Yo Ho, Mateys! We just cel­e­brated the big boys’ birth­days in Jake and the Never Land Pirates style! With the boys’ birth­days only one day apart, I’m all about doing a big joint birth­day party (just like last year’s Wild Kratts party & the train party the year before that). Even though we don’t have cable, the boys have seen the fun Dis­ney Junior show, “Jake and the Never Land Pirates”, and LOVE it! So, it was the per­fect theme for their ages! How cute are those newly turned 3 and 6-year-olds?! It was so fun to cel­e­brate those sweet boys! And, they were so excited about every­thing! So, get ready for pic­ture over­load! Then, I’ll be shar­ing some more detailed posts soon with descrip­tions of how we made some of the dec­o­ra­tions, activ­i­ties, and of course, the cake!

For the decor, I kept things a lit­tle more nautical/general pirate instead of an over­whelm­ing amount of Jake mer­chan­dise. It made the decor eas­ier to “DIY”, less expen­sive, and will be eas­ier to reuse for other things! We sig­naled the party on the front entry­way with our Minted pirate sign (“Fun Ahead: Enter if Ye Dare”), some paper anchors, and a big X marks the spot (just red Duck tape)!

Indoor Pirate Decor

When you enter our house, you come into the liv­ing room/dining room. We’ve got a fair amount of open space there, so it’s a good start­ing point for the kids. Plus, it’s a good place to open gifts and sing Happy Birth­day. The man­tel and back of the piano were beg­ging to get dec­o­rated too! So, this was the indoor pirate decor scene: Here are a few close­ups of the dif­fer­ent areas:

Of course, my favorite thing to set up was the “pirate loot” table, com­plete with fun trea­sure and dessert! The boys absolutely loved the cake! It def­i­nitely required some work, but was so worth it! (Full tuto­r­ial on the cake com­ing soon).

Out­door Pirate Decor

Given the gor­geous weather here in AZ this time of year, the major­ity of the party activ­i­ties were done out­side! We had SO much fun dec­o­rat­ing our back­yard! Some sim­ple things like rope with fab­ric scraps added great color. And, with a pirate theme, sim­ple signs made out of card­board are easy & inex­pen­sive to do. The birth­day ban­ner from Minted looked great on the patio too!  The major­ity of the decor was actu­ally really, really sim­ple. But, we did go all out on a few things. And, our hands-down favorite DIY decor project was the giant mast and Bucky sails (the name of the ship in the show). It hon­estly wasn’t too tough to make at all (full tuto­r­ial com­ing soon) and it added so much “char­ac­ter” out­side! The boys think we need a Jolly Roger mast & sail now though, for duel­ing ships! I do have to say that the pirate decor out­side is pretty fun! So, maybe we should just go ahead with that other sail and turn our back­yard into a fun, trop­i­cal, pirate oasis! The kids of course loved just run­ning around play­ing, but we did have some fun orga­nized activ­i­ties! They were all so sim­ple to do! First up, each kiddo got their pirate gear to dress up like Jake or Izzy! They LOVED this (and was impos­si­ble to get a pic­ture of them all look­ing !! Then, after yelling, “Yo Ho, Let’s Go!!”, we headed out­side for all of our fun pirate adven­ture activ­i­ties. After each activ­ity, each kid received a gold dou­bloon for com­plet­ing the task (just like when they get dou­bloons in the show). It all cul­mi­nated with hunt­ing for the “buried” trea­sure. They were SO excited when the found the “X”! The trea­sure area itself was mostly hid­den by our large arti­choke plant! Per­fect! Each kiddo could dig to get 3 more gold dou­bloons and two “jewel” neck­laces”.  Baby Brother even got in on all the fun! We found a sim­ple 2-pack of pirate theme iron-on trans­fers. We put “pirate in train­ing” on the front” with “Yo Ho Ho and a bot­tle of milk” on the back. To make things look even more piratey (and cooler for him on a warm day), we cut the sleeves with a jagged cut! That’s one cute pirate! SUCH a fun party! All the plan­ning, work, and dec­o­rat­ing was SO worth it! It was an absolutely fab­u­lous night! See­ing their lit­tle faces light up is SO price­less. Every­thing was mag­i­cal to them! And, of course, they absolutely couldn’t wait until it was time to get cake (and get their char­ac­ters off the cake which was their present from us)! Pre­cious moments! I know it won’t seem like long at all until these cute, fun par­ties aren’t “cool” any­more. My fun cakes might not seem so mag­i­cal to that cute lit­tle 6 year old in another 6 years. So, this mama is soak­ing up every birth­day year that we can cel­e­brate with our lit­tle guys like this. We’re so thank­ful for all of our fam­ily & friends who helped us cel­e­brate our boys!

And, thanks to you for shar­ing in all of this buc­ca­neer birth­day fun here!! Sep­a­rate posts with details on mak­ing many of the items for the party are com­ing soon, so stay tuned!

Related posts, party details, and inspi­ra­tion can be found here (with more added to the list soon):

• Jake & the Never Land Pirates Party Plan­ning Pin­ter­est Board
• Pirate Party Food — Menu & Directions
• DIY Pirate Swords Tutorial
• Jake & the Never Land Pirates Birth­day Cake Tuto­r­ial (com­ing soon!)
• Jake & the Never Land Pirates Birth­day Party Activ­i­ties (com­ing soon!)
• DIY Pirate Mast & Sail (com­ing soon!)