Star Wars Party: Episode II | The Decor

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Did everybody get out to see the new Star Wars movie over the weekend?? My husband saw it twice! Once, the night it came out, and then again on Sunday when he took our son to see it for his birthday. This week, our Star Wars love is continuing with Episode II of our Star Wars birthday party, this time it’s all about The Decor! Check out Episode I: The Refreshments, if you missed it last week!

I’ll start off where every party starts off, the invitations!

I ordered an invitation file right off of Etsy, for $10. I chose one that was designed to be printed as a 4×6, so that I could then order them online through Walgreens for same day in-store pick up. You order the printed invitations just like you are ordering photos, so yes that means that if you do a 4×6, you are usually paying less than $.20 per invitation! For the Etsy file and printing, my invitations cost less than $15 total! That is about the same that I would have paid for 3 packs of Star Wars invitations at the party store and I didn’t even have to write them out myself! I was intimidated by ordering my invitations this way at first, but now I have used this method for all my kid’s party so far. It is so easy and I have loved every single one, plus the price is really hard to beat!

On to the decorations! Being that my son’s birthday is in December, we always have the battle of Christmas decor vs birthday decor. For his first birthday, I waited till after his party to decorate for Christmas. After that year, I vowed to never do that again. Christmas felt so jipped! So now I just do my best to find a balance between the two, either by temporarily tucking some Christmas decor away for the day, or by finding ways to make the birthday theme work with my existing decorations.

Most years there is nothing I can do about the elephant Christmas tree in the room that threatens to compromise my party theme, but not this year, the force is strong in this house and our tree officially joined the dark side!

My son received the Darth Vader mask and chest plate last year for his birthday, so we attached those to the tree. The cape that came with that set was child size, not tree size, so I had to pull out a black table-cloth and I wrapped that around the tree’s “shoulders” to act as a cape. Luckily it’s an artificial tree, so I just clipped the table-cloth on with some safety pins and we were good to go. I only had a clear lightsaber to work with, so I wrapped it with red wrapping paper, which seemed fitting since it was going on a Christmas tree.

On the other end of the holiday vs birthday decor dilemma, my mom gave me two Star Wars pumpkin decorating kits to use “somewhere” at the party. Well, I did still have some pumpkins left over from Halloween, so we just spray painted them black and off-white with some paint that we already had, stuck the pumpkin kit pieces in them, and viola, we had centerpieces for our outdoor tables, which was perfect since it was 70 degrees the day of the party and the majority of our guests spent most of their time on the patio. Wow, Vader has let himself go!

As far as regular “birthday” decor, I didn’t go to crazy. My son has A TON of Star Wars toys and figurines since he was pretty much born into being a Star Wars fan, so I really just stuck those all around the house, on the shelves, in the bathrooms and on the food and cake tables. I do, however, always like to make a banner for my kid’s parties. We have a big open wall above the table where we serve the food, so I like to make my own, that way I can make it as big and decorative as I want it.

I almost always make my banners out of scrap-book paper, either to use for the letters or to make background flags to hold pre-made letters. There are so many colors, designs and themes to choose from and they are often sold in individual sheets, so you can really customize your banner however you want. The only place that I found Star Wars scrap-book paper was at Joann Fabrics, and they only sold it in a pack of 12 sheets, which I was fine with. The pack was about $7, and I was able to use a 60% off coupon on it (December does at least have the best coupons!), so I got all the Star Wars paper that I needed for about $3.

This banner was a pretty simple one. I used the Star Wars font that I told you about in my last post. I typed up “Happy Birthday Gage,” and printed it out. I adjusted the font size and print percentage to get my letters to print as big as I wanted them, and I also set my font color to light gray since these letters are really just going to be your template (I also recommend printing them on cardstock, since you’ll be tracing them). Cut out each of your printed letters, lay them face down onto the back side of your scrap-book paper and trace the letter. Then cut out the scrap-book paper letters and you will have all the decorative letters for your banner. You can tape them or use a hole puncher to string them to attach them to any type of string, ribbon, or streamer of your choosing and then hang it! For this banner, I also cut some stars out of blue and black glitter scrap-book paper to attach over where my banner strings were taped to the wall. I think that helped to give it more of a “finished” look.”

Since the Star Wars font was so fun, I couldn’t resist making up a “Please Wash Your Hans” sign for the bathrooms. And I pulled the Jedi bathroom sign from google images, and just printed it out. The Star Wars theme is really too fun.

We ended the party with a Darth Vader pinata that I picked up at Walmart. We filled it with some Star Wars Gummies, Star Wars mints, and a mix of other candy. I also used Star Wars goody bags for the kids to collect their pinata candy in. I found some Star Wars gift labels at the dollar store, so I labeled all the bags with the kids names and pre-filled them with a light-up lightsaber lollipop, a ring, a pencil, a pencil sharpener or eraser, and a glow stick, so once the kids topped the bags off with their pinata candy, their goody bag was ready to go.

We didn’t have a bat lying around the house, so I couldn’t resist turning this $5 “pinata stick” into a lightsaber for tackling Darth Vader, by pulling off the tissue paper and wrapping some duck tape around it. Making the kids wear a Darth Vader mask while hitting the pinata, was simply for the pure enjoyment of the parents!

Overall, we had a pretty successful Star Wars birthday party. We got so lucky that we were able to have the party outside, even though it was December, and my son certainly added to his Star Wars collection with all of the leftover party supplies, and the unbelievable gifts that his friends brought over!

And I couldn’t resist adding in a picture of Ellie in her Vader onesie and tutu…

Anybody else planning a Star Wars party this year? This was the second one we’ve experienced in the last few months, something tells me it won’t be the last.

May the force be with you.
xo
c