Mine Craft Party

My kids love Minecraft.  It is pretty much like unlimited Legos that you never step on barefoot or have to clean up.  I have even enjoyed playing it some.  It can be addictive so I limit playtime.  Last October I was seeing some nifty ideas for using Minecraft themed Halloween decorations.  I used some boxes to make a Creeper:

I spray painted it green and used black crepe paper to add a face.  For some reason I didn't take another picture of it yet.  So once I get it down again (it's put away up high in the garage) I will update this post with a picture of the finished Creeper.

My kids loved it and my daughter asked for a Minecraft birthday party.  Her birthday is in January and it has been challenging for me to plan birthday parties at all let alone immediately following Christmas and New Year.  However, I am done being pregnant and nursing so I didn't have much excuse really.  I was in a hurry though so I had her pick a pre-made image for the invitation and I used Paint to add the personal info (no I am too cheap for Adobe Photoshop).  The blank place at the bottom right is where I put the address and phone number.

After I looked up some ideas and we visited Party City.  We found out that Minecraft hasn't released much for other vendors to sell.  We made do with our own creativity.  My husband was disappointed with his rush job on the cake but I think he did great with the little time he had.  We got some figurines to add the finishing touch.

Minecraft cake

We knew we would be indoors due to the rain.  So I came up with the idea of having "stations" for the kids to play.  I pulled our our mega bloks for the bedroom since I would have an age range of toddler to pre-teen.  I would have pulled out legos if it was mainly older kids or possibly both but I was still recovering from Christmas remember?  I set up another table and put the laptop next to our desktop so the kids could have a station to play Minecraft.  I asked my friend to do face painting and she did an amazing job.  She set up at the same table and the kids were glad to get a turn and the other stations kept them busy while they waited.  I also like using crafts to keep kids busy.  I wasn't super prepared but kids love decorating the bag for collecting the pinata goodies.  So I decided to decorate my card table to look like a craft table.  I bought a plastic table cover from the dollar store and just drew on it.

 I made a Ghast pinata out of cardboard box and white wrapping paper and tissue.  I drew the face on it with markers.  The legs are white crepe paper.  The best part about using a cardboard pinata instead of a paper mache one is that the kids can hit it as hard as they like and everyone can get a turn.  To make sure it would break open I taped two the flaps inward.  Then I told my oldest child (the last one to take a turn) to hit the bottom of it and in 2 hits the treasures were released.

Since it was raining outside we set it up in the Garage.  If I had more forethought I would have made the door to the garage look like a Nether portal with black and purple crepe paper but I lacked purple.

piñata

 I saw an enderman made from black poster board and crepe paper so that was easy to copy. I used lavender paper and purple marker to make the eyes and sparkles.  I wish I had put it some where else and we could have had the kids do a version of pin the tail on the donkey since the Enderman usually holds something.  But it worked as a decoration anyway.

  Samples of my friend's excellent talent.

I decided to use our leftover Halloween candy (not much) and some miniature Rubiks cubes and some decorative diamonds from Party City as prizes in the Pinata.  The kids all got a few things in their bags but not too much junk or candy which made all the parents happy.

We were also lucky to find square plastic plates at Party City just the right color of diamond in Minecraft.  I served dinner on them.  We saved them because I foresee more Minecraft parties in our future.  I was also grateful to have 2 other moms stick around to help me manage the kids and we made sure everyone had a good time.  Good Luck on your Minecraft party endeavors!