"The Best Birthday Ever!!"

I made the invitation with Microsoft Publisher.  I took a minecraft pix and put the Minecraft logo with the yellow Happy Birthday Franklin at the top.  Then I put the info on grey rectangles to mimic the opening screen.

For the decorations I used black, grey and Caribbean blue plates, napkins, silverware, streamers and balloons.  I printed various minecraft scenes and pictures from the Internet, put them in frames and hung them in place of our normal wall art.  I made minecraft block bunting out of felt. I had a black opalescent beaded curtain for a doorway so I hung that up and made a portal. I made my windows into glass blocks.  I bought this minecraft music and played it in the background.  I also made various papercraft blocks, characters and the cake about three to six inches and put those around.

As the kids arrived they chose a stack of 12 trading cards.  I printed these cards onto 2x3 printable business cards so they were exactly the same size and felt like a deck.  I had them all sit down on the floor in the living room and read and trade their cards while waiting for everyone to arrive.

They also had these magnets to play with.

I printed these on sheets of magnets that I then covered with a laminate sheet.  I cut them with a rotary cutter.  This is the fridge with only two sheets I made to see if the kids liked them.  They did and I made six sheets and got a huge magnet board for the party.

While they were on the floor I played this intro video that I found on becauseiamthemama.blogspot.com

Now everyone knew the first thing to do is find wood...

I took six inch boxes and covered them in construction paper.  The wood blocks had circles cut out of the cardboard.  When they punched through the paper they found a bundle of two sizes of Popsicle sticks.

What do you do next?  Crafting table again thanks to becauseiamthemama.blogspot.com

They used their sticks from the tree to make their picks.

The took their picks to the mine...

I printed sheets with the various blocks then glued them on the the six inch blocks.  I used plain grey construction paper for the cobble.  I cut the tops off of some of the cobble to use as an "inventory" to carry their stuff around.  Inside the inventory boxes I put coal.

I took two of the printed coal sheets and glued three sides together.  I crumpled a piece of shiny black paper and put it inside then glued the last side together.  I put one of these in each inventory box.  They used their picks to get the coal out.


Because it's getting dark and we need light!!

I enlarged papercraft torches to fit onto an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper.

I took three small pieces of tin foil and folded them inside of one large piece.  I taped it to the back of the iron blocks in "the mine"

They used the big piece to wrap around the top of their pick for an iron pick.

The three small pieces they crafted into an iron bucket!!

I had a big black spider that I taped on lots of small black balloons.

Inside a few of the balloons I put in little bits of dental floss. Each child grabbed a balloon and tried to pop it. They popped balloons until each one found two balloons with string.

They used some of the string to make a fishing pole because in order to mark those buckets with their names we needed ink.

I took squares of black felt and folded them and sewn the top half.  I put BB's inside and hot glued them shut.  I glued tiny white squares on for eyes.  I used pinking shears to cut out small squares of red to be teeth filled mouths.  Last I cut the bottom half into eight legs.  We threw about 10 of them into the pool and put magnets onto the end of fishing poles and let them reel the squid in.  Then they got a tear drop shape of DRY black felt they brought inside to turn in for a big sharpie they used to write their name on the cup and the inventory box.

Now for the weapons!!

They used the rest of their string and some sticks to craft bows.


I had a skeleton toss for arrows.  Dopey me thought that arrows were made out of bones. 

I guess tossing bean bags at skeletons is better than tossing at flint or feathers!!

Anyway, if they got it in the big bowl it was three, medium five and small ten.

I pulled the cotton off of one end because if I cut it they were too short for the bows.  I also dipped the cotton in watered down glue so they didn't unravel.

They used the bows to shoot at mob targets.

I printed them from the Internet and folded about one inch for a stand.  They were a little flimsy so I glued a penny onto the base of each one.  That was the perfect amount of give for the Qtip arrows.  I made a set of these for each child so they could take them home and play with their arrows.

They got stickers for the mobs they shot.

I printed images onto sticker paper then covered with laminate sheets.

They played with all the stuff for about a half an hour while I was getting ready for the food.  They liked the big blocks the best.  They built massive structures and rooms.  I was surprised they didn't like the bows and arrows so much.

THE FOOD...

I took images of all minecraft food and put it on card stock to make little labels.  I had rice pudding in the crock pot for mushroom stew.  There was bread, burgers, fried chicken, Waldorf salad, caramel apple chunks, choc chip cookies and of course watermelon.  In the back to the left of the stove I had two wine carafes I used for pink potion and blue potion.  I also took water bottles and printed minecraft logo labels for them.

As they finished I had guess the item & block sheets laid out on a table. I also made a puzzle by taking a full size minecraft pix and covering with laminate sheet and cutting into puzzle shape.

When they were done with the trivia and puzzle they got a TNT block filled with poppers and a chest with iron bar (Hershey's chocolate with silver label) and diamonds (turquoise sixlets)

I got the TNT block here and the double chest here.

I took this image of diamonds and printed it on card stock.  I needed double sided images because I took them and hid them around the house like an Easter egg hunt.  After all you have to really hunt for diamonds right??  The rules were you did not have to touch a thing.  Every diamond was in sight...if you really looked.  They were tough to find.  That's why it was important to impart do not touch anything until you see the diamond.  They were also told to only find two.  When they had their two diamonds they grabbed one more of their sticks and went to the crafting table.

I made these diamonds swords out of a five gallon paint stir stick spray painted Bermuda blue. I wrapped the handle with the black electrical tape and glued on two big sticks to finish the hilt.

I stenciled creeper faces onto green shirts.  I sprayed them with water until they were damp.  Then I folded them and really sprayed each fold.  I put them in sandwich bags and put them in the freezer.

I had them go outside and see who could unfold and get the shirt on the fastest.

While they were doing the shirts I was hiding clues for a cake hunt.  They ran around chasing clues until they found the cake.


You would be expecting this cake since I was doing everything as literal as possible.

Unfortunately I had already made this for the scout cake auction.

So I went with this...

This cake was very easy.  White cake and white frosting with a bit of black food coloring for the cobble.  Chocolate cake and white frosting with green coloring for the grass blocks.  I put vanilla ice cream in the mixer with blue food coloring for the water.  I refroze it in a Pyrex and cut it to fit.  BOOM cake and ice cream.  Easiest ever!!  I took the Steve from this papercraft and cut and enlarged him and pasted a pix of my precious over the original face and used it for a candle holder.

Then we did presents.

A crafty miner brought this gift.

Finally, we had a pinata.

I found a pull pinata that was on clearance.

I glued a square piece of cardboard that I wrapped in grey crepe paper.  I took bits of aqua colored ribbon and made a diamond block.

I was going to make my own diamond block out of flour, water and paper with crepe paper but I couldn't resist this five dollar pinata.  How cute would that have been using a box covered with Steve head printables as the blindfold!!!

While waiting for parents to come we played Steve (Simon) says.  The winners got custom travel drinking glasses.

There you have it.  I hope you get some good ideas and please let me know any other ideas you come up with as I have one more minecrafter's birthday to deal with!!