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Toy Story Cowboy Party -2yr- Zurg's Outer Space

November 2010

leanne in Dorset, UK

Special Mention

My son's 2nd birthday was coming up & I thought cowboy would be easy.  Toy story 3 was coming out & my son loves toy story so decided to do an anything goes dress up toy story or cowboy (my son dressed as a cowboy).

INVITATION:  I took some pictures of my son dressed up as a cowboy shooting some water pistols.  I took a free toy story 'wallpaper' which happened to have Andy's cloud wallpaper on it with buzz running forward.  I had a friend use adobe to cut out my son & superimpose him onto the wallpaper background.  I loaded onto vistaprint & added txt saying; Howdy Rangers, etc etc, contact mummy space ranger rsvp.  I have a basement room so I decided to kit out the whole room.  

DECORATION: Firstly I went to a florist suppliers (amazing place full of interesting stuff if you have an imagination).  I bought a whole role of the see through plastic flower wrap called Polypropylene Film.  I wanted blue so I could put stars on it & cover the walls to make it look like Andy's room.  Unfortunately they had every colour but not blue?  I ended up with the light or lime green.  When I actually put this against the walls starting just above the skirting board, I found that there was so much static that it just stuck to the walls, I couldn't believe my luck! I ran it down the stairs leading to the basement, all the way around the room and covered the 2 pillars too.  I had printed out lots of images I found off of google images on the characters, cut them out & now stuck them randomly over the green plastic. My walls didn't get damaged at all!  I then filled the gaps with stars, gold ones sparkly ones, white sparkles or silver stars.  I got these over months of planning whenever I could find them cheap.   

The florist suppliers also had bag of 50 balloons, so I bought lime green, blue & silver.  Florists also have an abundance of ribbon every colour, thick thin, so I bought lime green blue & silver ribbon to colour coordinate & tie the balloons & we ordered some helium air.  On the day though we only managed to fill the silver ones before we ran out & they were all just floating on the ceiling & looked so great that we just had them covering the ceiling rather & didn't tie them.    My 2 pillars helped me corner off a section of the room.  I then used fabric I had to block it off to make 'Zurg's out of space area'.  It wasn't dark enough so I bought some black sheets from a real cheap shop & pinned them together to make it darker.  

I then got clear fishing wire & some nails & nailed in as many nails as I could, ie above door frames, around the tops of the pillars etc.  I then criss-crossed as many lines of fishing wire as I could.  I bought 9 different size globes from a craft shop made out of polystyrene.  1st night I covered them in glue to stop them being porous.  2nd night I used a combination of glow in the dark paint & vibrant oranges, yellows, browns & blues to copy the planets as much as possible.  I looked up the planets on google images to get it right. I then hung these planets from the fishing wire with the wire too so it looked like they were floating.  I then got packets of glow stars & tied the wire around the stars & did either 3 or 4 stars per wire & also had these hanging all over the place off the fishing wire.  I had every lamp I could get my hands on under them to charge them before the party. I also sprayed glow in the dark spray everywhere & it was draping down from the wire too.  I put my big silver bean bags in there as crators & my silver fitness ball in there too.   I taped bubble wrap (I'd been saving from a delivery I had) all over the floor so when the children 1st went in the room it was popping like mad!  Outside the room I had signs pointing to zurg's planet & had stuck loads of alien pictures around.

ACTIVITIES/GAMES: As everyone arrived I got them to do colouring in the dining room with pictures I'd printed out from the internet, until most of the kids arrived.  Then I said 'as my son's having a birthday party today all the toy story soldiers are out looking for his new presents  Can anyone find them?'  I had hidden the soldiers all over the basement so when we got down there it encouraged the children to check the place out & they kept the soldiers they found.    Once that had been exhausted.  One of the daddys was given the task of handing out glow in the dark bracelets. They were also given glow in the dark monster finger puppets. All the children were so excited.  On line you could buy 100 for not much money.  They were told they were going to zurg's planet and they needed their special lights to light the way.  So off we all went to pear in to the darkened room.  It was amazing.  I wanted to have my own party in there that night when everyone had gone!  

They were a little scared to start but as soon as they could see their bracelets lighting up they were having great fun then wanted them on their ankles too!  I had a blow-up car paddling pool in the summer so I filled it with balls for the little ones & threw in some extra baby toys too so mums had somewhere enclosed to feel safe in whilst the little ones were kept busy.  Within the car I threw loads of coloured ducks too & later the children played catch the space duck & I gave them a fishing net.  They won stickers if they got one. I found a picture of a bath duck dressed with a space-helmet so I stuck that to the car.   I had a funny front facing half dome uv protector tent so this was put up, its red & we hung Christmas red decorations draping down over the entrance so the kids had to lift up the tinsel to get in.  Inside were some toy steering wheels making this tent a space craft.  The kids loved hiding in there.  

My small grey fitness trampoline became a moon bouncer & all his ride ons & cars were lined up.  Its fun using a lot of stuff you already have & adapting it.  Before the party, I had a huge box arrive, with brown paper as the stuffing.  I drew an outline of Mr potato head on the box & used the brown paper to fill him in, around the background to hide the rest of the packaging I just painted it bright blue.  For his hat eyes, nose etc, I went to a craft shop & bought 4 vibrant red light blue for feet, white for eyes, etc felt & cut it to shape to make Mr potato head.  I gave him a big smile cut a hole out for his mouth & bought packets of cheap balls lime green blue & silver, for the kids to throw in the mouth. 

I ordered a woody poster, bought a packet of sheriff badges used a highlighter to add the kids names to the back.  Then in turn the kids were blindfolded & had to put their sheriffs badge on theposters where they thought woody's badge was.  We also had a Buzz pull pinata filled with; spinners, a packet of little frogs, lollipops, sweets, chocolate. My husband held buzz & had all the children pull on the strings but we had a duff one and it wouldn't open so my husband ended up acting like zurg and ripping the back open much to the kids amusement.  In the end we did food to get them seated & calm just before home.  

FOOD: Star cut out sandwiches, pizza (planet) hoola hoops, (saturn rings) cheesy wotsits, big platter of fruit which they grazed on all afternoon especially the water melon triangles.  All cutlery was blue & plates, napkins, cups were toy story.  The supermarkets were doing so many toy story promotions for the new film finding favors was easy --

FAVORS:  Toy story key ring, packet of toy story notepad & pencil, glow in the dark bouncy ball for boys, my little pony for girls, packet of raisins (with toy story on front) toy story bar of chocolate & a toy story pocket book.  It was magical, everybody made an effort to dress up.  We had buzz, 2 cowboys, Jessie, Woody, a fairy?(anything goes!) The others didn't dress up. My husband went to a army surplus store & dress up as a soldier which I think was the best! He couldn't believe how heavy the helmet was.  If they were older I came up with a game that there would be 2 teams, each team defending a toy story character, we had woody & buzz (whatever you have)we had loads of space guns and cowboy guns for them to pretend shoot.  The teams would have to defend their toy but try touch the others toy to gain a point. Great pretend play & lots of running around, unfortunately the 4/5 year olds that were coming were ill.  I would really recommend the Polypropylene Film.  I will buy it again the the colour I need for the next party.  I am already thinking pirates & getting black film next time for one wall ( the ship) & light blue for the sea for the rest & then put pictures of sea creatures on it.  

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