Sam's Pirates and Princesses Party

Ahoy Matey’s! Following straight on from my daughter’s 10th Ice Cream Parlor birthday, was Sam’s 5th Pirates and Princesses Party!

If you read my post from Sam’s party last year, you will understand my aversion to full-on class parties, but Sam has such a lovely group of kids in his class that we decided to go with it this year.

We sent out invitations from my Pirates and Princesses Party Printables. Unfortunately, somewhere between being put in the school bag and arriving home, a lot of the invites disappeared – 5 year olds are that funny age of being able to remember all sorts of random facts from months ago, but utterly unable to remember to hand over an invite they received that day!

It’s a fab time of year here for an afternoon party down at the park in our compound AND fittingly, there is a Pirate Ship in the playground – the perfect setting for our Pirates and Princesses Party.

We set up our Tattoo Parlor in a shady area. This was a bit of a hit. We had lots of tattoos for the kids to choose from – but most kept coming back for more than 2, so next time I will be sure to have some more on hand.

Thanks to Sam’s big sister and her friends (my fab Pirate helpers), the kids were entertained with a Walk the Plank game…

…followed by a Canonball Toss! We had hundreds of water balloons for this (and I can honestly say that I wished we had hundreds more).

It evolved from tossing them at my husband to the kids running around and attacking my Pirate helpers. For next years party, we might just have water balloon fights, there’s nothing kids like more really.

I don’t have any pictures of this, but we also had some black balloons (more canonballs) that the kids had to explode by stomping on them.

Again, no photos, but our last party game was a treasure hunt. It was a very simple version – perfect for 5 year olds. I spray painted about 60 rocks with silver paint and my Pirate helpers hid them around the grounds. The kids loved finding these – we rehid the stones and played this about 3 or 4 times!

I made some DIY Princess wands for all of the girls which I was quite proud of. I printed off the stars from my party printable collection, hot glued a food skewer to the back (covering the pointy end) and then hot glued quite a solid larger silver star (that I had previously found for less than $1 each) at the back, together with some silver or pink ribbon. Oh, and lots of glitter.

Not only did the girls love these, but the boys did too and if I was going to do this again, I would make sure I had enough for all the boys too 🙂

I also had some eye patches for each of the boys (they liked the wands much better).

Here’s the birthday boy with his pirate ship cake. Failing again at this photography caper, this is the only photo I have of Sam at his party this year.

Anna helped make Sam’s Pirate Ship birthday cake – the recipe and instructions for making this come from the Australian Womens Weekly Kids Birthday Cake Book. This cook book was a tradition in Australia when I was growing up – constantly brought out and well thumbed through as each birthday neared.

It’s been updated since then, and has become a tradition in my house too. My kids go through it all the time deciding on what theme their birthday cake will be every year (well, until last year anyway when cupcakes seemed just far too easy and far less less time consuming).

Food, yep we did have food – no photos to prove it but we had some. I can’t remember all that we had but there was:

Royal Rolls (Sausage Rolls and ketchup),
X-marks the Spot cookies (for the Pirates) and Heart Cookies (for the Princesses),
Skeleton Bones (Pretzels)
Crunchy Brains (popcorn)
Fish of the Day (Goldfish crackers)
Polly want a Cracker (assorted crisps)
Princess Treats & Pirate Grub

We sent our Pirates and Princesses home with some cute party favors. The princesses had candy necklaces, Princess Pennies and Gold Bars (wrapped Kit Kats) and the pirates were given Stolen Loot & Sticks of Dynamite.

But my favourite part of the party was this sail – totally inspired by this pinterest pin here.

If you are interested in making one, mine is sized 90cm x 120cm (approx 35.5 x 47 inches) which was the perfect size lashed onto some bamboo poles atop our food table. I had it printed on waterproof vinyl with 8 eyelets across both the top and the bottom (make sure the outer eyelets are closer to the outer edge than mine ended up). The vertical bamboo pole slots through the hole our BBQ table meant for umbrellas.

This sail now proudly hangs on Captain Sam’s bedroom wall.