At the beginning of December, we took our kids on their first cruise and they had an absolute blast! (I’ve shared some cruise posts before so if you need door decorations, shirts, or nautical accessories click here.) It was no surprise my oldest wanted to relive the moment a little for his birthday!
I’ve hosted many birthday parties at this point: dinosaur, construction, cowgirl, superhero, bug, mermaid, you get the idea. (If you want to see more of those parties click here.) They were all very fun parties, but not super original. It was easy for me to find other ideas out there. But not for a five-year-old’s cruise birthday! So, I’m throwing some ideas and cut files out into the crafty universe, so the next person won’t have to wing it nearly so much.
Decorations
This is where the magic happens! First, you’re going to need a birthday sign. Feel free to use this one. As always, my cut files are free for personal and commercial use. I just ask that you do not share the files directly. If you have a friend who would love this project, please send them a link to my blog. It really does help me out!
I used a gold foil for the background of the banner which tied in perfectly with the next decoration which is cruise ship port holes! I used Dollar Tree mounting squares in between each paper layer to give it some depth. These turned out so cute I can’t get myself to take them off the walls of the toy room! Pro tip: Hobby Lobby sells giant metallic poster boards for less than a dollar! I used about 5 to make these windows. I cut them on my Silhouette Cameo 4+ so they were a little larger than you could get with a standard cutting machine.
We also used our door decorations from our actual cruise to decorate our front door. In the chaos of the party I forgot to snap a picture of it, but you can get all the info about that by clicking here.
Invitations
The nice things about SVGs are that you can customize them in Cricut Design Space. So, feel free to make this invitation your own! I have included generic information, but do what works for you. I did a Print then Cut with my Cricut for these ones, but you could easily print them out and cut them by hand.
Activity
I thought about a lot of different possible activities for our cruise themed birthday party, but there was one thing that was nonnegotiable: a balloon drop. On our cruise, there was a balloon drop the first night at midnight. The kids wanted so badly to go! We let them try staying up (not sure what we were thinking) and then nearly made it. Well, they were finally getting so tired and I told them I would wake them up in time to see it. Guys, I really tried to wake them up. They were like floppy fish. I was poking them, talking to them, sitting them up. Nothing worked and they missed the balloon drop. They were devastated the next day and I promised then and there that I would do a balloon drop at our house when we were home.
So, we did.
In the past, I have blown up (with my mouth) more and more balloons for each birthday party. This last year I did like 70 and I decided that was beyond my limit. I was pretty light headed. So, when I committed to a 160 balloon drop, I also committed to buying an electric balloon pump. I totally should have invested the money long ago. It was so worth it! Here’s the one I got. Here’s a link to the balloons I got too. I got two of this set and then supplemented with white balloons from Dollar Tree.
I used three clear shower curtains, a bunch of packing tape, and some fishing line to get these beauty in the air. If you make one of these, do not get the Amazon Basic shower curtains. Now, if you are in the market for a shower curtain, I would highly recommend them, they are freakin’ hefty! Great for a $2 shower curtain, terrible for someone trying to attach three of them full of balloons to the ceiling! It took us a long time and several failed attempt to get this thing hanging and in the end, we had so many strings up that we had to have three adults cutting them at the same time for the drop. It looked cool. The kids loved it. I’m not sure it was worth the hassle.
So, after our balloon drop craziness, I didn’t plan any other activities. I was working with preschool age kids after all, but you could easily plan any sort of party game!
Dessert
There are so many amazing cake decoration ideas out there. Unfortunately, my kids aren’t huge cake fans, so we settled for donuts! Which we also ate a lot of on our cruise ship so it worked out perfectly. I actually highly recommend donuts for a birthday party. Way less clean up!
Happy Birthday little dude! What would you have added to a cruise themed birthday party? Let me know in the comments! Thanks for stopping by and happy craftin’!
So cute!!