For my son's 4th birthday we had a Jake & the Neverlands party complete with tons of games! Kirsten and I like to make as much stuff as we can and challenge ourselves to make most of it out of "junk" or leftovers from our office. Come on in....... "Dress like a Pirate and Walk da Plank" My husband screwed two boards together, Tyler and I painted the words, we had the crates, blue tarp from wal-mart, small crocs from dollar tree and the rest is below.... The croc was made from green bubble wrap we found in the mailroom at work. The croc legs are made from cardboard boxes painted green, glued and tied with yarn. We made the croc body "sections" with rubber bands and the spikes on his back are cut from a rubber hand we found at the dollar store. Googly eyes and white styrofoam balls from hobby lobby. Pirate hats made from black foam sheets. The original plan was to cut these using the cricut but that didn't work (even with a deep housing blade) so we cut a template and traced onto the black foam sheets. These were super easy to cut out by hand. Embellished with red glitter glue. Measured and secured with elastic (dress rehearsal required!) Jake's spyglass. The spyglasses were made out of paper towel rolls, black paper and gold duct tape. Super easy! We secured the black paper to the rolls with hot glue. Again, dress rehearsal required. ;-p Every pirate party needs swords but we didn't want to fork over $3 per sword for the party and we wanted them to be a little safe (the kids ARE 4...) so we decided to make our own out of cardboard. I cut a sword template with my cricut (two cuts taped together) and we found the perfect box by our freight elevator. We traced the swords and cut with a box knife. We gave the swords stability with some popscicle sticks and painted them blue and red (black handles). Testing the sword stability. (LOL!) I'm gonna stop right here and make a note about our crafty blog name, Corporate Crafters. Do you see the view in most of these pictures?! It's pretty nice, huh?! ha! Kirsten and I do the majority of our crafting during our lunch hour in the vacant office next to mine. We are here 9 hours a day with an hour commute each way......when else do we have time to do these fun things?! You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff you can get done in 1 hour! Back to the party...... "Shark Infested Waters" The object of this game was to "hook" as many necklaces as you could before the sharks attacked! Green tub is from our farm, sharks from dollar tree, beads from oriental trading and my sis in law, hooks..we made! Red solo cup, wire hangers, foil We made the hook part out of wire hangers and pushed them through the bottom of the solo cup. Make sure and leave enough hanger so the kids can grab and hold the hook inside the cup. Cutting the wire was SO hard. I had to used all of my body weight to make a "simple" cut. Kirsten captured a bit of this on video..... Dress rehearsal. (I texted this picture to several of our friends asking "arrrrgh you ready to parrrty?!" At this point, I think I had forgotten that this party was not for me...hehe.) "Trolling for Booty" We always have fishing at our parties so we tailored this for a pirate party and added crocs to the sheet. The kids used a real fishing pole and caught Jake fruit snacks from HEB. "Tic Toc Croc Bean Bag Toss" Kirsten painted this bad boy!!! The red is a table cloth so the bags would fall behind. We also used this as a photo booth of sorts. "Buried Treasure" The treasure box was not one of our favorites projects UNTIL it was done and now it's one of our favorites. I don't have any crafting pictures but we wrapped a paper box with brown paper, outlined with gold duct tape, drew planks with a black marker, secured a pirate hat to the front, and zip tied the lid on. I'm not a fan of sand so we used rice! The kids dug for necklaces, doubloons, rings and bracelets. Wal-Mart has Jake cups that we used to collect their loot. "Jake's Tattoo Shop" (tattoos from the dollar spot at Target) I didn't get a very good picture of the "ship rides" but you get the idea....... (tractor rides are also always a part of our parties so I made a mast, hung colorful streamers on the trailer and we called it a ship ride!) The masts were easy to make! I bought some cheap mops and back scratchers from the dollar store and secured them together with hot glue and twine. The red and white striped fabric was from Wal-Mart. I secured the fabric to the cross bars (back scratchers) with hot glue. Jake printable from the Disney website (safety pinned) One of my favorite games was the "Cannonball Fights" I used large cardboard boxes and covered them with table cloths, zip tied a mast on each and called them ships. I was trying to make the cannonballs safe for little ones so I ordered pirate and ship themed beach balls from oriental trading! The games were a huge hit amongst the kids and adults! Decor post here.