Football Themed Birthday Party

For Ethan’s big birthday (turning double digits!!), Ethan wanted to have a football themed birthday party.  Ethan is all about sports…currently he is playing on a basketball team, next up is baseball then back to football season!  Ethan picked the theme for his birthday, but said he just wanted his party to be football themed—not team specific.  Today’s post is about ideas for throwing a football themed party.  Read on for some football fun!  But brace yourself…it’s a long and there are a TON of pictures!

My ideal children’s party?  One that is not at my house (I don’t do well with messes), so Ethan chose to have his birthday at Rockin’ Jump Trampoline Park.  The party package at Rockin’ Jump includes two hours of jump time for ten children, a private dodgeball party and the use of the party room at the beginning of the second hour.  Rockin’ Jump provides cups, plates and utensils for use in the party room and they allow outside desserts to be brought in.  Any other food and beverages have to be purchased through Rockin’ Jump.  We planned the party so it was after lunch and before dinner….I don’t think the kids would have wanted to stop jumping to eat anyways 🙂

I purchased the football themed invitations from the Nifty Printables Etsy Shop.  Flo Karp is the owner of the shop and is so EASY to work with.  I made my invitation purchase before I went to bed one night and by the time I woke up the next morning, Flo already had a proof for me to review!  I wanted to make a few changes to the invitations and Flo had the next proof done in minutes!!  And the invitations were perfect!  I was so happy with the final product.  Flo emailed me the JPEG file, which I uploaded to my Costco photo account and had printed out.  The invitations were 5×7-inches and we just picked up some plain white envelopes to put them in.  Between the invitation design and printing, the cost was only about $25 for 20 invitations.

I liked the vintage football look of these invitations.  If you are in need of any invitations, or other printables, definitely visit Nifty Printables!  I will definitely use this shop again in the future!

So besides making the cupcakes, my favorite part about planning this party was creating the goody bags.  Who doesn’t love a goody bag from a party?!  Those were the best!  Since this was a football themed party, the goody bags were football themed.  We made goody bags separately for the boys and the girls, since we didn’t think the girls would want some of the boy stuff.

For the boys’ goody bags: Gatorade, box of Cracker Jacks, bubble gum, a Super Bowl ring (aka: Ring Pop), crazy eraser, football rubber bracelet, glow stick, baseball cards, a football punch balloon and a football bouncy ball all put into a happy birthday goody bag.

For the girls’ goody bags: Gatorade, box of Cracker Jacks, bubble gum, a Super Bowl ring (aka: Ring Pop), crazy eraser, football rubber bracelet, glow stick, make your own friendship bracelets, a football beaded necklace, a football punch balloon and a football bouncy ball all put into a pretty pastel birthday goody bag.

The football bouncy balls, bracelets, necklaces, friendship bracelets, punch balloons, baseball cards, glow sticks and crazy erasers were all bought from Party City party supply store.  The goody bags, Cracker Jacks, gum and Ring Pops were bought at the Dollar Tree.  Gatorade was purchased from the grocery store.

I initially was going to make the goody bags using brown gift bags and add white football laces to them, but because we had a co-ed party, I wanted to make it easier for the boys and girls to know which goody bags to grab by using boyish looking birthday bags for the boys and girly ones for the girls!

Since I could only make desserts to bring in for the party at Rockin’ Jump, I went with Cocoa Krispie Treat footballs, Funfetti cupcakes and Mocha Coffee cupcakes with Mocha Buttercream frosting.  I used my Cocoa Krispie treat recipe to make the footballs.  Recipe HERE.  The only thing I changed about the recipe, is that I added the cup of chocolate chips to the hot marshmallow mixture right after I removed it from the heat, at the same time I was adding the Cocoa Krispies.  The chocolate chips melted and made these sooooo chocolatey!!  I spread the Cocoa Krispies out in a thin layer on a large jelly roll pan and cut the Cocoa Krispies out using a football cookie cutter while the treats were still warm.

Let the Cocoa Krispie treats cool completely before piping the football details on it!

All decorated!

I made Funfetti cupcakes with vanilla buttercream “grass” frosting, topped with a chocolate football, and Mocha Coffee cupcakes with Mocha Buttercream frosting, topped with sprinkles and a fondant Happy Birthday topper.

The decorations were super easy to make.   I used my silicon Happy Birthday mould to make the orange fondant toppers and used Salted Caramel candy melts and a candy melt football mould for the footballs.  I always make the decorations a few days in advance just to get that part of it out of the way.

Now onto the party!!!

The kids getting ready for their private dodgeball game!  Such a great group of friends Ethan has!

After the kids jumped for an hour, we went into the party room at Rockin Jump to have cupcakes and sing Happy Birthday to Ethan!  Here’s the dessert table (goody bags and presents in the background), which we topped with a football table cloth.  We didn’t go crazy with the decorations since we only had the party room for a quick hour.

Who wants a cupcake??

Here’s Ethan blowing out his special EDIBLE chocolate candle!  The WHOLE candle is edible, including the wick!  You can buy them HERE from My Cup of Cake.

Miss A approved of the Funfetti cupcakes 🙂

Such a fun party.  And again…the best part for me?  I did not have to do any post-party clean up hehehe 😉

Hopefully if you are planning a football birthday party in the future, this post was helpful.  If not, then I hope you just enjoyed all the pictures 🙂

XOXO,

Kelly

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PS-

You can find this recipe and tons of other recipes at the following parties I have linked up to: What’s Cookin’ Wednesday, Create, Link and Inspire, Sugar and Spice, Weekend Potluck, Pretty Pintastic Party, Friday Frenzy, Meal Plan Monday.  Click on the links to check out tons of amazing crafts, recipes and ideas from a variety of bloggers who love to party like me!! 🙂