Pretty Easy Ninja Birthday Party

(Yeah, that is a paint stir stick. It is his ninja/samurai sword. I thought about getting him a real one, but he loves this one and has never questioned it's obvious non-ninja/samurainess. He is probably the sweetest person on the planet.)

I put a moderate effort into my kids birthday parties. Here is my semi-not really that organized way of planning a kids birthday party:

 First I focus on a present (PR mask as pictured above), which then generates a theme centered around the present, next comes the cake which follows the theme, after that snacks also centered around the theme, and then some decorations.

Pretty much in that order.

So this year it was pretty simple. My little boy loves Ninjago Legos and Power Rangers, so we went with a kind of Ninjago, kind of ninja, kind of samurai, kind of ranger type party. Yeah, we are laid back in this house. No games though. I hate putting that much structure in a kids party (I told you we were laid back). I do however plan a game for our annual Halloween party, since we usually have more kids there and they need some way of working off all those sweets.

First was the cake. Why didn't I chose Power Rangers when his present was PR related? Shoot, look how simple that cake is! A PR face would have been way more complicated. This was a really easy birthday cake. Plus, he had no problem with having like 15 themes going on for this party. In fact I think it made it better in a way. Anywho, I got the idea for the cake from this Flikr account. There aren't any instructions on it, but it was pretty simple to figure out. I just made some of this easy marshmallow fondant from candy.about.com (seriously I loooove this stuff. So much cheaper than store bought fondant). I just rolled it out bigger than I needed it to be, marked the face with a knife, piped on an outline for the face in black icing, made the eyes and eyebrows, and iced the rest in black. Wish I had a picture of every one's teeth after they were done with that cake! This turned out to be my 2nd favorite cake I have ever made. What's my first favorite?

This one! I did this for my tea pot birthday cake for my daughter's birthday. The only problem I ran into was that the fondant got a little, well, limp after it sat at room temp. for about a 1/2 hour. I heard that the store bought stuff holds up a bit more. Ok, back to ninja stuff.

I also made "Samurai Sushi" which is made from rice krispie treats, twizzlers, fruit roll-ups, and gummy fish. This party was very uncharacteristic of me. It was full of all kinds of processed foods and dyes. My kids didn't even know what the fruit roll-ups were! It was totally worth it though. They were a huge hit! Sure my son stayed up until 10:30 pm, but you only have one 6th birthday party! You can find the instructions here, also at candy.about.com. 

The little "nigiri" were my favorite!

I also purchased these ninjabread men cookie cutters from Amazon. This is a picture of what they could look like.

This is what they look like when you get to the point in party preparation where you give up. Oh well. The kids loved em still. I even found my son scarfing one down, crouched behind his play kitchen (after he had already had cookies, sushi,  and cake. *sigh*). I tried to act serious about it, but he had chosen to sneak a black iced one and was so covered in black icing he couldn't even attempt to deny what he had done ;)

(Here is a link if you want to buy some of your own! They look metal but they are actually plastic; just a heads up!)

I have wanted to use these "Cupcake Ninja" printouts from Zakka Life for a while now. Technically I have used these before for "computer ninjas" (I pretty much just printed these out and taped them all over the sides of the computer, which I thought was hilarious), but their original purpose is for cupcakes. Just make sure the inky part doesn't touch the icing.

Here is what our little snack table looked like. The black and red streamers were about the only other decoration I did.

Oh and this. I just copied it from babble fish and printed it off in Word (I think the font size was 500?). Apparently it says "Happy Birthday" in Japanese. Maybe someone can verify that for me? Note: My husband won't stop bugging me about giving him credit for this idea. He is the most creative person ever and far surpasses my feeble creative attempts at party decorating. Satisfied J?

Overall it was a really simple party. I wanted to do more, like always, and I just didn't have time for everything, like always, but everyone had fun and my little boy said it was the "best party EVER". That is all I needed!

One of the things I didn't have time to make that I had full intentions of making this awesome Ninjago key chain from Wee Folk Art. I will still make it eventually! Maybe I can make it in time for V-Day?

I just love how cool this looks. I have had a hard time finding homemade gifts to make a 6 year old boy. It was super easy when he was little, but now he likes stuff that is a bit more "manly". This definitely meets his standards! You can find the pattern here to make your own Ninjago key chain!