I am a freak when it comes to parties....any party young or old. Ask anyone that knows me. So when my little one turned 4 he wanted a Pirate party. I held it at my home, which is always chaotic because my family is huge. I made all my own invitations using map paper from the scrap book store, mounted on brown card stock with an overlay of velum and pirate ship embellishments (all from the scrap book store). Here's the verbiage: Ahoy Matey Ye be invited to  Captain ________________'s Buccaneer Bash Chart your course for: (address) (date) We be meetin' at: (time) Fer some swashbuckling fun, grub and kiddie spirits! Raise yer flag if ye be attending or have your mum or dad send a message to (phone number) Sees ye thar......Arrgghh! For the cake I made one round layer and then two 9x13 sheets. I used the round one to create and island on a large tray. Then I layered the two sheets and carved them into the shape of a ship. Brown frosting with black frosting piping to make it look like wood. I printed sails out on the computer with red stripes and skulls and used long baking sticks to create the masts. I used some pirate people from Playmobile for the island and the ship and one of the octopus in the blue frosting water I put on the tray. I put black sparking candles out the sides like canons. Around the edges of the tray I had necklaces, gold coins and gems scattered. For the food, out on all the tables for snacking were goldfish and swedish fish. I served a pirates grog fruit punch and then all my food was themed as well. Yellow corn was pirates teeth, I made canon balls and ropes (aka spaghetti a meatballs), I dough local fresh pizza dough and cut them in thin strips and created a handle with another piece and they were swords, topped with garlic butter. I took hot dogs that I cross cut at both ends to make 4 legs on each end, leaving the middle intact and when boiled they curl up to look like an octopus.   Decorations were large nets hung from the walls and ceiling and over surfaces. I also scored some large metallic tag board sharks that I hooked to my ceiling with fishing line and threw seashells out all over the room with star fish and lobsters too. I created a large treasure chest out of the box and put the prizes in there. I also found large floor length collapsable palm trees that I hung from the ceiling. My hubby and I wore large fancy pirate hats and eye patches (from our halloween costumes as well). For games we played pin the wooden leg on the pirate (much like pin the tail on the donkey). I fashioned hook hands by buying large black plastic cups and cutting a small X in the bottom and threading a candy cane through to create the hook. The kids put their hands into the cups, grabbed the candy cane and had to hook as many pretzels out of the bowl as they could in 30 seconds. We had a pinata as well. That halloween my son dressed as a pirate so we had him dress for the party. We handed out bandanas and eye patches as well. The goodie bags were pirate squirting ducks, gold chocolate coins, pirate finger puppets and suction cup pirate poppers, along with several beaded necklaces.