A Superhero Themed Birthday Party (on a budget!)

My eldest boy asked for a "Superhero" themed birthday party for when he turned 4 recently. This was a bit of a worry for me, as I had never hosted a birthday party before, let alone a themed one! So I wanted to make sure that I was able to fulfil the wish of my son by providing enough Superhero-ness, but on our tight budget.

I only invited 10 children, 2 couldn't make it, so including my two, only 10 children were coming. I thought it was best we start small.

The Budget

We are on a tight budget, so apart from food and party bags contents, I didn't want to spend much at all. I wanted to use things we already had, and make my own party games.

Location

We have a small house, but our garden is sufficiently sized to host a small party, perfect for that summer child, although it would not be good to have a garden party for a winter baby I guess.

Decorations

Okay, I admit to have used the same decorations I used 4 years ago, I even have a "happy 1st birthday" banner that I just pop a piece of paper with the correct number on! I only used banners and hung some steamers from the trees! It was simple but got the point across.

There were loads of balloons around and we decorated the front door with balloons too.

Food

We gave the food table a superhero theme by using black paper as a skyscraper backdrop, and drawing on the little square windows with chalk! 

I did use a plain white table cloth we already had to draw more of the cityscape such as the road, but due to the amount of food, no one could even see it! 

We already had the plates and napkins etc. As we purchased them over the years for about 25p each from the reduced sections! Which is why we had Scooby Doo Halloween plates! The kids loved them though.

The food was classic party food -cocktail sausages, sandwiches etc! But where we could we popped a superhero spin, and made labels for them, for example:

Cheese with pretzel sticks became Thor's Hammer

We found lattice crisps to use as Spider-Man Web Crisps

We even made Ironman Jelly by layering strawberry jelly with lemon jelly!

I forgot to photograph most of the food we made, including the Hulk Oreo Pops which were Oreos with a stick inserted inside, dipped in green chocolate, and then decorated to look like the Hulk's face (chocolate eyes and mouth, sprinkles hair)! You can just about see them here: 

I bought the sausage rolls and sausages from the frozen section for a reduced price a couple months ago, and we used up ham, cheese, cucumber etc from the fridge, which was great because we needed all the space we could get, so using stuff we already had was practical as well as being thrifty.

We even had 2 bottles of free Coke Zero (for the parents!) that a friend had given us after using vouchers from a newspaper.

The Party Games

The first hour was for eating food, and general playtime, including dressing up in my son's dressing up collection! We have them on a rail which made it easy to roll it outside for them to use.

We played the classic "Pass the Parcel" using a gift that I found at 90% off in a shop, and wrapping paper I bought from Asda that was also 90% off. The first layer of paper was "Marvel superhero" wrapping paper from Primark, which we already had, just to make it fit our theme! Each layer had a Kinder bar inside that I got for a great price on Amazon, I added them so that I got free delivery on a DVD I already wanted to buy. Sometimes this can be brilliant as you can get essential items like hand wash for a price that's cheaper than the supermarket, delivered to your door, and get free delivery on that £6 DVD too!

The next game we played was Pin The Pants on Super Pants Man. 

This was our spin on the classic donkey tail version. I used the kids paint to paint the chap onto a big bit of paper (could use wallpaper etc) and then made different pants to pin on from scrap paper. I am not a natural artist, but I was pleased with how it turned out. I tried to make the chap look like Daddy!

They all had a few goes, and thought it was very funny.

I forgot to get photographs of the following games, but did a bowling game called Bowl the Badguys. We collected  bottles from the recycling over a few weeks and coloured them by putting bright paint inside and shaking it up to cover the whole inner surface, and left it to dry (some never dried but with the lids on, a quick shake made them coloured for an hour or so). We stuck or drew pictures of Bad Guys (the joker, Loki etc) on the front of the bottles. During the party, the kids could line them up, and throw a ball at the bottles to knock them down, easy! Another option would be to do this with a Captain America theme and use a frisbee!

Hulk Smash/Target Practice

We also kept cardboard boxes over a few weeks and let the kids stack them up high, before kicking or punching them down with their Superhero moves! 

Party Bags

We used party bags from the reduced section (5p a pack!).

The sweets were from Poundland, Haribo and Spiderman sticks. I popped in a toy car (3 for £1!) or a Slinky type spring (2 for £1) also from Poundland for each child too, as well as a chunk of cake! Temporary tattoos, balloons, bubbles are things I've included in the past.

The party is over! Now time to relax.

Oh hang on, here are the cakes!

My top tips:

If you have the space to store bits throughout the year, buy things at a reduced price with the intention of using them for birthday parties! Such as party bag gifts, decorations, even food if it will still be in date.

Make your own games and decorations to play! You can even personalise them.

Try to keep it to 2 hours maximum, any longer is just too long to keep everyone entertained.