CheezWaster decided he wanted an Army Party for his birthday.  I thought it was a great idea and it sure was easy to find stuff for this party (for once!).  The kids were so excited and ran from thing to thing, so I didn’t get a ton of pictures, but I’ll show you what we did and tell you about the rest.  We again used the space at our church hall.

INVITATIONS - For the invitations, I purchased an Army graphics package for $4.99 on Etsy.  I used a combination of the graphics and text wording it as if we were recruiting soldiers for a mission.  I used this as a guide, but made it my own.  We just printed them on regular computer paper - I mean, really…people just throw them away anyway.

DECORATIONS - I purchased a bunch of Army stuff from Party City.  They have a great camouflage line and it was conveniently all on sale online (but incidently not in the store - it looks like they don’t have much of it online anymore - I guess we got in on it just in time).  That was a lucky find!  I purchased 2 camouflage table cloths for the food tables and the rest of the tables I did in dark green, brown and beige table cloths.  I had some left over light green paper goods from The Destroyer’s bug party, so we used those and paired them with camouflage napkins.  We bought latex balloons that had tanks on them and were dark green, light green and black.  We also bought some camouflage mylar balloons.  I had also purchased the army tank balloon weights.  The local Army recruiter hooked us up big time with many items.  I got Army posters and Marine posters and hung them around the church hall.  We also had a camouflage netting and some blow up army rifles.  My husband accented the church hall with some real ammo cans.

Upon entering, each child was given a camouflage hat which I purchased from Oriental Trading.  Most of the kids showed up in camo clothes - which was AWESOME!  I was wearing a pink camo top and my husband was dressed in camo from head to toe!

GAMES - The first game we did, we called “Save the Soldier”.  At Christmas time, I purchased on sale a bunch of army men sets that included tanks, helicopters, flags, mountains, etc.  We gave each child a camo paper bag (from Oriental Trading) and let them “save” whatever they could.  Anything they could grab, they could take home.

The next game was “Sergeant Says”.  This was just Simon Says where my husband played the Sergeant.  We played 2 rounds of this and I was surprise that the kids laughed as much as they did playing this game.  Sometimes the simple things work the best.

After Sergeant Says, we played a game we called “Top Shot”.  It was based on the Top Shot TV show.  In the fall, I had found 2 camo pump rocket guns on clearance at Target.  I made Angry Bird pigs out of paper using these box like templates.  I taped them over the tops of water and juice bottles and covered the bottles in green paper.  The kids had 2 shots to knock down the pigs.  Each pig had a value.  The top 2 values won Nerf Guns (they just happened to both be girls - YEAH GIRL POWER!), which I picked up at JC Penney on Black Friday for the very awesome price of $3.99.

The final game was a pin the tank in the target game, which we picked up from Party City.

All of the games had Army themed prizes such as Tank cars (metal cars like Hot Wheels), Lego Army Men Sets, Parachuting Army guys, etc.

FOOD - We just had normal party food.  We had a pretzel tray from the Philly Soft Pretzel Factory, chips, dip, fruit, veggies, and cookies.  As always there was Climax Beer from Climax Brewing Company, my family’s brewery, juice boxes, water and soda.

We had cupcakes made at our local ShopRite.  The bakery there air-brushed the cupcakes in camo colors.  The candles were a mini star and tank candle set from Party City.

FAVORS - For the favors, we used Pencil Cases that I purchased for $.50 each at Target at the beginning of the school year (yes, we do plan ahead in this house).  I filled them with stuff that the Army Recruiters were nice enough to give me - stickers, pencils, bracelets, Army and basketballs.  The girls got camo lip balms (only camo on the outside) and the boys got the basketballs.  I also purchased Army themed yo-yos, notepads and pencil sharpeners from Party City.  The very fine folks over at MrsCraftyRVing made us the most awesome camo crayon rolls, which rounded out the pencil cases.

I also made little bags of gummi army men for the kids.  I used a regular Avery address label, camo scrapbook paper and ziploc bags.  The label read “Thanks for coming to my party, Soldier.  I hope you had a blast!”  and included a grenade graphic.  Very simple.  I ordered the candy from an online candy store in a 5 pound bag.  Google Gummi Army Men and you’ll find a ton of stores that have these.  Some places also had individual bags which I would have preferred, but they were MUCH more expensive.  I still have LOTS of gummi army men left, though.  DOH!

As always, the kids had a blast running around the large space of our church hall.  They had tons of fun playing with the army men sets and the top shot game was a big hit.