Project: Game Board Themed Birthday Party

My daughter woke up one morning so excited!  She had had a dream about her birthday party and they had played all her favorite board games.  Now THAT I could do!

"Twister" Invitations

 Her invitation was based off of the game Twister.  I just pulled out our do-a-dot markers

 and let her go to town!  She loved that she got to help me with the invitations.  I just picked out green, red, yellow and blue cardstock (8.5 x11) and cut them in half - so they were 8.5 x 5.5 and then folded them in half.  She created the twister mat on white cardstock rectangles and I printed the party details on another the same size - both slightly smaller than the folded card.  One was pasted on the front and the other on the inside.  Then I added the "Game Time" to the front and it was done!!  Easy peasy!

"Candyland" Cake

 The cake took a bit longer than the invitations, but it was so much fun!  I decided not to start entirely from scratch and just grabbed a cake at Costco and remade it.

 I used the Wilton color spray for the green.  Then I cut starbursts in quarters for the path.  I wish I had grabbed some of the tropical flavored ones so I would have had blue and green too. 

 I crushed up candy canes and mint circles for the "Peppermint Forest".  For all of the white/snowy lands I sprinkled coconut over the white frosting

 Gumdrops for "Gumdrop Pass" and Dum-Dums for "Lollipop Woods"

 Cut up Twizzlers for the "Licorice Forest"

 Leftover peanut brittle from Christmas and some almonds (Shhh - don't tell!) for "Peanut Acres"

 Coconut and Marshmallows with some blue sprinkles for "Snow Flake Lake"

 Mini Reeses Cups, chocolate chips and Shell topping for the "Chocolate Swamp".  This cake had to be refrigerated so the shell topping worked great.  If you don't need to refrigerate it though, I would recommend melted chocolate instead.

I made the "Candy Castle" out of waffle cones and skittles.  I'm sure you could probably make this much cuter than I did.  Just use your imagination!!  

I printed all the people off of the internet and laminated them.  Then I taped them to toothpicks to stick them in the cake.  This cake was a huge hit!  The kids loved picking which land they wanted their piece from.

Goodie Bags

 The party attendees were all girls, so I threw together some flower clips for the goodie bags.  For a tutorial on how I made them click here.  There was also squiggly straws, bouncy balls, candy from each of the candy land places....it was a little random.  A little deck of cards or a travel game would be cute to go along with the theme as well.  I just put them in brown paper bags tied with ribbon (forgot to take a picture!).  Any kind of bag works though!

Extras

I put some jars filled with candy in the middle of the playing tables and the winners got a bottle of bubbles from the dollar store.  If they had already won one, they had the option to share with a friend who didn't have one.  I'm proud to say that they ALWAYS chose to share over getting another one.

The girls ranged from 6 -8 years old and two of the favorite games were Jenga and Twister.  It was so much fun to hear their squeals and laughter as they played the games. It was also interesting to see how many of them had never really played board games before!  So sad that such a treasure is being lost to so many kids.  It was a fun night full of good old fashioned fun.  And pizza then games, cake and ice cream, and presents made the perfect 2 hour party.