Last weekend we celebrated my little guy's 5th birthday with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle themed party.
My kid is TMNT CRAZY! I remember when I was a kid and these little cartoon testudines were very popular, so, the fact that he's nuts about them is blowing my mind! He's got TMNT shirts, socks, undies, jackets, hats, toy boxes, coloring books, movies and the TOYS....ugh! I'm so over it!!! LOL So, you can imagine, getting inspiration for this party was an easy task for me. All I had to do was raid his room! I found inspiration for the colors from a pair of his underwear.....don't laugh....I won't show the undies to you because that could cause problems for me and quite frankly, I wouldn't want my cartoon drawers showing up online :() Anyhoo, the look of them was grungy graffiti with blue & green as the main colors. Since blue is my boy's most favorite color I had a great starting point for the color scheme and design!
I designed printables for the set after seeing
this TMNT movie poster. I wanted the look of the printables to reflect some of the common themes of TMNT, that being sewers, toxic ooze and New York City. I didn't try and replicate any of the TMNT characters, because I cannot afford to be sued by Nickelodeon and whomever else has rights to them. So, I just created printables inspired by images from the movie.
The invitation set the tone for the party. I created a brick and city-scape backdrop with the party details shown atop a 'sewer' with ooze. The graffiti and grunge text were a perfect match for the look I wanted.
I loved the streamer backdrop that I did for my daughter's party so much that I used the same idea for this party. I added a personalized banner that I created for printables. The table was set up with color coordinating items to match the theme of the party. I added a few of my son's TMNT toys to further carry out the theme. I enlisted the help of big sister, Tracey to painted wood letters that spelled out my son's name. We left the edges of the letters unpainted to match the wooden box that the cupcakes were placed on. I found green silly string at my favorite spot, Dollar tree, and used coordinating paper to wrap them with and added a party dot and some shimmer green ribbon as embellishment. I also found green cardboard boxes at Target and added blue ribbon and blue crinkle paper to hold the lollipops.
TMNT love pizza - so that's what we served for the meal! I found a bright green table cover and bamboo place mats for the place settings. My daughter insisted on having TMNT plates and napkins for the party for her brother, so I caved and got them. They actually worked great with the rest of the design and I instantly felt better when I placed a few utensils in the cutest
green & white chevron bitty bags from Bloom Design. I used a black runner and placed some inexpensive Ninja play toys on it so the kids could work their Ninja skills out in the back yard afterwards. A huge Leonardo turtle was the centerpiece and surprise gift to my son who wanted it for weeks. I tied a few balloons to his hands and told Adam that he was wishing him an Awesome Birthday!
I didn't focus much on the activities, because most of the guests were our boy family members and knowing them as well as I do, they would be too preoccupied by all the goodies and the moon bounce we put up for every party....that was enough to keep them busy. For party favors, I found bubble tubes - again from the dollar store, and placed them in a pail on top of a stack of wooden crates - I think it gave it a back alley feel. The kids headed outside to play Ninja wars, spray silly string and blow bubbles! A good time to be had by all.
One other fun activity was we 'kinda' did as a family was to make Toxic Ooze.....I say kinda because I never got around to doing it at the party....but me, the girl and the boy made it later that night....here's the final result. I've got the DIY on it for you later this week!
You can find the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle printables and
invites available in my Etsy shop!
