Luma Solem: Happy Minecraft Birthday

Poor Larry has had very few proper birthday parties in his life, considering the busy time of year that his birthday falls... but this was a big year for him. Eight is great! And along with his baptism, I actually made something of a themed birthday party for him. There was a lack of school friends in attendance, but an abundance of cousins from both sides of the family!

Lawrence kept changing his mind about what kind of party he wanted, so when it came right down to it, we planned and shopped for the party in a matter of a couple days. Many thanks to the many previous families who have done Minecraft birthdays and posted their ideas and pictures for us to get ideas and inspiration from. After all the research, this is how it went down in the Koberstein home (unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures on our good camera, so we'll have to settle for phone snapshots to tell the tale):

Decor

On the wall in the living room, Dawna and I designed and put up some Minecraft decorations. My favorite was the sword:

With each piece being a 3x3in. square, the whole sword measured about 4.5 feet long.

If you're familiar with Minecraft, hopefully you recognize this torch... but most of my family that came wasn't familiar with the game. Most of them thought it was a cigar... whoops.

Of course I had aspirations to create several other "pixel art" style wall decorations, but alas, I ran out of time.

Across the dining room arch, I strung a banner that I printed from ThePartyAnimal which was super cute. I added one extra creeper between the two words... and if you look closely, you'll see that I accidentally punched and hung the H in birthday upside down...whoops...

The Food

For the "cake" Emily made rice crispy treats with Cocoa Crispies and then I cut them into cubes and topped them with green frosting to make grass cubes. I tried to build a little block tower thing... but clearly I need more practice with Minecraft :) They were very tasty though!

I also made Jell-o jiggler cubes in blue for water, red for lava, and green for grass. Lunch was a build your own sandwich bar.

The Activities

Creeper bowling! We wrapped up six blocks with green paper and drew the faces on them and since it was such a last minute event, we just used whatever green cups we had in the house and rolled a green ball down the hall towards them. Lots of fun!

Pin the tail on the piggy. Classic game with a cubist twist! The thing I love most about the Minecraft theme is how easy it is to make anything from Minecraft... all you need is the right colors of paper and a chopper!

And of course the main activity that all the kids worked on the longest is the one that I took zero pictures of... We used Perler beads to make a variety of Minecraft gear. Items created include swords, boats, health hearts, even a couple of the characters. Even if I didn't get any original pictures, here's something to give you an idea of how cute they all turned out: