Jake and the Never Land Pirates Birthday Party!

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 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:

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