Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Spy Party

This past weekend we celebrated Cole’s 6th birthday with a spy party. He’s obsessed with spies lately from watching movies like Spy Kids and Agent Cody Banks. In fact, he’s convinced that our neighbour must be a spy because he drives a black car. He’s constantly looking for clues and codes. He told us that the number 9 is a secret spy number, so when I sent out the invitation to his party I told everyone that the password to enter was “number 9.” Cole had fun asking them all what the password was. Our very sweet tenant, who happens to be a children’s art teacher, decorated our driveway and sidewalk with chalk and included all the kids’ names who were coming to the party….and notice she even included ‘9’ in her message? Cole was thrilled! Coincidentally, there were 9 kids coming to the party.

Our neighbour noticed the chalk drawings and said to Cole “So you’re having a birthday party today! Do you know how I know that? Because I’m a spy.” Cole was pleased that his suspicions were confirmed.
Tony set up a spy training camp in the backyard. It was an obstacle course with a bouncy castle, ball pit, tunnel, punching bags, laser maze, tire swing, hula hoops, balloon bombs, and play centre with creepy crawlies inside. We also hid plastic jewels all over the yard for them to find.



Cole navigating through the crepe paper laser beams



Bennett crossing the finish line
I had some crafts planned- invisible ink using baking soda and grape juice, and ID badges- but the kids were far too rambunctious to sit still very long, so I skipped the invisible ink. It wasn’t working very well for me anyway. Instead, we put on a spy movie to settle them down while Tony made balloon animals and I helped each kid individually with making an ID badge. I had done the badges up earlier with their names and then we added a code name and fingerprint. For the code names, I had a bag of labels with adjectives and another bag with nouns. They picked one from each bag and that became their code name.
Secret Agent ID Template

I learned that it’s very hard to get a decent fingerprint from a 5 or 6 year-old. Mostly they looked like black smudges, but that’s okay.

I kept the party food very simple- crackers, cheese strings, snack mix, fruit, veggies and dip, and juice boxes.

I also made sure the snacks were fairly healthy, because I knew the kids were going to get their fill of sugar from the cake. We had an amazing cake that was in the shape of a briefcase, with a magnifying glass and a bomb on top. The words were written backwards so it looked like it was in code.

And no, I didn’t make it! This was done by my very talented friend Allyson of Allyson’s Edibles. Check out her website for more of her beautiful creations. The above photo was taken by her before she brought it over to our house where Bennett promptly stuck his finger right in the magnifying glass. I should have seen that one coming.

We put silver candles on the cake and a sparkler on the bomb so it looked like it was going to blow up. Luckily Cole blew it out and saved us all. That was a close one.

Allyson also made these super cute chocolate mustaches pictured below. I handed them out at the end of the party as the kids left. She also made chocolate cake balls, which I gave out as a prize after they finished the obstacle course.

For party favours, I made up secret agent folders. Inside of them I put a magnifying glass, memo pad, pen, finger laser, mustache lollipops (from Blonde Designs Blog), glasses, and mentos. The mentos idea was from the exploding mentos in Cody Banks 2.

So that was our Spy party. I wish I could say that now I can relax and not think about parties again for a while, but Bennett’s birthday is just a little over a week after Cole’s, so I’m not finished yet. I’ll be planning a Spiderman party this year for Bennett. I made Cole’s party a little early and Bennett’s will be a little late, as a way to spread them out a bit. Thank goodness the 3rd child’s birthday will be in February!