This year Easton turns 8, which is a big birthday at our house. So he got to choose whatever birthday theme that he wanted for his party this year. I don't know why but he chose "Indiana Jones."
So...we started with the invitations. I made them pretty simple by making a tri-fold invite out of card stock. Inside the invite we had a map, like the map in the Indiana Jones movies, with a dotted line that lead to our home. The left side of the invite had the party theme & the right side had all the party details. On the front of the invite I put a small label in the center to close it that read "OPEN-Adventure Ahead."
I then wrapped the invite a few times around in some twine and tied on a tag with the child's name. Best part about these invites is they were made with stuff that I already had...which made them FREE!!
Onto the decorations...
I decorated our kitchen nook all "Indiana Jones-ish" with crates, boxes & barrels that were all labeled in vinyl letters. Some read "Fragile-this end up" others read "Caution-Explosives." I put up black vinyl table clothes in the background (over my windows) to make it cave-like. I added creepy clothes to the backdrop & table clothes. Then I served the food off of old wooden plates & barrels. I topped the decor off with a choc. brown canopy that I hung over the entire table.
The boys LOVED IT!! I knew I had done a good job when my oldest son told me that this party looked just like the movies.
The boys LOVED IT!! I knew I had done a good job when my oldest son told me that this party looked just like the movies.
I had the boys eat outside since we were doing all our games outside & then swimming. I put up a table and covered it with black tablecloths & creepy clothes. I surrounded the patio with big boxes that also had misc. labels on them. Then I placed small tiki torches around the patio in Terra-cotta pots (I didn't light them for safety, but just having them around was a cool effect). Lastly, I hung white and spider paper lanterns over the table and then they glowed while they ate dinner (once the sun went down). I had ALL of these decorations in my Halloween bins so I didn't have to buy one single thing to decorate. The only thing I didn't have were the boxes, which I just borrowed from some friends.
As soon as the guests arrived, we sent them out to our sandbox for an "Archaeological Dig." We gave each boy a camouflage nap sack (oriental trading-12 for $10) that they got to fill with whatever buried treasure they dug up in the sand. The boys found gold (bubblegum coins from Oriental Trading 100 for $5), bones (old Halloween decorations that I had), magnifying glasses (Dollar Tree 6 for $1), snakes (Oriental Trading Co. 56 for $6.00) & squirt guns (Party City Clearance 8 for .50). Not only did they have fun outside digging but the nap sack doubled as their goody bag that they got to take home.



Our last game was a grenade fight...which were really small grenade water balloons that I found at Walmart for $1.50. I put all the grenades in a metal bucket labeled "Explosives." The boys had a great time cooling off in the heat with the water balloon fight.
Then the boys took a quick swim while I prepped the food...
GROSS-GRUB...(or food)
I think my favorite part was coming up with food that we could mimic as gross-out grub. I wanted it to be food that they would recognize, so they would actually eat it but be able to give each item a gross name.

The boys ate boiled worms (hot dogs cut length wise & then boiled so they would curl), dried mosquito wings (potato chips) gooey bugs (gummy bugs), brains served out of skulls (strawberry jello with real strawberry's in it for texture & made with sour cream to give it a pinkish color) & jungle juice for drinks
The boys finished the evening by watching the first Indiana Jones movie. This really was my favorite party for my boys that I have ever done. It was inexpensive to do because I had a lot of the supplies that I needed for it already. Plus it was the perfect party to have for boys...They all had a FAB-U-LOUS time!!!