Pirate/Princess Summer Party

My son starts kindergarten this year, so I wanted to try to get some kids together this summer so he sees some familiar faces on the first day. We decided to put together a pirate/princess theme party this week. Here is what we did...

The Food:

Pirate and Princess cupcakes. I found the toppings at a cake store. 

Princess chocolate suckers: I just poured melted chocolate in chocolate molds and added a stick.

Pirate ship jell-o cups. The bottom is blue raspberry jell-o. We added a quarter of an orange and placed a pirate flag stick in the orange. 

The pineapple is my best attempt at turning it into a boat. Then I added a few of the grape/watermelon princess wands to resemble some sails. 

Cannonballs (grapes)

Fish and chips

Star sandwiches

Hot dog boats

Princess Decorations

The table:

I took some of the rose chocolate suckers and placed them in a piece of styrofoam. Then I flipped a vase over the suckers to resemble the rose from Beauty and the Beast. 

Princess Putty: 

Start by mixing about 2 cups of white school glue with 1 1/2 cups of warm water. Then we added red food coloring for the princess putty. We did a separate batch using green food coloring for the pirate slime (see below).

In a separate small bowl, mix 3/4 teaspoon of Borax and 1 1/3 cups of very warm water.

Pour the borax water into the glue water. Mix with your hands.

Keep mixing with your hands until you have the slime. It will only take a couple of minutes. 
I placed the slime in little containers I found at Wal-Mart. Then I added a treat pop label to the top. 

For the wands, I started with a skewer stick. I cut out two stars from glitter cardstock. I hot glued a piece of maroon, pink, and white ribbon to the inside of one of the stars. Then I glued a piece of black glitter tulle and some gold stars to the star. The final step was to hot glue the other star to seal all of the ribbon inside. 

I got the princess plates, napkins, and sashes from Party City. Each girl also got a pack of stickers and a necklace. (And a tin of pirate goodies)

The princesses each got to choose a hat as well. I used the template from this website: http://www.firstpalette.com/tool_box/printables/Birthdayhat.html 

The hat is made from decorated foam sheets with a piece of tulle hot glued to the top of each one. 

Pirate Decorations

 The table: 

I found black plates from Wal-Mart. 

I got eye patches from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EKWB0E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) . 

The gold bar box came from Amazon as well: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001K35Y1G/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I filled the boxes with candy bracelets. 

I gave each guest one of these pirate tins from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YQS0X2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I put a few of these pirate coins in eaach tin:(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005OMV42C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) I hid the rest of them around the house. That was one of their treasure hunt activities. 

The hook cup is just a red solo cup with a piece of tin foil through the top. I also bought pirate and princess stickers. I placed a different sticker on each of the kids' cups. This helps keep track of what cup belongs to each kid. 

We used gold spray paint to turn some gravel into little gold pieces to fit inside these little jars: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ZXW4MK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here is the Pirate slime. The recipe for this is above in the princess decoration section. 

For the swords, I bought a large piece of foam insulation. I cut it into four pieces. Then I added gold duct tape for the base. 

The last decoration was treasure hunt cups. I made sand-colored play dough. I used my microwave play dough recipe: http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/03/microwave-play-dough.html

 To color the dough, I placed 4 drops red, 2 drops green, and 16 drops yellow food coloring. I made 3 batches of this to fill 12 cups. 

I got the idea for these cups from this website: http://alwaysexpectmoore.com/2012/09/treasure-island-pirate-party-game.html.

I cut 6 leaves from green construction paper, leaving a strip to connect each of the leaves. I ran glue down the strip. Then I wrapped the strip around a decorative straw. Using a different straw, I curled the leaves down. 

Inside the play dough, I hid a pirate coin and some jewels. I added a pirate sticker to the cup. 

The boys' table:

For an outside decoration, I found a large cardboard box, cut out two ovals, and painted a princess image on one flap of the box and a shark image on the other flap. The kids took turns getting their pictures taken in this photo booth.