Muppet Party!
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Last year, my younger son requested a Muppet-themed birthday party and, as a lifelong Muppet fan, I was thrilled! Kermit is one of his favorite characters so the color green became an easy decoration theme. The first items that I bought were these honeycomb balls, for color, from Target. As I stared at the packaging, I realized with a little snipping, I could make it into a Kermit head! (more photos and how-to below). His balloon body was inspired by some of the crafts in the BALLOON chapter in our next book!!!
I wanted to keep it simple with the dessert and lucked upon this Kermit cupcake idea on the blog Queen of the Kitchen.
The eyes are Mentos and the pupils are drawn on with black food-coloring markers.
As you can sorta see, above, I iced the cupcakes with tinted-green vanilla frosting and applied less towards the bottom so the face would look tapered. I like the green in McCormick's neon pack of food coloring.
For favors, we gave a kid-level biography of Jim Henson. I love giving books rather than a bag of plastic junk and candy (though I always tape a lollipop to the bag....I'm not a total kiljoy)! I buy them online and they are cheaper than buying in-store. There is a book appropriate to any party theme! The lollipops and bags are from Oriental Trading.
The first activity was a quiet puppet-making craft. I gave each kid these blank fabric puppets, also from Oriental Trading, and set out fabric markers, googly eyes, tacky glue, and felt tongues that I pre-cut. A craft is a good way to warm everyone up at the start of the party when everyone is trickling in. I put a squeeze of tacky glue into the egg cartons next to the googly eyes. (See above photo, taken before I added the glue.) Popsicle sticks were used to apply the glue to the eyes and felt tongues.
Afterwards we went out to the backyard for some carnival games which we game Muppet-y names! One, thought up by my son, was a (Miss) Piggy-Pie-Eating-Contest. To keep it easy I bought some inexpensive small pie tins and we filled them with whipped cream (no actual pie). We topped each with a shake of Kermit-green sprinkles. The winner was the first to eat all the sprinkles off the whipped cream. No hands allowed! Cleanup involved a water balloon fight! (I wish I had gotten some good pic's!)
To make the hanging Kermit decoration....
supplies:
- honeycomb ball
- scissors
- ping pong ball
- craft knife
- black Sharpie
- piece of red construction paper
- pencil
- double-stick tape
- hot glue and hot glue gun
- 1 green round balloon
- 4 green twisty balloons
- Glue Dots, optional
- Trim the honeycomb ball to give it a diamond-ish shape, as shown.
- Use the craft knife (BE CAREFUL...GROWNUPS ONLY!) to pierce and then saw the ping pong ball in half. Use the Sharpie to draw on Kermit's pupil, as shown.
- Open the honeycomb ball and hot glue or double-stick tape open.
- With the honeycomb ball's string at the top, use the scissors to cut out a wedge of the bottom half of one side for a mouth, as shown. Fold the piece of red construction paper in half, stick into the mouth, and hold in place. Trace the mouth with the pencil. Remove the paper from the mouth and cut out the traced shape. Place some pieces of double-stick tape on the outside of the red paper and place it back inside the mouth.
- Squeeze some hot glue around the cut edges of the ping pong ball eyes and place onto the head.
- Inflate the round balloon and the four twisty balloons. Adhere the bottom of the head to the round balloon top with double-stick tape (or a tape roll of duct tape if it isn't holding).
- Adhere the arms and legs to the round ballon with double-stick tape or glue dots. (see photo below).
A side view, before attaching the body....
Happy Birthday Muppet fans!! xo