I SPY Birthday Party
For my son's 3rd party we had an I SPY party. My son loves the I SPY books and he loves cars and trucks, so we had an I SPY CARS, TRUCKS, AND THINGS THAT GO birthday party. For the invitations I used one of the I SPY book covers (went to a online book retailer website and copied and pasted the picture of the front cover into Power Point). After cropping and sizing the cover of the I SPY book cover in Power Point I then changed the book title. Previously the title read: I SPY Little Wheels, by 'author name'. I changed it (used Power point to hide the original title and typed in my new title) to I SPY Ryan's 3rd Birthday, Party by Ryan's Family, Fun by ALL. I changed the 'scholastic' at the bottom left corner of the book title to read, 'funtastic'. Like in the I SPY books, I created my own rhyme written underneath the book cover picture. it read, I SPY CARS, WHEELS, TRAINS AND TRACKS, BALLOONS, CAKE AND BIRTHDAY HATS. Then I skipped a few lines and typed: "June 11th is the day so come and have some cake and play, the 'our last name' house is the place to be as the party will start at a half past three" I used clipart I found on the web and decorated the invitation with pictures of ballons, a train, party hats, a cake, and trucks. I printed the invitation on heavy white stock paper on a color printer. The invitation took up half of an 8 1/2 by 11 size paper (landscape mode). I also printed the I SPY logo onto clear mailing labels and sealed the envelopes with a clear label of I SPY and then a clip art picture of a birthday cake. To be used in games and decorations (more below), I went to the Scholastic website (who publishes the I SPY books) and copied and pasted into Power Point pictures of the duck on wheels, the I SPY 'wheeler' guy, and the I SPY Logo. I sized these and printed on color printer. I went to the Party store and used blue and green as our color themes. Bought a few mylar balloons with trucks on them. Printed the I spy wheeler guy, logo, and other items onto paper and pasted them around the house. Party games: We had a few games but 2 specifically I made with the I SPY theme. The first game was the I SPY duckie match game. I bought little carnival style ducks (i.e., the kind you put in a pond and the kids pick one) from Oriental Trading Company (really cheap). Then I printed by I SPY characters (duck on wheels, truck, and Spyler-all from the Scholastic website) onto clear labels (again using a color printer). I put the labels onto index cards and then onto the bottom of each duck. The kids had to pick a card and then find the duck (I placed in a brown bag) with the matching picture. (My kids and I use the cards to this day playing 'match' game.) The next game I had was I SPY hunt game. At Easter I noticed how much the kids enjoyed easter egg hunts and found ball shaped eggs. I bought over 100 balls (basketball, baseball, soccor ball)that could be filled with goodies. I filled them with stickers of cars, trucks, trains, and candy (again Oriental Trading company had choc. cars), hershey kisses, etc. Then I got my two boys involved. We bought green and blue brown bags at the craft store and then stickers (Thomas the train, trucks, cars, etc) and we put these stickers on the front of each bag. These bags the kids would use during the I SPY hunt game to collect their balls and stash their loot. For party favors, I bought pull back cars, sailboats (to be used in the bathtub or at the beach) and small beach balls (it was summertime) from Oriental Trading Company. I placed these items in their loot bag and then wrote their names on their bags for them to take home with them when leaving. For the cake(s), I ordered a construction site cake from our local supermarket and then made a race car cake. I bought a race car mold from the local craft store and decorated it per instructions. For food, we just had standard fare (hot roast beef sandwiches, salads, mac and cheese, ham, etc.)
