Arggh you all ready for this? Pirate Party Paloosa!

Duh duh duh dunt dunt dunt dunt- MORTAL COMBAT! Okay so Sams pirate party may have felt like mortal combat sometimes but it was AWESOME!!!!

I decided MONTHS ago to do this pirate themed party which gave my very talented friend Elizabeth plenty of time to complete her commission for Sams pirate banner featured above & through out... but I am getting a head of myself. Once the theme was settled on then began the search for awesome party garb. I found the Website for Meri Meri and went ballistic. I justified buying most of the pirate collection but drew the line at invitations that would cost around 80 dollars to send. Um sorry but no invitation is THAT cool, even if you can wear it after :) So I headed over to Oriental Trading and found the invitations in a bottle. I knew I wouldn't get them in time so I had them mailed to Kerstin who was conveniently coming the next week (Man that was such a cool visit)! Poor Kerstin headed to the post office on her lunch break thinking she will pick up an envelope with invitations... because that is what normal people do. The postmaster comes out with a huge box and she reminds herself that it is me she is dealing with ha! So she shoved 24 plastic bottles in all the little empty spaces and then suffered through rolling up all the little invites, emptying sand into them etc. See what happens when you come to visit? :) I also wanted to make sure that each of the attendees could really feel like a pirate so I ordered about ten yards of black burlap and made each of them Pirate tunics!

I just made little sandwich board like tunics and wrote their "Pirate name" in glittery puffy paint.

I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with more than 30 pirate names. I cut long strips of different colored fabric for their belts aka sword holders and let them pick which they wanted. They each got a sword an eye patch and a bandana to go a long with it!
Buccaneer Bianca who has since lost that last pesky top tooth

Sammy got to be Captain Sammy since it was his party and Liam was 1st mate!

(Grandma Jan, those hats you got them for Colonial Williamsburg are extremely loved and well used!!!)
Once all the tunics were sorted out we let the kids pick out their tough pirate themed temporary tattoos. The Pirate mommies all got glittered eye patch's

while the dads go fake stick on mustaches... some also donned the few Jack Sparrow hats

When Elizabeth sent the banner she was awesome enough to include matching fabric for me to make Abby something, so Abby got in on the action!

Although to be totally honest we had 3 nanny's that night so she spent most of the evening with Che Che while I ran around like a crazy person. Since our "stuff" had arrived the night before I decided to turn one of the huge wooden crates into a make shift photo booth. It turned out so so but I did love this one:

Once everyone was decked out and tattooed up we sent them on a treasure hunt. I totally meant to make a treasure box but spaced it so at the last minute grabbed Abby's jewelry box and put all the booty in there. Since most of the searchers are still illiterate we just gave them hints of places to look. (Once again, living on a huge guarded compound is AWESOME-- tons of space and not a single worry about kids getting out, lost, run over etc.) Each child would bring me a piece of gold and receive a treat! Then it was off to the pirate pinata. I tried to take some good pictures of this but bats and small children don't mix and I actually ended up holding the pinata and letting them whack it until Chris finally just broke it open ha!
Just in case they hadn't had enough sugar we took a break from activities to have snacks and cake.
We had three tables over flowing with food by the time it was all brought out. This was the parents table with more "adult" food

Most peoples favs were the licorice and pirates booty but I loved the fruit salad. Look at the size of this papaya I got for 2 bucks!!!

Holy cow I had more papaya then I knew what to do with! To drink we had Root beer for the adults and juice for the kids. And for those who wanted to keep with the theme: Coconuts!

Our Gardner was kind enough to cut about 20 of them down a few hours before the party. I think if you were stranded on a desert island barely scraping by then yes coconut water would be fantastic... as it is I would recommended sticking with the root beer :)Sammy's cake was awesome- in theory... didn't look as cool in real life

I used a bunt cake to try and make it look like a volcano, brown sugar for Sand, blue raspberry jello for water and playmobile characters so people would know what in the world I was going for. Sammy loved it though and thats what maters!

Even though I had made a TON of cupcakes most of the kids wanted the blue jello ha! (It is one of those things you don't often see in Timor)

(It was so great having 3 helpers to magically replenish everything through out the night! Every time I turned around there were more chips and dip, cupcakes, drinks it was awesome)
Once it got dark the twinkle and globe lights turned on.

These globe lights from Pottery Barn were so cool and surprisingly cheap, I am thinking about keeping them on our deck year round :) I had also been saving the tons of glass baby food jars Abby had been going through and put little tea lights in them then put them every few feet on our garden path. I was a little worried about fire and kids but it was a total non-issue! I think that is because most of them were hovered around the HUGE fire to do s'mores!

They are such an american tradition and it is near impossible to get marshmallows here unless you can mail food in like we can (seriously the state dept and its amazing perks- don't get me started) I think the cuties mainly like melting the marshmallows off their sticks :) After s'mores we let Sammy open presents with the help of a lot of friends! Then let everyone run wild!

I mean they were by this point chocabox full of sugar thanks to yours truly. It was hilarious to watch them sword fight and search for treasure and try to scare us moms

It was nice to take a breather and relax with some of my mommy friends and the baby pirates

Sammy took a break to talk to his preschool teacher Ms. Naomi. He was SOOOO excited that she came, and even more excited when she gave him a soccer ball!

When the kids were ready to head home they each got a booty bag with of course more candy...

What I loved the most is how many people came up to me and told me they heard Sam exclaiming that this was the best party ever!!! What made it the best though is how wonderful our friends are here and how totally game for a laugh they are! While I was totally exhausted after, Sam and Liam were, of course, wound up like tops... look at my crazy eyes again and hilarious attempt at a pirate outfit

The next morning we were still reeling and it was all the boys talked about over breakfast. Liam even put a mustache back on!

This morning in the car Sammy was talking about his next birthday and how he wants an airplane party... hmmm. At least I have a year to come up with ideas for it right? Hope your weekend was as full of laughter as ours!