I have a love/hate relationship with birthday parties.  I get really excited and pin 800 different ideas on my Pinterest boards.  And then I have anxiety for weeks before the event trying to make all the things.  It’s awesome, scary and exhausting.

We have having a small party for my son’s 10th birthday.  In exchange for the small party, he’s getting an Xbox for his birthday.  I say that’s a fair trade.  So we’re trying not to spend a ton of money on birthday party things.  I’ve made most of the games, crafts, food with little expense, but with great themeing!

It’s all about their favorite game, Minecraft.  So we have lots of Minecraft fun for the few boys coming over to the house to play, what else…Minecraft on the new Xbox.

We started making some foam swords.  We’ve seen this on the internet for upwards of $50 each.  So I managed to make 8 swords for about $40 with some foam, small pieces of wood and glue.  And lots and lots of cutting.

Making Minecraft swords. First, making a template and cutting a lot of squares out of foam.

I first planned on 2 inch x 2 inch squares would be good.  That was WAY too big, so I cut it down to 1 inch by 1 inches squares.  The squares have to be perfectly square to work well.

Patrick working on the Minecraft swords.

Did you think I was going to do them all by myself?? NO! I put the boys to work.

Brendan works on Minecraft swords.

We were really happy with the finished products.

The boys show off the finished Minecraft foam swords.

With the swords finished, we moved to some smaller crafts.  I kept seeing the Perler bead ideas on Pinterest and I thought that would be fun and easy for the boys.  I printed a bunch of templates and spent hours separating colors of beads.  It gave me a great excuse to watch TV while sorting beads, a task I thought would never end.  We made a few samples and they turned out great!

Getting the pattern and the beads ready for some Minecraft crafts!

Minecraft Skeleton

Minecraft Diamond Pickaxe

Minecraft Diamond Sword

So we have some games, some crafts all that was left was the food.  I spent the last two days making cake pops.  Not just any cake pops, but Minecraft cake pops.  I’m decent at making them, as long as they are circles.  But, as my kids informed me, there are NO CIRCLES in Minecraft, so I had to make some squares.  Again, thanks to Pinterest I found a great recipe for making square pops.

I made some Creepers and some Endermen.  The Creepers required some green melting chocolate and black eyes.  I found Wilton Edible Paper sheets to make the face…and those took forever to cut out.  The Endermen required black melting chocolate and purple edible paper.  I was disappointed that the purple paper featured on the outside was much more pink once I opened it up.  But all in all, I think they turned out great.  And so did the birthday boy – so that’s all that matters!

Cutting Minecraft Creeper faces from edible paper.

Minecraft Creeper cake pops.

Minecraft Enderman cake pops.

Here’s to hoping I survive this big birthday weekend ahead!