Diamond’s are a Birthday Boys Best Friend

For my son’s 6th birthday party this year it was no surprise when he said he wanted a Minecraft theme.  Around the time he turned 5, he started to get interested in Minecraft from watching YouTube videos and began begging for months to get the Minecraft app for his ipad.  I was very hesitant to get it since he was younger then the recommended age and I assumed he would require a lot of help from me.  I finally let him download it in the Fall and since then have continued to be amazed by the things he builds and the knowledge he has gained from the game.  I still not sure I fully understand the whole concept, but I know it has been a lot of fun for him and was happy to use it as this year’s party theme.

As I began my search for Minecraft party ideas, I quickly discovered an overabundance of the color green.  Most of the party table’s seem to pull inspiration from the green creepers and the green and brown grass/dirt building blocks found in the game.

I will admit I had a hard time getting into this theme because everything I was finding seemed quite repetitive.  I already had green plastic grass tablecloths and many of the other party supplies needed to replicate the ideas I was finding, but I wanted to challenge myself to come up with some new and creative ideas to share.

I was feeling very uninspired until I was in Michael’s and happened upon this package of fun diamond shaped honeycomb decorations by Martha Stewart.  I first took notice of the product because they were displayed in a beautiful rainbow of colors across the shelves and I wanted to take a mental note because I thought they might be good for one of my daughter’s future parties.  Well, I then had an A-Ha! moment in which I realized that diamonds are actually a HUGE part of Minecraft and that these might actually work for the party currently in planning.

I decided to switch gears from the green scheme I had first envisioned and bought the package of diamond decorations in my favorite aqua/teal color scheme because I knew those were the colors of Steve’s Diamond armor in the game.  At the party they added the perfect touch of fun hanging above the dining table.

To continue with the theme and color scheme on the table, I layered aqua colored plastic tablecloths with a black and grey faux stone tablecloth.

The box decorations on the table were repurposed from last year’s Super Mario party.  Lucky for me I didn’t toss them out and they were easy to reface with print-outs of Steve’s face and the diamond ore blocks.  I also found some plastic diamond gems that I scattered throughout the table amongst the food platters.

The final touch with the tablescape was to incorporate some of Steve’s diamond weapons as the backdrop.  I decided my diamond sword and pickaxe were best displayed in the background in frames that looked like the item frames from the game.  To create more of a 3D effect for my printouts, I mounted them to layered foamcore and hung them in front of black plastic tablecloth “curtains”.

For food, I kept it simple with a variety of kid friendly finger foods inspired by the actual foods in the game.  The menu was very simple to come up with thanks to all the great ideas on Pinterest and most of the food items could be prepared ahead of time or required very little prep.

For the cooked chicken, I heated up some pre-bought breaded chicken pieces.  The Pigs in a Blanket are not a food found in the game, but I made it Minecraft related by indicating on my food label that it was a combination of pig + bread. 🙂

To try and keep things a little bit healthy, I had carrots, watermelon, golden apple slices and “Red Stone” strawberries.

The chocolate chip cookies and meringues were easy to prepare ahead of time.  For the meringues, I used my standard recipe shared over on Moms & Munchkins and the mini chocolate chip cookies followed this great recipe from Baker by Nature.

And you can’t go wrong with the old standby’s of potato chips and pretzels at a party.  I had initially thought to try something fancy like mini baked potatoes, but since one of my sons favourite foods is plain potato chips I decided they would be the best kid friendly option to represent the potato.

Drinks were water or lava punch – a mixture of orange juice, lemon lime soda, orange sherbet and frozen raspberries.  It was served in TNT wrapped Solo cups.

And, finally, it isn’t a birthday party without cupcakes or cake.  For the cake, my son saw pictures on Pinterest from other’s who had recreated the cake from the actual game and decided that is what he wanted.  I wasn’t about to argue when it was a pretty basic design.  My only hesitation was that it really needed to be done with fondant and I had done pretty well up until this point avoiding fondant.