Here is the long-awaited post about Ian’s 3rd birthday party.

I let him pick out his theme and this year he wanted Superheros.  So I quickly started pinning ideas to my Pinterest Board.

I kept checking with him to make sure he didn’t change his mind about the theme.  Every time I asked him what kind of party he wanted he would throw his fists in the air and shout “SUPERHERO BIRFDAY PARTY!”

I originally thought about taking some pictures of him in his superhero costumes and making a comic book for his invitation.  Due to  my limited time and his unwillingness to pose for pictures, I decided to make a newspaper cover as his invitation.

I used pictures I had previously taken of him.  The hardest part was thinking of what to write!

I wanted the kids attending the party to decorate their own capes.  This was a battle between my mom and I, she didn’t want a bunch of kids gluing stuff while in her house.  I had originally thought of iron-on but then someone would have to man the iron.  In the end we decided it was the best option.

I also decided to go with inexpensive so we used all felt for the capes, masks and decorations.

I think we ended up with 24 capes (big enough for a 7-year old), 24 masks and all the shapes for about $40.  Which is less than two-bucks a cape!  The most expensive thing was the binding web.  We made the capes too large and trimmed them to fit each child.  She used this pattern for the portion around the neck.

I printed out the shapes and my mom cut them all out, and the webbing to fit.  She went a little overboard, but it allowed for each kid to have as much on their capes as they wanted.

This is one little girl’s cape

This kids placed the shapes and then a friend of mine, or my mom, ironed them on.

When making decorations for a party I usually find a digital scrapbook kit I like and use it.  I could not find one for superheros.  There were some available, but none that I liked.  So I just used pictures that I found on Google.  I tried to only use ones from Marvel or DC, but I can’t really say for sure where I got all of them.

What party is complete with out party hats?

I used Photoshop to make these and bought the string at the fabric store.  It is elastic thread.

I wanted a night-time city scape behind the food table, I got the idea from this post and this one.

Of course Ian needed to help.

I just used a cardboard box and some poster paint.

I wanted some hanging decorations and saw this post that used pinwheels.  I usually make decorations for the table dishes but decided to use the circles for the pinwheels.

I was so pleased with them that we used the same concept for a baby shower.

My Aunt made this wonderful cake!  Ian was so excited about it.

I saw these suckers all over Pinterest, this post has a printable template, but I just made my own.

I printed them on card-stock and used a hotglue gun to glue the masks on.  

I really like the idea this mom had about adapting the game “pin the tail on…”  I photo-shoped a picture of Ian on a comic book city and had a poster printed.  I did cut out little masks, but we never got a chance to play.

I used this posts idea about making a banner with the Superman logo that says “Happy Birthday”

(please excuse my mom’s gold mini-blinds…)

I loved the boxes in this post, so I decided to make my own.  I was just going to make a few for decorations, but of course my mom said they had to be filled with candy, which meant I had to make 40 of them!  They all had to be cut out, folded and glued together!

I made three different styles.  They are my new favorite thing to make.

The gift bags we just got at Party City, we added a few things that we found along the way, plus a bottle of bubbles!

I made the food labels using the same circles on the pinwheels and on the party hats.

This Avengers Scene I downloaded from Spoonful.com.  They had a number of printables that I didn’t get a chance to use.  They had some great masks, like the Hulk and Ironman, but I didn’t get them made.

The other thing I wanted to do but didn’t get a chance to, was to turn my mom’s front porch screen into a red telephone both door.  I just ran out of time.

The Birthday Boy had a great time.

Happy Party Planning