Hendrik's Poké-party

Hendrik's birthday parties since year 1 have basically been little time capsules of what he's like at that age - from his obsession with birds, to his love of Harry Potter, and now... Pokémon. Admittedly this is not something I personally care for (or really have any knowledge of), but after being introduced to it at school he has amassed quite a collection of cards along with an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Pokémon. So of course he wanted this to be his party theme, and I obliged - but tried to at least make it cute ;-)

 

Invites and décor

It's Paperless Post all the way for me these days, and luckily they had a cute Pokémon inspired option! For décor, I'm always tempted to go all-out, but honestly it's more for me than the kids - I mean, do 9 year olds even notice any of this? They were immediately just running around the house, not oohing and aahing over decorations. So I'm glad I kept it fairly simple, since I don't really have time to be doing Pinterest-worthy creations... Ordered some fun balloons, which he LOVED, and a birthday banner, and I got out my cute cake stands to arrange the food. Good enough! Though I did see and think this idea to do a wall of Pokeball designs made out of paper plates was really cute.

Treats

Hendrik helped me plan this part - he thought we'd be on theme if we did Poképuffs (cupcakes) and Pokéberries (fruit tray), and on the day of the party he even came up with making cute little label cards for them. I kept it simple by ordering cupcakes from the grocery store bakery with color-coordinating frosting and grabbing a pre-made fruit tray.

 

 

Activities

This is the biggest "friend party" we've done in years, and I was a bit nervous about having a bunch of 8 and 9 year olds running around my house, so I tried to come up with some good activities - but also was a little nervous they'd think my ideas were cheesy... luckily I came across an idea to do some minute to win it games as "training" for Pokémon trainers. You need your agility and dexterity and such before you go off to catch your Pokémons after all!

Then for the catching of Pokémon, I hid little figurines for a backyard hunt. To make it cost-effective and also a bit of a challenge for these older kids, I got these little Croc charms - quite small so they really had to hunt, but comes in a huge pack so I could hide enough for each kid to find about 6 of them. And then I put little bracelets in the favor bags that they could put their charms onto.

The minute to win it games we did:

• Unwrap it: see how many Hershey's kisses the kids can unwrap in 1 minute while wearing oven mitts (spoiler alert - not many!)
• Balancing act: hold a tongue depressor (or a popsicle stick, I suppose - we have an ENT doctor for a dad here!) in your mouth and see how many dice you can stack on it. Can try it two ways: stack your own (makes the kids go a bit cross-eyed, very funny), or do it with a partner and have them stack on your stick.
• Hands-free transfer: put a pile of mini marshmallows on the table and see how many each kid can transfer into a bowl using just a straw, no hands.
• Marshmallow toss: have pairs of kids stand 4ish feet apart and see how many mini marshmallows they can toss into their partner's cup in a minute. And then have the other kid toss the other way - eats up some more time!

 

Favor bags

The part that I more went all-out on searching/spending a bit because I like to find things that are not too junky and are a bit of a novelty. For starters, who doesn't love office supplies, adult or kid? I found round sticky note pads (reminiscent of a Pokéball...) and put those in along with an eraseable pen (Hendrik is obsessed with these and his friends seemed to love them too) and a Pokémon pencil. Then there was the rubber bracelet for the character charms they collected in the scavenger hunt, and some treats too: Pokémon grahams and monster-themed Hershey's kisses. And everything went into these little bags.

 

It seemed like all of the kids had a great time (and were delighted to meet the baby Pikachu in attendance), and Hendrik thanked me for such a fun party multiple times unprompted, so I'm feeling like it was a success! Also felt like I was ready for bed by like 5pm that day, but that's another story... whew.