We have all been there! Sometimes coming up with yet another idea for your child’s next party, can send us into a stress orbit. There is however no need to dread the upcoming event if you make it a fun affair for yourself and your child. The easiest way to do this is to use a theme.
Boys and girls love outer space themes and depending on your child’s age and interest, you can come up with loads of ideas and colour schemes for this party. You can for instance, use a space shuttle/rocket ship theme, an alien ship theme or build the whole theme around planets and outer space monsters.
Or you can combine all the ideas for a totally out of this world party.
Once you (and your child, of course) have decided on a theme, you can start with the cake and then choose the party food to complement the cake.
You also do not have to come up with weird kinds of food for an outer space theme. Make normal party fare but choose outrageous names to suit the theme.
Outer Space Party Food:
Moon Crater Meringues
Make a meringue mixture, but before baking, fold Smarties (M&M’s) into the mixture. Spoon uneven mounds of meringue mixture onto greased and lined baking trays and bake as per recipe instructions.
Alien Cupcakes
Use your favourite cupcake recipe to bake cupcakes. Once cool, coat the tops with blue, green or red butter icing and decorate with wafer biscuit triangles or jelly worms.
Satellite Sausage Rolls
Wrap or mold circles of scone dough around Vienna sausages and bake until well risen and golden brown. Serve with tomato sauce.
Meat-ors with Sputnik Sauce
Use your favourite meatball recipe but add cubes of cheddar cheese to the mixture. Form into uneven rounds or patties, coat in flour and fry in hot oil until nicely browned and cooked through. Drain on absorbent kitchen paper towels. Serve with tomato relish and toothpicks.
Planet Pizzas
Make pizzas with store-bought mini pizza bases (or make the dough from scratch if you prefer). Top the pizza bases with tomato sauce, canned pineapple rings cut into large wedges, salami and ham slices, julienned. Sprinkle grated Cheddar or mozzarella cheese on top and use sweet green pepper rings to round off the pizzas. Bake until cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown.
Rocket Juice with Stardust for the thirsty space explorers.
Add a few drops of blue food colouring to lemonade, throw in a few edible silver balls/dragees and let the kids watch how the balls dissolve and float to the top. Listen to the oohs and aahs when their rocket juice gets covered by “stardust”
Entertainment:
Keeping to our space theme, it is easy to hire bouncy castles and other inflatable party rentals like water slides and even laser tag to keep everyone entertained. Laser tag would fit the party theme very well but bouncy castles always go down well with kids.
Decorations:
Older kids will love these black, white and silver colours. Use black paper as a backdrop for the party table. Spray stars and moons with silver lacquer spray paint to resemble the Milky Way.
Cover the table with silver paper or foil. Attach a table skirt made from coloured Cellophane paper around the sides for a flaming effect. Use black or silver paper plates for the food and decorate paper cups with stick on stars.
If you like, you can hang silver stars and moons cut from cardboard on the ceiling or add black and white balloons interspersed with coloured lights.
Clothes Maketh the Astronauts:
No man (or woman) would dare set foot outside a space ship without protective suits. Spray a light sprinkling of silver paint on black refuse bin bags, cut holes for the heads and arms and tie the “suits” with belts made from strips of foil. Use left-over silver paper plates or spray ordinary white paper plates with silver paint and cut out to let the rim of the plates fit around the children’s heads. Save the inner circles to make the party invitations.
Invitations:
Using craft paints, paint polystyrene balls in different colours, leave to dry then paint a few stripes in different colours all over so that the balls resemble planets. Use the left-over circles from the paper plates to cut out circles that can fit over the balls. Write the party details on the circles and deliver by hand.
