An Indiana Jones Birthday

My son is turning seven, and he has asked for an Indiana Jones birthday party. Well, I have to admit that I am not much for character parties with premade plates, cups and napkins. My one concession was the invitation. I found these on Baysic Design's Etsy shop. You send a picture of your child to her and she sends a file back to you that you may print or email. How simple is that?

Cole was so excited when he saw the finished invitation. You can get your own here.

I founds some inexpensive fabric at Joanne Fabrics to make a tent like structure. My sister found some rope at our local hardware store to hang from the trees above our deck.

We wrapped some snakes in the ropes, since Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes. (The snakes were part of Cole's present from his Aunt Karen... more on that in the next post!)

We had an easy activity to start with. The children broke up into groups and took turns wrapping each other into mummies! They were giggling and having so much fun. We certainly got our money worth out of a few rolls of toilet paper!

I made this little pillow pouches myself. I found the paper at Michael's in the scrapbooking section. The template for the pouch was at the Got Crafts blog here. I put the paper in my printer and printed the template on the back. Easy cutting and gluing and voila. Now I have to tell you that I made these pouches because I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, and I didn't have enough time to have something shipped. If you are not into making things, or simply do not have the time, you can find some wonderful boxes at LilithEvy's Etsy shop. We filled ours with magic tricks from the dollar store.

We found "chalices" on line at a floral supply house. I purchased jewels with stickers on the back at Oriental Trading, and glitter, gold and silver markers at Michaels. While the kids were decorating their goblets, my friends hid treasures in the yard. (Thanks Robin and Tara!)

It was important to me to find jewels that looked real. The kids were so into them!

I made these pyramid boxes to hold faceted "jewels" that I also found on Etsy. My son picked out colors for each of his friends, we filled the boxes with shredded wood and one large jewel. I wrote each child's name on the box and we hid them around the yard for a treasure hunt. Here is the link to the pyramid box template I found online.

To keep the kids busy, we had another activity. Originally I thought I'd send these home with the kids, but they had great fun being archeoligists digging out egyptian treasures. The Pyramid Dig Kit is from Oriental Trading.

I found some edible jewel decorations on Fancy Flours to decorate the cupcakes, and some "crystal" skulls too. We ordered plain cupcakes at Wegmans and decorated them a few minutes before the party.