Robot Birthday Party: Celebrating 5 years!
I’m only about 6 months behind on sharing this fun day. John’s 5th Birthday was a bit of a mental turning point for me. My baby is 5 years old, he’s ready to start school, play sports and so many other big kid things. He’s the greatest kid and so much fun to spend time with. One of my favorite things about him, is that once he makes up his mind, he doesn’t waiver. The moment he decided he wanted to have a robot birthday party that was that. For literally 6 months before his big day we planned his special Robot birthday party. I think you are really going to love the way that it all came together for a great day of fun with friends and family.
Robot Birthday Party: Location! Location! Location!
Every year I think about all of the places that would be so much fun to have a party at, I worry about the weather and some of those factors that are out of my control. In the end we always love our neighborhood park and it’s always a big hit. Our favorite park has a perfectly positioned picnic table right next to the playground and amazing tree coverage around it. So that Texas sun isn’t scorching you. The best thing about a party at the park is you don’t have to plan games if you don’t want to. The kids are going to be more than happy to play on the playscape or equipment that is already in place. Another perk of the park birthday is that no matter how many friends can attend your party there are always new friends to meet and invite to enjoy the fun.
Robot Birthday Party: Invitations & Decorations
We searched high and low to find the that John liked, I mean serious 5 years have some strong opinions. He had a hard time with some of the examples because they didn’t have the correct number for his age and he wanted it to say 5 for sure. Once he figured out they would change the number to a 5 he was super excited to help me pick the invite out. His favorite colors are blue and green so he selected an invite that reflected that.
After ordering them we had a proof within a few days and were able to have them printed locally for convenience.
No party is complete without a great selection of decorations. We kept is simple with a few color themed balloons and streamers and of course the photo booth!
John sported this awesome that is still a hit on most days, I love that it’s all robot and doesn’t have a year or anything on it.
Robot Birthday Party: Entertainment
Photo booths are fun for everyone, and no photo booth is complete without great props. For the ultimate robot birthday party, we needed robot heads. Here’s out tutorial for DIY robot head photo booth props.
Here is what you will need:
2 boxes large enough to hit over someones head and rest on their shoulders
Silver metallic wrapping paper
Solo cups (color of your choice)
Pool Noodle (color of your choice) 2-4″ pieces x 4
18 gauge wire (2′)
After you have gathered all of your supplies and are ready to get started, you will begin with removing the flaps on one end of the box. This will create the opening you need to put the robot head on. Now you can wrap the exterior of the box with silver metallic wrapping paper, just as you would a gift box, securing the paper with tape.
I placed the “head” over my own head and poked a hole to make eye level so that I would know where to remove the eye openings. Remove the box and trace the end of solo cup or pool noodle at marked area. carefully cut out these areas. Remove the ends off of the solo cups, make sure there are no rough/sharp edges that could injury someone’s face. Using hot glue insert the bottom end of the solo cup into the eye space cut into box and secure with hot glue around edge. On the second box, follow the same steps however place 2″ pieces of pool noodles for the eyes.
Alternating supplies on each box, place ears on each robot head with hot glue.
Shape pipe cleaners to the desired shapes and using a small point punch holes in the top of your robot heads. thread the pipe cleaners through and secure with hot glue on the inside of box as well as around the top entry. Using a highlighter we wrapped out 2′ of 18 gauge wire around it to produce a spring. After stretching to our liking we attached to the ends of our pipe clears.
For the final touches, cut out mouths in various shapes with your Astrobright paper and attach to the heads with glue stick. Allow to dry completely before using.
Now that the props are ready we needed the ultimate background. Attached to the tree all around out photo booth a DIY cog wheels! Using party theme colored paper plates, cut out various shapes and sizes of cogs and attach to background area of photo booth!
The fun didn’t stop with the awesome photo booth, our DIY robot pinata was a huge hit! (see what I did there?) Want the full tutorial on our DIY Robot Pinata? You got it!
Robot Birthday Party: Cake!
I wanted a robot full body, John wanted a robot head. We made a large square cake, alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla cake. I iced the cake with the came delicious chocolate buttercream recipe I used on this Monster Truck Cake, it’s a family favorite. After the cake was frosted I applied a thin layer of Wilton Silver food safe coloring spray. After allowing it dry I sprayed 2 additional applications, allowing for dry time between each.
For the eyes you will need 2 Oreos, Open the cookie carefully to keep the frosting on one side one. Using black gel frosting add a small round eye. Allow to dry slightly before attaching the eye to the cake with a small amount of chocolate buttercream on the back of the cookie.
For the mouth, using the black gel a simple straight line was added. Red pull and peal licorice was inserted into the top of the cake for antennas and used around the edge of the cake to bring the color together. Sparkler candles are the perfect addition to this robot cake.
Robot Birthday Party: Party Favors
This was a big hit with both the birthday boy and friends. Granny and Papa had a huge part in the party favors and actually created all of the robot buckets by hand! Each one is unique and was designed with love. Papa works for a company that refurbishes fire extinguishers so most of the parts are random pieces from his work. To make your own head to the local hardware store and select a few handfuls of fun random parts and get to creating. E6000 is the ideal adhesive for metal on metal. Once the robot buckets were all finished we had to fill them with goodies.
I had been wanting to make our own crayons for some time and found the cutest mold online. I stocked up on gallon zip lock bags full of broken and used crayons from a local craft reuse store. I removed all of the paper (a tedious job) and separated by general colors. Next came the melting! I have to say I struggled with this at first and finally got the hang of it.
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.
- Remove all paper wrappers.
- Break the crayons into pieces.
- Fill molds with crayon pieces.
- Place the molds on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until the crayons are completely melted.
- Very carefully, so as to not spill any melted crayon, remove the cookie sheet from the oven.
- Place the molds in the freezer to cool, remove after 30 minutes. If cooled then removed from molds.
Seems easy enough right, well all my robot hands kept breaking off! So I had a back up and ordered a simple mold and got back to work. I made crayons for DAYS! In the end each goodie bucket had a package of rainbow crayon sticks. We also filled the buckets with fun trinkets like build your own robot mask, robot erasers and build a robot sticker sheets.
Robot Birthday Party: Creative Thank you notes
My absolute favorite way to tell our friends thank you for coming to our party is by sending them a fun picture from the party. I make sure to snap a photo booth picture of each kiddo or grown up at the party. Later I have them printed up at a local photo processing like Walgreens but printing from home if you have a photo quality printer works great too! I assist the kiddo with writing their thank you notes on the back of each picture with a sharpie and then run them through the laminator. Add a small piece of magnetic tape to the top of each picture and drop them off with friends. Note that if you are mailing them you may need additional postage for the magnetic stripe on the photo.
