Life in Stepping Stones

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I’ll admit it. When it comes to throwing parties for my son, I love to go over the top and put everything I have into it. Since he was born, I’ve worked tirelessly on party decorations and for the first few years, they went mostly unnoticed by him. However, I knew when he turned 4, he was finally at an age where he’d appreciate it, and I couldn’t have been more excited than to do a Super Wings Travel Theme!

My love for throwing elaborate DIY parties stems from my amazing mom who did the same for me. I still have vivid memories of being 9 years old and walking down the “castle” stairs towards our basement in my princess dress. My mom had covered the walls to look like a castle and downstairs, the pool table was set up for dining at a royal banquet. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to always create the same magical experiences for my own children.

This year, I really threw myself into the party decorating experience. Part of it was through my desire to make something amazing and having endless ideas, the other part was to distract myself while I was still struggling with the pain of my miscarriage and the constant pressure of trying to conceive. By the time we threw the party, I was over a month pregnant and it was definitely hard to pull off the day of with morning sickness! However, I managed to push through that day and his friends are still talking to him about his party, three months later.

Making a Travel Suitcase

I began my projects by making suitcases for each of his friends to fill with party favors and prizes won from the piñata during the party.

What You Need to Make a Party Favor Suitcase:

• White folding gift box
• Duct tape (I chose red for the theme, but you can choose any color!)
• Foam Sheets (I chose yellow)
• Sticker Paper
• Printer with color ink
• Scissors
• Glue Dots
• X-acto knife

How to Make It:

1. Take the white folding gift box and close it shut. The box should be horizontal like a suitcase.
2. Place duct tape a couple of inches inwards, going up, wrap the duct tape around to create a pretend belt. Repeat on the other side to create a mirror image.
3. Cut out rectangles from the foam sheets and make openings inside to look like belt buckles. Add glue dots to the back of the buckle and glue over the belt.
4. Compile different images on google to make the stickers for the suitcase. After putting them together, I printed them on sheets of sticker paper and cut them out individually. I also recreated the Super Wings logo to say “Bailey Airlines”.
5. Place the stickers on the box as you desire.
6. Turn the box over and carefully cut with the X-acto knife three sides of a rectangle on the backside to create a “door”. The door should swing downwards so the toys can be dropped inside without falling out.
7. Cut a long strip of foam paper and use glue dots to make the suitcase handle.
8. Get gift tags to tie around as luggage tags with the name of your guests written on each.

For a customized logo, please visit my Etsy shop.

Plane Ticket Invitation

For the invitations, I created airplane tickets, in the theme of Super Wings. If you’d like to purchase these downloadable invitations for your own party, please click here to Visit My Etsy Shop.

Making a Jet Airplane

To create the airplane, I used:

• Wardrobe box (from Home Depot)
• Large rectangle box (from Amazon package delivery)
• Old cardboard scraps
• Red paint
• White paint
• Blue paint
• Black paint
• Paintbrush
• Sticker paper
• Printer with color ink

How to Make It:

• First, I used the large rectangle box for the front.
• Bend and cut extra cardboard pieces to make the front. Tape or glue to the rectangular box.
• Cut a piece of cardboard for the windshield screen and glue it to the box
• Draw an outline for the color design
• Paint: for the Jett plane, I painted the top red, the bottom white, a black mouth and eyes, and blue trim around the face.
• On the wardrobe box, glue the flaps of the box to allow openings at each end for the kids to crawl through. Cut out windows on each side.
• Paint: I painted the box red.
• Create the airline labels on the computer and print them on sticker paper to stick under the windows.

Making a Super Wings Tower

To be honest, I wasn’t planning on making this one until my son came in the room and asked me when I was making it. Excited about the projects I already did, I figured why not? I was already in way over my head, why not take it all the way.

What You Need:

• Large white roll of paper
• Paint colors: blue, metallic silver, white, and black
• large cardboard pieces

How to Make It:

• Draw out the Super Wings tower on the large sheet of paper
• Paint it! I mixed the blue paint with white to lighten it so I wouldn’t need to buy extra tones of paint. I also printed out a sticker for the logo, but you can always get some yellow paint and paint that as well!
• To create the bottom Tower Entrance, I used a leftover cardboard box from a shed we bought for the backyard.
• Cut out the entrance at the appropriate height for your party guests. (I didn’t mind adults crouching a little so I kept it around 4 feet tall)
• Sketch out the design and paint.
• For the sides sticking out on the front, I wrapped the cardboard in silver wrapping paper to add to the metallic effect and super glued them to the box.
• On the opposite party side, I painted it metallic silver with “windows” with clouds and the sun inside.

Other Crafts You Can Make

I got a small treasure chest box from Michaels and painted it to look like the package the Super Wings deliver in every episode. Inside, I placed each kid’s ticket and Kicko Passport Sticker Books.

Add to the fun with a Passport photo prop! This was relatively easy to make. All you need is a foam board, some paint, stencils to write out the words, and an X-acto knife to cut out the photo window.

Activities

Now, if the Super Wings Headquarters decorations weren’t enough already, I knew I had to make the experience a truly immersive travel experience. I chose two countries to decorate for: Japan and Egypt.

For the party’s theme, once the kids arrived, I played a video I put together of myself (compiled with clips from a Super Wings episode) sending them on a mission to find the missing treasure. Their first stop was Egypt!

By the time Egypt came around on the list of the things to do, I was dealing with morning sickness. Thankfully, my parents helped by putting together the cardboard pyramid! I ordered a pyramid backdrop from Amazon and made some small cardboard decorations using sticker paper.

For their journey in Egypt, they had to go on a scavenger hunt to find pieces of a puzzle that my mom also created out of foam board. The picture on the puzzle led them to their next destination.

In the drawing, my mom drew a picture of the Ninja piñata (purchased on Etsy) in Japan. After the kids put the puzzle together, we alerted them that the Ninja was hiding the treasure and they had to fly to Japan for the next part of their mission.

They went back outside where my husband had hung up the piñata while they were busy putting together the puzzle. It took quite a while for them to break it (and these kids had some major swings…two of them play tennis!). In the end though, they had a lot of fun and collected all of the candy and toys inside to put in their suitcases.

Food to Serve

Our final activity involved make-your-own lunch. I gave my son the option of “Pizza in Italy” or “Sushi in Japan“. My son is a very unusual four year old, so of course he requested his favorite food, sushi. For the kids, we picked up a sheet of tamago (egg sushi) from our favorite restaurant. For the adults, we provided fresh salmon that my husband picked up from one of the suppliers he works closely with. I created a little Japan area for everyone to sit and make their own sushi rolls! Both the kids and adults loved it.

To decorate, we set up our coffee table in the dining room and covered it with a red plastic table cloth. I ordered some extra Folding Step Stools for each of the kids to sit on. I created a pretend rice paper window using a large black roll of paper and white letter sized paper attached with glue dots. Additional decorations included Red Sakura Flowers Japanese Paper Lanterns and LoveVC Japan Flag Banner. The kids were each provided with Fun Express Decorated Chopsticks, FUNCHOP Chopstick Helpers, BambooMN Sushi Making Rolling Mats, and menus I created with instructions for them and their parents on how to make their own sushi.

After lunch, we brought out the cake (which my husband made this year…normally this is my favorite thing to do…see my Spider-man Cake for our son’s 3rd birthday). My husband decorated this cake with toys from the Super Wings Collector Pack. We saved the rest of the toys that came with it for stocking stuffers for the holidays! Our son blew out the candles, and then opened his presents before the kids headed out.

Leading up to the party, I was nervous about being able to pull it all off but I’m happy to say it all went off without a hitch! Our son had an amazing time. My only concern is the standard I’ve set for myself. I always try to outdo myself and I have no idea how I can ever outdo this one! I guess we’ll see what happens for his 5th birthday party, especially with a baby in the house!

I hope this gave you some great ideas on how to throw a Super Wings or traveled themed birthday party for your kid!