Syd's Space Adventure

When we asked Sydney what kind of birthday party he wanted, he firmly replied "A Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Lightning McQueen, Spider Man party".  Umm, that may leave our guests feeling a bit schizophrenic, so why not go with the first thing that popped out of your mouth and do Buzz Lightyear?  He agreed.

I didn't want to blast the licensed Buzz Lightyear party ware all over the house, so I turned to my friend Abby who designs and sells printable party ware via her company Paper and Cake.  You pick your theme, and for a very minimal cost you can have stylish, customizable themed party ware that is fun and festive, and sans the Disney characters splattered all about. 

We went with the space theme and Abby was nice enough to even customize the color scheme for me to purple and lime green for Buzz.  After choosing our party package, the ideas just started flowing.

Now let me just say that I consider myself about a 6 in the spectrum of party planning.  I like to have a color scheme and have the goodie bags and activities all follow along the same theme for the party.  But I usually don't get too anal about all the little details.  After blogging for some time now, I have seen plenty of over the top Martha-esque type parties, and I'm just not into that extra stress.  But with this printable party ware I was able to sort of bump up my skillz a notch and without much extra effort.  It may sound like this is a paid endorsement for Paper & Cake, but I promise it's not.  I was just really pleased with the way all the extra details came together with ease.  You can check out their blog here.
Let's start with the invitation:

Next, the customized banner and garland:

The cupcake wrappers and picks plus the food and drink labels and straw markers (these gals think of everything):

The liquid hydrogen was Tang, the drink of astronauts, and the Saturn's Rings and Asteroids were honey nut O's and peanut butter filled pretzels.

And a little Buzz thrown in for good measure

Finally, the favors were my absolute favorite part.  I made homemade Syd's Space Doh, included packets of individual servings of Tang, and Space Food!

Now in case you're wondering, yes,  I did have a good time and I was able to enjoy myself.  Even though all the details were pretty "party perfect", the activities and fun stuff for the kids was very homemade.

Building on the whole space theme, we had 4 stations for the kids:
Moon Sand Table with various space guys 

Coloring station with various space and Toy Story pictures I printed up for free on the web

Syd's Space Doh Table, which I was surprised was such a hit with the older kids.  I think having it in a big mound as opposed to little jars, and feeling a little different because it was homemade, made it more of a novelty.

And finally, the absolute hit of the party was Syd's handcrafted Space Station that Art built an hour before the party.  Just some cardboard boxes, a couple of old keyboards and monitor, and a routing switch that the kids could plug phone type cords in and out of.  We let them paint it and decorate it however they wanted.  This kept every kid entertained for a while and is still up in our yard 4 days later.

(at some point in the party Buzz turned into Woody)

Oh, and just for good measure, we threw in a Buzz pinata and let the kids whack the heck out of it

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"GO SYDNEY GO"

Happy Birthday Bubba!  I hope you enjoyed your party because you're probably not going to get another party like this one for a while!  :)  Love you Syd!