Saturday, March 22, 2014

Candy Land Birthday

I just want to start with a disclaimer: I  am fully aware that a one year old doesn't need an "all out" birthday party. However, it was the perfect opportunity for me to plan and throw a party and I was all over it! That being said, because this party was for a one year old I didn't go all out...you'll see what I mean.  So don't judge, just enjoy! Hopefully I can give you ideas for your own Candy Land party and please improve on them to make your party even better! Also this is a long post with a lot of pictures.

First Jason designed a cute invite to be emailed to the families. He didn't understand the need of an invite, and really there wasn't a need, but it was fun for the kids and it got them excited!

We had the party at my sister's house.  She has this nice open basement and I knew immediately it would be perfect for a life size game of Candy Land! I got online to see if I could get any ideas. Holy Moly! I couldn't believe the kinds of things that have been done! Like this (be sure to check out her part 2 also) or this. There are so many  more fun ideas, go ahead and check it out, just google Candy Land party there are a ton! I knew I couldn't (oh but I wanted to) do a party at this scale. I didn't have a ton of space, it wasn't my own space, we were traveling so I would have had to pack it all, and time, I had exactly 1 week to plan, prep and perfect. So this is what I came up with and, though it isn't huge and showy, I think it turned out pretty cute and everyone had a blast!

This is how I did it...

Let's start with the life size game.
For the board I just got a multi colored pack of construction paper and cut each sheet of paper in half. I printed off the different pictures for the pink specialty pieces and just taped the pictures onto the pink papers. I also did three licorice spaces.

Then for the cards I just cut one inch squares of the construction paper and taped them onto the cards. I used a deck of cards I bought at Michaels a couple of years ago in the dollar bins. Because they are circles they don't get used much for normal game playing so I didn't feel bad about using them. And they were the perfect size don't you think?

For the lands and characters I found some balloon sticks on clearance at Zurchers and taped them into ice cream buckets. For the characters I just printed off some coloring pages I found online and colored them as close to the game board as I could. Then I cut out candy shapes out of foam board and wrote the lands on them, then taped them to the balloon stick. I also wrote little blurbs for each of the characters like they were introducing themselves.




And then in each of the buckets I put a little treat that represented that character/land for the kids to collect as they passed them.

For dinner I planned an easy, cheap meal. Spaghetti, salad, jello and rolls. Easy peasy, I also tied each food item to the game and used little cards to identify what they were. (This is one of those things I didn't go "all out" on, the display is pathetic.)


( Ranch colored red)
 (Jello Jigglers made with Jolly Rancher Jello, Yum!)
(Cheese Pinwheels stuck on paper straws)

Okay so that was the prep work.
Here is the party!

My nieces and nephew were so excited for this party. We went down Friday night and had the party Sunday before coming back home. The kids were practically planning the party that I had worked so hard to do myself. I had to stop them from making the rainbow path throughout the house, putting up pictures of the characters and making the game. I was trying to keep everything a secret so it would be a surprise, but they made it hard. One niece had the way cute idea to make crowns for the girls. She printed off coloring pages of crowns and then taped them onto her head bands. They went through the dress up clothes and dressed like the characters. It was cute.

When it was finally time for the party we ate dinner. Then the kids got a card from King Kandy, he was suppose to come and give them a tour of his kingdom but he got delayed at his castle and left the kids instructions to follow the rainbow path to find him. He told them to stop along the way to meet his friends and collect treats from each of them. The idea was that they would stop at each of the characters and read their introduction...yeah right! There was too much excitement they just wanted to play the game and collect the treats.

And then the game began!





The kids had so much fun! Anne didn't really know what was going on, but she had fun too. She even won! She loved drawing her cards and loved the cotton candy she collected from King Kandy at his sad, pathetic looking castle. Don't you just love the outfit the kids picked out for her? I'm not sure who she is suppose to be.

Once everyone made their way to the castle it was time for some birthday cake!
Ice Cream and Pudding Cake
Homemade Peanut Butter Ice Cream Topping

We sang and blew out a candle, and everybody dug in!


Lots of fun! Be sure to check out part two! I figured this post is really long so I put my recipes in a second post. Part 2 includes the how to for the pinwheels using a really easy pizza dough recipe, the ice cream cake and the peanut butter topping! You don't want to miss it!


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