Avast Ye, I’ll Tell Ye a Tale

We had a great time celebrating Julius yesterday!  We had a bunch of people over to the house consisting of Julius’s friends from school and their families.  In August (when we were on Block Island) Julius discovered Santiago of the Seas and said he wanted a pirate themed party.  That was great because up until then he had been telling me he wanted a “monkey party”.  When pressed for details about this monkey party he suggested “we act like monkeys and eat bananas”.  If I ever offered suggestions of other activities we might do at this monkey-themed party he promptly suggested that instead he wanted a Wallace and Gromit party again.  When I would then mention to him that we could try a different Wallace and Gromit theme, instead of the space “A Grand Day out” theme, he would respond that he wanted it to be exactly the same as last year’s, complete with giant cardboard rocket ship.  All this is to say how you can imagine that I latched on for dear life and refused to let go after Julius suggested a pirate party in August.

Theme

So pirates aren’t technically good people, but we glossed over that and focused on the treasure hunting and pirate aesthetics.  I saved boxes from the last 4 months to build a giant pirate ship out of cardboard as the pièce de résistance and then decided a few days before (after having worked nights and weekends at my “day” job for the last several months) that I just didn’t have time.  It ended up working out because the activities all doubled as decor for our theme.  For a centerpiece for the dining room table I used the cake I made, and a couple of my favorite pewter mugs that I filled with some ostentatious  ostrich and peacock feathers and pirate flags I made.  I also made a bunch of favor bags for the kids to take their hats, pets and candy home in, and I hung them from the front door to double as decoration.

Activities

Make your Own Pirate Hat

When guests started arriving we directed them to sit at the dining table and make a pirate hat.  I’d made pirate hats out of black felt for each of the kids and they could decorate the hats with skulls (that I cut out of felt using my cricut) and jewels (that I had leftover from my princess Peach costume years ago) and feathers (from, of course, Whimsical Brims).  The kids used glue dots to attach the accessories which worked to varying degrees of success depending of the application.  Overall it was a perfect activity that we could slow roll as kids arrived at different times.

Pick a Pirate Pet

No pirate is complete without their trusty sidekick, so after critical mass of the party arrived we headed to the garage that Will and I had turned into a play gym.  During the pandemic I built the climbing wall for Julius (you may remember that I also later entirely removed said climbing wall and painstakingly put it back up after Tesla finished the walls of the garage.  You may not know, but I also installed heavy duty playground hangers into the ceiling that we use sometimes to hang gymnastics rings, swings or hammocks.  That combined with our little trampoline, slide, pikler triangle, ball pit and tunnel (on top of a bunch of yoga mats we bought for cheap) served as our fake gym.

I prompted the children before they went thru the door that they could choose either a parrot perched on the “Parrot Wall”, a monkey hanging over “Monkey Ladder” or a frog from “Frog Cave”.  The children then ran into the room and completed the task to retrieve their desired pet (and then played around some more on the equipment).  Patricia and Julius were the only two children to choose frogs.  (Perhaps because of Santiago’s pet coqui frog? And Patricia’s love of following her brother?)  I was flat out shocked after the whole request for a monkey party.

After they retrieved their pirate pet I encouraged the children to make their pet a name tag (using pipe cleaners and some discount fall letter beads from Michaels).  This actually come in handy because several children “lost” their pets during the course of the party and their name tags meant they were easy to find.

Treasure Hunt

The children alternated between playing with the equipment, getting their pets, naming them and making them tags.  Unbeknownst to them I had hidden a treasure map in a bottle inside the ball pit.  One party-goer found the treasure map and alerted everyone!  That’s when the final phase of the party began!  Everyone grabbed their hats and pets and tried to figure out my extremely cryptic map!  Every child in the room (except perhaps Patricia) knew the treasure was under the “X” but I provided some helpful context that the black dot was probably the starting point at the garage entrance.

