Ahoy Matey

I was in over my head on Saturday with 6-7 year old pirates.  My son had decided to have a pirates themed birthday party.  There were 19 pirates invited and 14 showed up.  I know.  What was I thinking?!  I put a lot of time into trying to plan it inexpensively.  I have to say google is a great thing.  Without it, I know I wouldn't have thought of all of the games I found from other people.

To set the scene for the party, they say it starts with the invitation.  I downloaded a rapscallion font from Dafont.com.  I printed the invite out on parchment office paper.  Then proceeded to burn the edges of each invitation.  Yes, it was time consuming but look how authentic it looked.

When each child arrived, they were given a red bandanna, eye patch, an inflatable sword, and face painted beard.  Then, they were ushered outside for games to save injury to any breakables.  Of course, it was chaotic with swords flying everywhere!

First, the boys dug up gold coins.  If the coin had a black dot, they were on the black pearl.  If not, they were on the flying Dutchman.  Once in teams, they had to get their sea legs by relay racing against the other team.  They had to run around a tree and the playground while holding a full cup of water with the goal being not spilling any water. 

Next game, we swabbed the deck by using a dollar mop and ball to race around trees and the playground in sort of a relay race. 

Of course the pirates had to walk the plank which was a 2x4 extended across two outdoor side tables.

We passed the pirates version of hot potato passing a skull instead.  Ate a lot of sugar! 
 
 

 
Each pirate walked away with a little goodies bag that I made by using the little black bags and printing off this graphic on fabric and adhering to the bag with a spray adhesive.  Inside they had pirate chocolate lollipops I made, pirate stickers, tattoos, and a pirate flag bead craft.
 
 

I hope all the boys had a great time being pirates for the day.  I wanted the thank you cards to be memorable.  So, I had each boy hold up an empty frame and take their picture.  Here is the photo thank you card I came up with in Photoshop elements.

Now that I have sent those off to be printed.  I have finally recovered!  The amount of energy from 14 six  to seven year old boys was off the charts or maybe I am getting old.  Any rate, I hope all the boys will remember a great pirate birthday party.