Arrgghhh, Shiver me timbers, and Blow me down. (Pictures at the end of the article)

This was just some of the pirate talk I heard on Saturday at my son’s 4th birthday party. You see he loves pirates and so we decided to throw him a pirate birthday party. I started planning for it at the beginning of September, buying all the decorations, making the invitations, and more. I looked at several places online for pirate supplies, and the best deal. After visiting about 15 sites I finally settled on partycheap.com. They had the most pirate party supplies, and they were the cheapest. I bought a ton of supplies, I really wanted to go all out this year since we finally could afford to.

We hand made the invitations, since my husband is a computer guy he handled the design and we printed them out on our home computer. I also printed out a note to each and every guest that we would be pleased if they dressed in their pirate best, and gave them a link to a site with some ideas on how to dress like a pirate.

Two weeks before the party I started cleaning, I started outside getting the front and back of my house cleaned up, pulling weeds, etc. The next week I spent cleaning the inside of the house, and getting party stuff together. I decided on two games we would play, one was a fishing game, I printed out two fish from the computer and then began to trace them on card board from boxes we were not using. I cut all the fishes out, not easy to do, and I am glad I had a great pair of scissors. Then my cousins, and I painted all of them front and back with finger paint. After they dried I wrote numbers on the back of them with permanent marker. Each number went to a certain prize, we had bouncy balls, looking glasses, and the big prize was a pirate book. We then bought some twine and a wooden dowel and created a fishing pole and tied a magnet on the end of it. I have a big concrete back patio, and I took chalk and drew a blue ocean for the fishes. However if you don’t have a patio you could use blue spray paint on grass.

The second game was dig for treasure. I bought 4 bags of 50lb play sand and dumped it all in my sons plastic pool. Then he and I buried, gold and silver coins, bead necklaces, some packaged candy and some real money. Each kid got to dig for 3 pieces of treasure, and then after everyone had gotten their treasure they all got to surround the pool and dig up the rest of it. The last kid game item of the day was the pinata, it was a pirate guy, I am calling him The Unlucky Pirate. Each kid took a turn with a wooden sword, and they finally got him open with a shot to the head.

We also bought foam swords which they had a blast with and of course were safe for them to run around and hit each other with. We had silly string which should be bought for any party, it might be slightly messy, but the kids had a major blast with it, and the best part was when they stopped shooting at each other and all went for the adults. Almost everyone showed up in some sort of pirate costume, and if they didn’t I had paper pirate hats, and eye patches for them to don.

The food was of some debate, and it took us awhile to finally decide on a menu, but we had homemade mac and cheese, Chicken quarters which some we left whole and others we cut in half so that the kids and who ever else wanted could eat drumsticks with their hands like pirates. We BBQ’ed them and covered them in sauce. We made little smokies, which cooked up in our small crockpot with BBQ sauce and grape jelly. We also had two dips, which I wish I had gotten a pictures of so I could give you a recipe for it, but I will make it again soon. The Dip went so fast, and I was so busy that I only got one bite of it lol. We had Walk the Plank sticks, which were celery with cream cheese or peanut butter and raisins. We had a fruit tray to help prevent Scurvy, and goldfish crackers for the kids to snack on.

Of course the best part of the food was the amazing cake we had. I had been looking online for pirate cakes, and was going to make my own, but I felt really bogged down with all I had to finish, and wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make the pirate ship cake I had wanted. After talking to my husband about it, he told me about this cake a guys wife at work had made for one of his co workers. He showed me the cake and I was blown away. It was one week before the party, and I was almost positive that even if we talked to the cake lady that she would turn us down. I gave it a go anyway and contacted Colleen, and to my amazement she took us on. Colleen makes beautiful custom cakes and ours was no exception, it was an amazing pirate ship cake with cannons and cannon balls, and sails, it just blew me away. You can check out Colleen and her amazing cakes at wemakeart.biz . Colleen thank you for taking us on at such short notice and not only coming up with a cake that looked astounding, but it tasted amazing as well.

This birthday party was the biggest one I had ever thrown, a lot of hard work and money went into it, but in the end it was worth it all. For me anyway just to see my sons smile and all the other kids, they had a blast, and that was the best part for me.

Click on the images to make them larger, and move them around the screen!

Close Pirate Shawnie the Birthday Boy	Close Silly String Pirates	Close Silly String Fun
Close Fish Game	Close Shawnie Fishing	Close Digging for Treasure
Close Captain Hook	Close Pirates with Swords	Close Pirate Crew
Close Unlucky Pirate	Close Birthday Boy taking a Swing	Close Unlucky Pirate Goes Down
Close Colleen our Cake Maker	Close Pirate Ship Cake	Close Pirate Cake
Close Shawnie Opening Presents	Close Buried Treasure	Close Pirate Ladies
Close Shawn Sr. Pirate	Close Baby Pirate	Close Pirate Boy

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