Pokemon Birthday Party

A long time ago we got a McDonalds kids meal with a Pokemon toy inside.  My soon-to-be 7-year-old daughter had no idea what it was, and at home it was thrown into a box of small random toys and forgotten.  Forgotten until the day when she found Pokemon TV shows on Netflix that is.  Then she suddenly remembered her little Tepig toy, and fell in love.  She carries little Tepig everywhere!  When her birthday party was coming, and I asked her what kind of party she wanted, she of course said 

"I want a Pokemon party, Mom!"

And inwardly I sighed.  Because you can't just go to WalMart and buy pokemon party stuff anymore.  They have the cards, but that's about it.  So off to google I went, and found

 this awesome Pokemon Party at Craft, Interrupted. 

Awesome.  Really.  If you're looking for inspiration start there.  We used their hat and gift bag idea.

After lots of googling, this is what I came up with for my daughter's 7th birthday.

We had a Pin the Tail on Tepig

(printed off an online Tepig coloring page and stuck on 33 cent poster board)

Gotta Catch 'Em All Balloon Game

The game involves little pokemon pictures I found with a google image search.  I laminated them because I know my daughter will want to play with them later, and I stuffed them into balloons that they had to pop by sitting on.  They thought it was fun, but loud.  Maybe this would be better outside.

We had an Easter-egg-style Pokeball Hunt in the yard.  Inexpensive fishing bobbers look a lot like Pokeballs if you just take a thin strip of electrical tape and stick it around the middle.  I didn't pull them apart and put things inside, but I bet you could if you wanted to.  We just hunted for them as-is and put them into their gift bags (sling bags from Craft, Interrupted).

 

Once a few months ago my daughter woke up in the middle of the night crying and when I went in to check on her, she said all she wanted in the world was a pinata for her birthday.  That must have been an interesting dream.  So I made her a Pokeball Pinata.   Why pokeball?  Because it's the easiest pokemon shape to make.  There was no way I could pull off a tepig pinata. I used this youtube video to get the basic idea.  I dipped the strips instead of using a paintbrush.  I just used a 12 inch balloon and made it with flour and water and newspaper strips.  There are three coats of strips on the pinata, each took 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour.  Three layers seemed to be just sturdy enough for the kids to each have a couple of turns.

We couldn't find our bat anywhere, so a broom handle worked in a pinch.

And of course we had Pokeball Cake and ice cream. 

I'm not a cake decorator, obviously.  I kept debating about just buying one at the store and having them make it look like a pokeball, but I forgot the picture every time I went to the store, so I ended up making it myself with a Rainbow Duff Cake mix.  The inside was kinda cool.

And to fill up time at the end, the kids played the Pokemon Card Game.