Minecraft Birthday Party Ideas
Every year I say I’m not going to go too crazy with birthday parties, but sometimes I just can’t seem to help myself. This year, Cole asked if he could have a Minecraft party for his 8th birthday. My initial thought was, “Alright!! This is going to be easy – he’ll have a few friends over to play Minecraft, we’ll eat some cake, and we’re done!” As I began discussing party plans with him, it became clear that he wanted something a little more elaborate than that. He didn’t want to actually play Minecraft at the party (how silly of me to think such a thing!), but he wanted the food, party games, decorations, and loot bags to all be Minecraft-related. Let’s just say thank goodness for Pinterest, because I don’t know what I would have done without all the great ideas I found there. I’m really not that creative.
It was a nice day, so we decided to have the party outside. It was a good thing, too, because we had over a dozen kids show up and I can’t imagine it would have gone well having that many hyper kids inside my house at once. We set up the food on our outdoor table, along with green plates, napkins, and cups. Cole drew creeper faces on all the green cups beforehand.
I gave each item a clever Minecraft-themed name. Fruit skewers became “swords,” but in hindsight, it wasn’t the smartest idea. We had to put a stop to a bunch of 7 and 8 year-olds running around our yard while pointing sharp wooden sticks at each other. Oops!
Hickory Sticks became just “sticks,” strawberries became “redstone,” Cheesies became “carrots” (I thought regular carrots should be the “carrots” but Cole thought otherwise), blue finger-jello cut into squares became “water,” and watermelon became “melon,” of course.
To make the label stands, I used modeling clay formed into cubes and stuck a toothpick in each of them. I printed off the labels using this free Minecraft font that worked perfectly.
We had signs up at the front of the house to direct the kids to the backyard, and they had to walk through the “Minecraft Portal,” which was made up of purple streamers hung across our gate with clear packing tape. I found this idea for the portal on Vivaciously Vintage.
With so many kids, we kept them occupied by quickly moving from one activity to the next. Everyone had fun with the Creeper Toss game, made out of a piece of cardboard with a Creeper face cut out so you could throw balls through it. Bennett and Cole helped me paint it green before the party. This Creeper Toss idea came from The Finogles.
Cole wanted a “Pin the Tail on the Pig” game that we came across at Raining Hot Coupons. The whole family helped make this pig one afternoon and we had a lot of fun with it. The game got pretty silly when someone unknowingly put the tail in a not so polite spot, and then everyone started putting them in funny places purpose…and not just on the pig. Oh boy.
We also had a Ghast piñata, which Cole made almost entirely on his own. We just used a square cardboard box (make sure it’s not too thick, or the kids will have trouble breaking it), covered it in white paper, and hung white streamers on the bottom. Cole drew a ghast face on it, too. There’s a really helpful tutorial for a Ghast piñata at Domestic Femme.
Now, I can cook and even bake, but I cannot for the life of me decorate a cake. I don’t even try anymore. I asked my friend Jay from Jaybird Creations to make Minecraft cake toppers for me – aren’t they amazing? Then all I had to do was make a cube-shaped cake. I was going to make it chocolate brown with green icing on top so it would look like a dirt block, but Cole doesn’t like chocolate, so we went with white cream cheese icing and carrot cake. It turned out well, except we learned the hard way that cube-shaped cakes are really hard to cut! It was delicious though.
I totally forgot to take photos of the loot bags before they were sent off with the kids, but I used the same Minecraft font I mentioned above to print each child’s name on their bag. Inside, we had things like TNT twizzlers, red gummies labeled as “Redstone,” and cute square magnetic picture frames like these ones with creeper faces and Stampy Longnose faces inside.
Do you have a kid who’s really into Minecraft? I’ve never actually played the game, but I’m sure learning a lot about it lately from my boys!
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