Themed Birthday Parties

Children love to celebrate their birthdays and there is nothing better than throwing them a themed Birthday Party. I know that the words Themed Birthday Party bring up images of $$$ but I am going to show you 4 Themed Parties that were not only held at home, but where most everything was home made as well.

In creating a themed party, the first thing you need is a nice invitation card based on the theme. For the invitation card, I sourced the graphics from the web and then personalised the cards for each invitee and printed them out on to nice thick coloured paper. All this was done off of my home printer. Cost is thus minimal.

Try to decorate the house or party place along the lines of the theme as well. To go one step further, if you are giving away party favours of Party Packs, try to include some small toys or gifts that go with the theme. Finally, bake a cake and serve food that goes along with the theme as well. You don’t really need to get fancy food. The trick is in giving exotic names to everyday food just to go along with the themes.

African Animal Jungle Party
First up, we have the ‘African Animal Jungle Party’. My son was fascinated with African Animals – in particular the African Elephant. I had made a card too but I can't find my copy of it - so you'll just have to imagine what it looked like!

We printed out pictures of African Animals and stuck them all over the house. The pictures came with an explanation of the animals habitat, average age, height, speed and food. So it was a learning experience for everyone too! I even got my son a white shirt with an elephant and his name embroidered on the pocket – so he looked like a little ranger!

For the food, my wife and I cooked a variety of dishes and we gave them exotic sounding names, all themed after African Animals.

• Warthog Stew (Pork Curry)
• Impala in Bamboo (Sausage Rolls)
• Crocodile Patties (Fish Cutlets)
• Jungle Vegetable Quiche (Self Explanatory)
• Steamed Jungle Vines (Stringhoppers - this was bought)
• Jungle Swamp Gravy (Sothi)
• Elephant Ears (Cinnamon Sugar Pastry)
• Spotted Leopard Cupcakes (Choc Chip Cupcakes)
• Spiced Giraffe Muffins (Apple Cinnamon Muffins)
• Jungle Berry Cupcakes (Blueberry Muffins)
• Jungle Hare Marsh Jelly (Cendol Jelly served as 3 rabbit moulds atop a flat layer of jelly)
• Assorted Pickled Animals (Lychee Jelly in animal moulds)

I printed out labels for the food so that everyone knew what they were eating!






As a finishing touch, we put up a small tent outside so that the kids could pretend they were on an African Safari camping trip!



Prehistoric Party
What do you do when your child is crazy about Dinosaurs? Why, have a Prehistoric Party of course! For the invitation cards, I sourced the web for pictures of cartoon dinosaurs and then designed this card.


We did the same thing with the food and gave them Dinosaur names together with signs to explain what everything was. You couldn't fool my son who wa an expert at Dinosaur names, so we had to do our research! This was the menu:

• Ankylosaurus Curry (Mutton Varuvel)
• Fried Pterodactyl (Fried Chicken)
• Fried Archeopteryx (Fried Chicken Nuggets)
• Fossilised Fruits and DNA (Custard Fruit Tarts)
• Preshistoric Weeds and Vegetation (Fried Stringhoppers)
• Steamed Jurassic Tuber (Yam Cake - this was bought)
• Spicy Triceratops Pies (Minced Beef Curry Puffs)
• Triassic Vegetation Parcels (Vegetable Puffs )
• Cretaceous Swamp Packs (Cheese Tarts)

See? It’s really easy to turn normal food into exciting, exotic food that will not only delight the kids but educate the adults as well! It was all rather funny seeing the two sets of grandparents trying to decipher all the dinosaur names!

For the party packs, we made Dinosaur Eggs out of Papier Mache. The dinosaur eggs were filled with tiny plastic dinosaurs together with sweets and chocolates.
How do you make dino eggs? Again, not that difficult. A little time consuming perhaps but really not that difficult.

Simply blow up balloons slightly till they are shaped like eggs. Then layer them with paper soaked in starch or glue, leaving the tied end of the balloon open. Once the ‘shell’ has hardened, burst the balloon and remove it. Fill the ‘shell’ with your choice of gifts and then cover the open ends with more Papier Mache. Once it has hardened, paint the outside. I painted the ‘eggs’ for the girls a peachy colour while the ‘eggs’ for the boys were painted a duck egg blue.





Formula One Party
This party was a blast to organise simply because I love F1 too! As invitation cards, I designed and printed them in the form of tickets. The only downside to this was that some people got confused with the ‘venue’ and thought that we were hosting the party at a racing circuit (although there isn’t one anywhere nearby!) instead of at our home! All part of the fun anyway.






To get into the spirit of the party, we got our son a ‘replica’ F1 shirt. We also bought lots of balloons with Chequered Flags on them as well as a Helium balloon with an F1 Car on it. I also draped Safety Tape across the staircase.


The finishing touch was me wearing a Safety Vest and pretending to be a Race Marshall!!!

In addition to the usual spread of food, we also prepared some finger food and stuck toothpicks with flags of countries that have F1 races into the finger food.

Under The Sea

Following the same lines as the previous party, I printed personalised invitation cards for everyone. As you can see, we pretended the party was at an Aquarium but this time, I made sure to add our home address so the guests wouldnt get confused!



We got an Ariel T-shirt for our little princess to wear which thrilled her no end!

The house was decorated with green and blue balloons – like the sea. I had also wanted to create ‘waves’ out of crepe paper and paste them to the ceiling but since we live in the tropics and have ceiling fans that are turned on practically the whole time, that wouldn’t have been possible. But that’s an idea for those of you that can do it!


For food, we kind of followed a seafood theme and as usual I named and tagged the food as follows:
• Chicken Pie and mini Chicken Pies
• Mini Vegetarian Pies
• 'Ursula Octopus' Sausages - chicken sausages cut to look like octopus
• Under the Sea Pasta - Seafood Marinara Pasta
• Spicy Sebastian Crab - Spicy Crab Claws and crab meat
• Garlic Prawns
• Chocolate Brownies


So there you have 4 themed parties. All rather simple, with minimal costs and all done on your own without having to seek professional help. Oh incidentally, should any of you use these ideas, you would have to pay me royalties…..!! LOL!

So what idea do you have for a themed party?

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This Post was written by Dharm from Dad ~ Baker & Chef