Tiger Birthday Party

My middle son, Elliot, loves tigers. Every big cat is a tiger to him. And he loves to give tiger hugs and kisses, complete with growls and roars. So, when his second birthday rolled around, it was fitting to give him a Tiger Birthday Party!

Let me share the details….

The Invitation

I can’t say this was my most inspired invitation I’ve ever made, but it got the information across. With his birthday just two weeks after Christmas, I was just scrambling to get the invitations out in a reasonable amount of time.

The Apparel

Once again, I turned to my favorite freezer pencil stenciling method and made my little tiger a little tiger shirt. I loved the graphic nature of this tiger. (So much so that you’ll see it again later!)

The Face Apparel

I thought a tiger party would be a great opportunity to try some face painting. I knew it would be hit or miss (Elliot did not want his face painted, it turns out), so I opted to make my own face paints out of lotion and washable fingerpaints (I forgot to use cornstarch). The color was not as dark as traditional face paints, but I think it got the point across. I followed this simple one-two-three step process to paint the kids’ faces.

The Craft

We put stripes on some cardstock tigers using a marble and some black paint, the same method that you’ll find here. I had the kids roll the marbles in lidded plastic containers. That contained the paint and the mess and made this craft a no fuss activity. I did this earlier in the party so that it would have time to dry before I put a magnet on the back and the guests had to leave.

The Games

Tiger Toss

We did two games at the party. First we did a bean bag toss. Or more accurately, a steak rice bag toss. I have to thank my mother-in-law for helping me make the steak bags. I was/am so excited to have steak bags. I mean, really, how awesome is that?

(And, just as a side note, if you ever get an owie needing heat, how awesome would it be to warm up one of these steak bags and lay it on you? The answer: really awesome.) And I have to thank my brother-in-law for his wide-mouthed tiger. It was perfect! The kids took turns trying to throw the three steak bags into the tiger’s mouth. Then whoever got all three in, got another chance from farther back. Sebastian ended up winning and got this amazing trophy as a reward.

(As another side note, I’m not completely sure that Sebastian, or any of my kids, know what a trophy is. But they did know that they wanted it.)

Catch a Tiger by the Tail

We, my mother-in-law and I, made tiger tails for each kid to tuck into their pants. Then for one minute, they had to try to steal other people’s tails, one at a time, and tuck it into their pants. Whoever had the most tails at the end, won. Most of the kids at the party did not understand what I wanted them to do, or what was going on once it began, so my older niece and nephew ended up taking most of the tails with my niece snagging the most.

She got an amazing trophy, too.

The trophies, by the way, say “Top Tiger Award” and are old spice containers glued together and spray painted with a dollar store tiger glued on top. At the end of the game, the tails were redistributed out, and each kid got to bring one home.

The Cake

There’s that cute tiger face again! I had to use it on the cake. The tiger is made out of orange modeling chocolate. I use this recipe to make it. It’s really simple to make and really easy to work with. I’ve used it on several other cakes.

The inside was chocolate and orange marbled cake, made to look like tiger stripes. It was super yummy. My hubby said it was one of my best birthday cakes, taste-wise, to date. And I’m inclined to agree.

The Favors

Besides the tiger tail that they got in game portion of the party, each kid also got another tiger tail to take home, except this one was full of Reese’s Pieces. I got these candy cane candy tubes on Christmas clearance. Then I wrapped them in orange crepe paper (which I had to look everywhere for. Thank you, Party City, for coming through for me.) Then I added electrical tape stripes. I thought they were cute and cost effective. I went with the Reese’s Pieces because they were a little less obvious that they were Christmas leftovers.

The Thank Yous

I’m in the process of writing and sending these out now, but here’s a little preview of what it’ll be. Fairly simple but it gets the job done, with a little bit of cute thrown in there.

And that’s our tiger’s Tiger Birthday Party! If you want to check out some of the ideas I didn’t end up using, look at my pinterest board (and follow me, if you like what you see!)