Angry Birds Birthday: How I did it

When Elijah started going ga-ga over angry birds earlier this year, I knew he was going to choose that for his birthday theme this year. So I did what any self-respecting girl would do: I hit up pinterest. I scoured the boards to come up with some fun ideas. I found a really cute idea to make an angry birds real life game. It really was a simple process.

First off, I collected some old boxes from the garage to use as "jenga" pieces. Then I bought a package of green balloons. I got to work prepping the balloons by blowing up each one, and then letting all the air back out of them so that I could add rice. Because it can sometimes get windy in the elements, you want your pigs to remain grounded for the game. I added about a handful of rice in each balloon (no there is no easy trick to not getting the rice all over the floor.) After the balloons were filled with rice, I blew them back up and tied them. I tried to make each balloon a different size, because that's the way they are in the actual game. Then I free-handed faces on them, using a sharpie. I used the point of the balloon as the snout and basically copied coloring books and stickers I had on-hand to finish off each face.

I was originally going to use some tiny bouncy balls, but then I found THIS amazing free printable of angry birds faces.  I decided to take an outside ball I bought at Taget ($5) and used it as the body of the bird. Then I printed out the face, cut it and used 2 thick coats of mod podge on it. It dried in 12 hours and it ended up looking fabulous to finish off the game.

The pinata was a contribution from my brother-in-law who made a fabulous paper-mache pig and then painted tennis balls in red and yellow to look like angry birds. Then we used some old excercising equipment to make a giant human slingshot. It was a raging success.

Ofcourse, a party wouldn't be complete without some food, and I had the toughest time deciding on what to make. I ended up on chicken nuggets (little birds) hot wings (bird wings), and pigs in a blanket. I also included some gummy worms, a box of snackfood (bird feed) and some red vines (pigtails). I printed out the labels on regular paper and put angry birds decals on each one and mod podged them onto the cake pans.

This was the first year that I included some real loot. I found an amazing deal on slingshots ($1 each???!!) and added some bouncy balls to use. I included some squishy balls that had angry bird eyes and some angry bird stickers. It was a total hit with the kids.

I was really surprised with how well it turned out and how inexpensive it really was. Throwing birthday parties gives me coldsweats, but it's totally worth this kid's smile!