an old sea captain ...

 © 2013 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.