Jackson turns 3: A Star Wars Party!

Due to a busy travel month in April, I had to do a lot of Jackson's planning in advance. I'm a pretty good last minute prepper (although that is a bit stressful) but this had to be different. I only had Monday-Friday the week of his party after getting back from Vegas (and Costa Rica right before that). So I did a majority of the things before Costa Rica. We even made our favors (cookies) a few weeks in advance and froze them.

Jackson has been a big Star Wars fan, ever since we bought my nephew Cameron a little Star Wars figurine and it sat on my counter for a week or so before the party. This was back in July so that would make Jackson just 2 years and 2.5 months! He wanted to look at that figurine every time he came into the kitchen. He would ask about it, the name, what was it from. So then after that, he had a radar for all things Star Wars and would zoom into SW things at the store, on the TV, etc.

A Star Wars party was a natural choice and it was Jackson's choice. There are tons of ideas online but I wasn't crazy about most of them... it just was too theme-y. Yeah, I know, it is a theme party. But I just don't like all the matchy matchy cups, napkins, paper decorations, etc. But thanks to pinterest and some helpful suggestions by friends/family, I came up with enough ideas to make it fun for me to plan and fun for Jackson to party. :)

Invites (made with the silhouette cameo):

I had gotten a Silhouette Cameo cutting machine shortly before I began working on his party stuff (thanks to my sweet hubby) and it was really great to use it for a lot of the party prep. I used it for the invite, the door sign (above), the labels on his pictures, the favor labels.... I think that might be it. Oh and the Happy Birthday sign above the fireplace & other misc. circle cut outs that I hung up or made a banner with. Really fun machine, in spite of it's few downfalls. :)

My picture wall in the entry that is usually my holiday decorating area became Jackson's yearly photo wall. I added in some pictures of each of the 6 Star Wars episodes (which you can't see very well in this picture) that are silhouette depictions of a scene from each movie.

As far as party activities go, we had galactic playdough set up at a table where they worked glitter into playdough and then cut out stars, star wars figures, etc. Another table was coloring and Star Wars tattoos.

Decorations were the paper lanterns in red and black (meant to be like planets), the circles on the photo wall (also somewhat like planets), and circle banners (again, planets).

We played pin the lightsaber on the jedi... Isabella actually pinned it in the exact location it should have gone (not sure if her vision was truly impaired by the bandana or not... but everyone got a prize for effort!). Then we played with the pool noodle lightsabers I made (just cut in 1/2 the dollar store pool noodles and then used duct tape, black and silver, on the ends to make them look like light sabers) either hitting each other or attempting to keep a balloon from landing on the ground. Then the last "game" was the pull string piñata with lots of fun gadgets and (healthier) candy. 

We had lots of snack foods which had fun names like Vader Veggies, Sarlaac pit dip, Padme Popcorn, and Yoda Ears. My mom made a super yummy and really great Chewbacca cake. Favors were green (colored with green matcha tea powder, a recipe I found online!) yoda cookies with a yoda label.

Jackson arranging his bugs from the Piñata.

Jackson got heaps of great Star Wars gifts and truly enjoyed his day. He was super busy the whole time, running around crazily from activity to activity. He loved having so many friends to light saber with and also loved getting lots of play bugs/lizards from the piñata.