Space Themed Birthday Party

My boys birthdays are 2 days apart, this year we threw their party at the same time. Mainly because we have a rule that they are allowed to invite one friend for every year they are and the family. This is a huge bonus to us because it so happens that the kids my younger son would invite all have older siblings that are my older son's best friends. It is also our excuse to have other adults over. Sorry for the background but its why we combined their parties, easy on mommy's life. That and there are only a few days around Christmas that people can get together. Maybe I left that part out... Yes, not only are my boys birthdays 2 days apart they are joined with Christmas smack dab in the middle. For 3 days it is non stop excitement in our house.

6 months before I asked my sons what they wanted to do for their birthdays, science birthday party. It took a few months, lots of time on pinterest and then narrowed it down to space science party in other words...Astronomy. My boys love the moon, stars, and planets so it was perfect but very hard to find supplies/ideas without aliens or being all about astronauts and rockets. All they wanted was the solar system. Luckily while not finding exact ideas I was able to gather a few of my own and being on a tight budget was able to throw a party for under $50.

We had plenty of white Christmas lights on hand so I circled them around the chandelier to make the MilkyWay. There would have been more but time and getting dizzy we knew it was enough. Just used scotch tape to hold them up so I didn't damage the ceiling.

By the way I did check all the lights before I put them up and once they were up the center ones shorted out...amazingly they began working again the night of the party.

I bought some tulle in red and yellow, didn't want to block out the light from the chandelier, and gathered it at the top to create the sun. If I knew that the Christmas lights were going to be so bright I could have went with a thicker fabric but it worked out well.

My younger son LOVES the moon, his cake was a grayish moon. Part of the fun for their parties is that I let them help through out, so the cakes may not be perfectly smooth or may have finger prints its okay because it is the time spent with them. I used a half ball cake pan to make the cake.

My older son is into it all but since we have been traveling a little more this year he has been big into maps. His cake was the earth so he could put continents and even a volcano on the cake. I used a full cake mix and ball cake pan.

Its always after the fact that you realize that you should have taken more pictures at different angles. Hopefully on another card or phone I may find the back side of the earth.

I was very tempted to add Pluto back in as a planet but I know I would have confused the kids. The other 7 planets were cake-balls covered in candy melts. Mars, Saturn and Jupiter were covered in butter-cream and the rings were pull-n-peel Twizzlers.

We had candy rocks for asteroids  foil wrapped candy for moon rocks, and best of all after Christmas sales had Lego packs marked down to $1 so we picked up a bunch of star war themed packs for take home gifts. And plenty left for stocking stuffers for next year as well. Right before the party we added some Galactic Gas for punch (lime sherbet and Lemon-Lime soda) it turned out really good.

 For dinner we served homemade individual space pizzas. The kids had a lot of fun and clean up was easy, and everything we used can be reused later. That makes for one happy mommy.