other party stuff

the birthday signage. printed and cut letters, robot cutouts from craft store painted with letter glued on top.

lots of robots, balloons, garlands and stars around. was bummed i couldnt get any green balloons.. but no one else seemed to mind.

the plates, napkins and juicebot army

oscar blowing out his birthday candles. you'll notice the table is fairly empty. i went easy on the food this year. we heated frozen pizzas, made dessert pizzas (sugar cookie, fruit dip, fruit), and had 'nuts and bolts' (chex mix).

alice's robot diaper, which provided the color scheme. when oscar told me he wanted a robot party, i automatically thought of this diaper. and it gave me a good excuse to buy one! shortly after i placed my order i found out they have the robotronic print in a doll diaper, and i wish i had ordered one for oscar's babies!

building robots

last year when we had oscar's dinosaur party, the crafting time was a big hit. so this year i wanted to do that again and unleash the kiddos for some mess-making. i set out a big bowl full of 3 different sizes of marshmallows, pretzel sticks, various candies (sixlets, jelly beans, fruit roll-ups, airheads, and little candy eyes from the craft store) and let them build some edible robots. they each had a bag of buttercream with the corner snipped to use as glue and there was a bowl of little tubes of decorator gels.

they went all out with it and had tons of fun. oscar made his all by himself! check out that fruit roll-up scarf!

aaron made this awesome octobot and ate a lot of candy. then he ate the octobot and made another one just like it.

here is scotie's robot with airhead legs - very nice!

and two of lane's robots - he ended up making a few more.

they had so much fun building and eating that it was hard to get them to move on to the next activity. i thought surely yelling 'pinata time!' would have them running from the table, but they wanted to keep making edible robots!

robot pinata

i thought it would be fun to have a pinata for oscar's party this year, since he didn't have one at his other parties. so oscar and nana both helped me paper mache our robot. oscar wasn't sure about sticking his hands in goo, but then had lots of fun with it until the goo started drying on his arms and making him itchy.

here is the finished robot. i did ribbons on the bottom for the kids to pull. we had to make this an indoor activity, otherwise as soon as we went outside with a pinata, all the kids from the apartments would swarm to us. i had two big fears 1) the ribbon to open the trap door would get pulled first or 2) the door wouldnt open when the right ribbon was pulled.

jeremy held it up for us since we didnt have a good place to tie it. they all got to pull 3 strings before lane finally pulled the winner.....

unfortunately, #2 was the case and the ribbon broke. paper mache is really strong when dry - lesson learned! so we let oscar yank the bottom open and chaos ensued over candy and toys!

cakebot

this year oscar wanted a strawberry-vanilla robot cake. i swirled together strawberry cake batter and vanilla cake batter into two 9 x 13 pans and that made enough cake for the head, body and legs. the arms were made out of rice krispie treats. i used fondant for the silver parts, because there was no other way to make them silver, and for some reason i really wanted them silver! i used edible marker to write the birthday greeting - how is it that i've never had any of these things before? they're awesome.

giant robot

i used some boxes i had been saving to make a giant robot decoration for the party. everything got covered in foil, holes were cut for buttons (little food container lids), a mirror, and lights. dryer vent arms. and jeremy put that awesome light-up belt on. the kids liked playing with buttons and looking in the mirror. oscar pretends that the robot gives you candy bars when you push the buttons.

juicebots

so i think this was one of my favorite things from this party.. i got some apples and eve juice boxes from dollar tree and turned them into juicebots! i usually find most of my ideas online and then just do my best to personalize them, but this one i actually came up with on my own for once! i spent quite awhile wrapping them all up in foil, but it was so worth it. we had tea and water for the adults, but they all wanted to drink juicebots too!

they looked a bit sad and worried when they were sitting in the trash can - or maybe that was just my imagination.

party favors

with most of oscar's robot party i tried to keep it as easy and as manageable as possible since there's a baby in the house and i dont have as much time to work on things. on the other hand, i wanted his party be be extra awesome because i didnt want him to feel like his party wasnt as good because there is a baby in the house.

these favor boxes were really easy. i ordered some mini rock'em sock'em robot rings, found some little candies, and used store bought chex mix. the containers were 3/$1 from dollar tree and i printed the labels up with each kid's name. and that was it. at first i thought there should be more stuff in it, but since they would also be getting a bag of pinata goodies, i'm sure this was plenty! plus, oscar LOVES playing rock'em sock'em robots and always asks to play it when he sees it in the closet, so those were right up his alley.