The kids took the hint and barreled through the door into the kitchen looking for the first symbol.  They all shouted in glee when they found it and proceeded in that way through the symbols we’d hidden around the house.  The cutest part were some of the kids lagged a little bit behind, and were just as excited when they found the symbols a couple minutes later.   The treasure hunt eventually lead the kids to the basement where they found an “X” marking the spot on top of the sofa.  The children told me disheartened that there wasn’t any treasure there!  That’s when I asked what pirates usually do to hide their treasure… and someone said they bury it.  After that they were digging up the couch cushions and eventually Julius found the treasure chest full of booty – gold coins and ring pops (Dia de los Muertos ring pops which I figured were aptly thematic because of the skulls – and I couldn’t find any regular ones anyway).

Food

I forgot to take pictures of the food but it wasn’t anything fancy!  We opted for “party pizza” which I’ll warn my family is not the same as Rhode Island Party Pizza  but still delicious.  I also made a huge platter of veggies with sour cream dip and humus and a fruit platter.  The food was nice and easy because I prepared the huge platters the day before and we had the pizza delivered!

Cake

This year Julius requested a chocolate vanilla swirl cake with chocolate frosting.  I decided I hated the cake recipe I’ve been using the last couple years and wanted to do something different.  I also decided that a loaf pan cake looks very similar in shape to a treasure chest so I decided to make a marble pound cake recipe.  It was so easy and delicious!  I used this recipe for the cake and I made a second batch that I turned into cupcakes (only baking for 30 minutes).

I usually make an Italian Meringue buttercream frosting, which is divine but (I’ll be honest) a pain in the butt to make. It takes me at least 2 hours from start to finish because it involves getting sugar syrup to the perfect temperature and cooling the entire mixture in a very controlled way.  It looks and tastes amazing though.  That said, I made this 6 minute chocolate buttercream icing recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen and I will never need another American chocolate buttercream icing recipe again!  My only real complaint is that I ended up making two batches of it because it really doesn’t make very much, and I needed a lot to frost an entire loaf pan cake and 20 cupcakes.  It’s not much of a complaint though because it really does take 6 minutes after you have the butter at room temp, and I could have made about 20 batches of this in the time it takes me to make my usual recipe.

My original plan was to frost the cake, cover it in fondant and make it look like a treasure chest, but after I frosted it with chocolate frosting I realized it already looked like a treasure chest and I decided to only use fondant for the details.  I used my favorite fondant recipe (also from Amanda Oakleaf) which comes together quickly, though to my dismay requires you to wait 24 hours to set after you knead it together.  I waited about 12 hours after mixing it and it seemed mostly fine. I’m pretty darn happy with how cute the cake came out.

The cupcakes though, I was a bit disappointed in.  A couple months ago I had bought some cupcake decorating tips  because I still haven’t mastered the beautiful sweeping ice-cream like frosting mounds.  I started practicing with the tips on these cupcakes and realized the large tips were not improving my skills.  So I decided instead to pipe designs onto the cupcakes.  I ended up using a flower looking tip, and the cupcakes came out cute and spikey, but looked too much like brown flowers.  So I cut some coins out of fondant with a 1″ circle cutter, looked up “pirate coins” on the internet and settled on the symbol on the back of a bunch of Roman coins that was the easiest to replicate.  I just now looked that symbol up and realized it’s a Christian symbol (the chi-rho I guess, guess these are later Romans the pirates are stealing from). In my defense it was past 1am by this point and I could not remember the word “doubloon” which would have yielded much better search results.  Anyway, I dusted the cupcakes with gold sugar and then placed a roman coin on top of a few of them.

Overall I think the party was a great success and it seemed like everyone had lots of fun!  In the coming week’s I’ll post some of the how-to’s from Julius’ birthday so you can make your own pirate hats and flags if you so desire!  Speaking of which…

This Month’s give away is for an instant-pirate kit!  A couple lucky winners will receive a pirate hat to decorate complete with jewels, skulls and feathers in your very own pirate bag.  I’ll draw the winners on December 4th, so you can hopefully get it in time for the winter solstice holiday of your choice!  Avast ye, all that’s required is to put a comment below with your pirate name.  Until then, may the wind be at yer back and roll that old chariot along me hearties.

~Captain Dark Jangle