Planting Dandelions

When you live in a small house, and have invited fourteen nine-year-old boys to come over with swords for a homemade hobbit birthday party, the last thing you want to hear is that thunder battles are predicted for that day’s weather. If you have any pull with the storm giants, please ask them to simmer down by late afternoon, so we can take our more raucous hobbit birthday party games outside.

Whenever we do a homemade birthday party, I aim for an hour of structured activity in the middle. Depending on the number of guests, that means time for around four games, which is as much structure as a bunch of excitable kids can be expected to handle, when cake beckons from the side board. I mostly stick to the classic party games I knew as a kid, like Pin the Tail, and Pass the Parcel, or Hot Potato, which can be adapted to any theme.

I asked all three of my kids for ideas for hobbit birthday party games, and here’s what we’ve got planned:

Riddle Contest

Guests try to answer riddles. The person who answers the most riddles correctly wins a prize. I put my sixth grader to work on this one, gathering clever riddles from the internet, and collating them into a document. He is counting on being the “Riddle Master.”

Ring, Ring, Who’s Got the Ring?

Based on Who’s Got the Button. Kids sit or stand in a circle with the birthday child in the center, holding a ring between his palms. Everyone keeps their own palms clasped together, while the ring master goes around the circle, tapping each set of hands with his own. Along the way, he secretly transfers the ring into someone’s hands. When he has gone around the circle completely, he stands in the middle and chants, Ring, Ring, Who’s Got the Ring?, pointing to someone to make the first guess. If the child guesses incorrectly, the guess passes to the child to his left. The child who guesses correctly takes the ring and becomes the Ring Master for the next round. Everyone wins a Ring Pop in the end.

Pin the Tail on Smaug

We’re lucky to have several talented artists in this house! I’ve asked my fourteen-year-old to draw one of his fearsome dragons on poster board for a game of “Pin the Tail.” I can’t imagine anyone alive doesn’t know how this game works, but just in case: guests take turns being blindfolded, spun around three times, and pointed toward a target with a paper cut-out of the missing element (in this case, the tip of the dragon’s tail) in their hands. The tail has a bit of tape or removable glue dot on the back, so it will stick to the poster (or the wall). The person who comes closest to the target position wins a prize.

Spiders and Dwarves Tag

Based on the tag game, Sharks and Minnows, one or two children are selected to be the spiders. The rest of the kids (the dwarves) have to try to cross Mirkwood forest (the front yard) without being tagged. Whoever is tagged joins the spiders. The last dwarf tagged is the winner.

Troll Pinata

Our homemade hobbit birthday party pinata is (mostly) dry. It needs a little patching, and then it will be ready to paint and fill.

Winding Up

I like to give about half an hour for guests to arrive. Sometimes I’ll have a simple craft set out to keep things from getting completely out of control. Still thinking about what this might be. I found a bucket of flat craft gems last night in the craft supplies box, and am thinking they could be used to decorate drinking cups or something. Any suggestions?

Prizes and Favors

I suppose it’s considered kind of barbaric in the 21st century, but I am kind of old school when it comes to party games. There are winners and a few special prizes (hoping I can find a few inexpensive geodes at our educational supply store today). There are also activities where everyone gets a treat, like Ring Pops for playing Who’s Got the Ring. There will be more sweets and treats in the pinata. And of course, everyone gets a favor to take home (we used to call them loot bags). I’m leaning toward bubble pipes, but gold chocolate coins have also been suggested.

Winding Down

After games, the birthday boy opens cards and presents (again, old school), and we have cake. Which so far looks like this:

Are you seeing the Lonely Mountain? With a cone on top?

After cake, it’s outside until pick-up time, supposing we all have to huddle on the front porch and watch the thunder battle. I’ll take my chances with the storm giants rather than stay inside with fourteen caked-up dwarves with weapons.

So much left to do today. I’ve got more bunting to hang, a troll head to paint, a mountain to build, and prizes to find. In the words of Prince Humperdinck, I’m swamped. Come back for cake tomorrow.

The hardest part of making hobbit birthday party bunting is getting in and out of Pinterest with a feasible plan before you lose years of your life in the real world. Seriously. Those pinners are into hanging some triangles, man. I’ll venture bunting is second only to mason jars in Pinterest obsessions.

Having finally found a couple of helpful tips for stringing pennants together without a sewing machine, we headed off to buy materials. This turned out to be the second hardest part of making hobbit birthday party bunting. Certain people wanted to make the flags out of cardstock in bold primary colors or cool black and white prints. Certain other people insisted “green stripes” not found in cardstock in either craft supply chainstore. At ten minutes to closing, those certain people found two calico fabric prints they deemed perfect, which necessitated the first people paying additional money for a pair of pinking shears and a bottle of wine.

Supplies: one yard each of coordinating calico cloth, one pair pinking shears, one roll jute twine. Cost: $18.94 and two hours of my life I will never get back.

For the pennant template, I drew a triangle six inches wide along the fold of a manila file folder, so that it opened up into a diamond shape. I wish I could remember where I got this tip, but my bunting quest through Pinterest is a blur.

I spread my fabric out, doubled the way it comes on the roll, and started tracing triangles with a permanent marker. The file folder template lets you flip open the triangle to trace another on top, and just makes things a little easier. The wine functions in much the same way.

Then I got out my spanking new pinking shears, and started cutting. I got about 72  six-inch-wide pennants from each yard.

From there, it was just a matter of punching holes in the corners, and stringing the pennants onto a 12-foot length of jute twine.

I did make one rookie mistake, which was to buy one fabric (the dark green) that was only printed on one side. I was stumped for a minute, thinking I would have to glue pairs of them together, when I realized I could just punch holes through two pieces at once, back to back. That meant fewer dark green triangles than the checked ones, but it works. Voila, reversible bunting.

I managed to get one bunting hung up before going to bed a little past midnight. I’m hoping we can get five more strung together after school today, and that it will go much more quickly now that the pennants are all cut. We still have a troll head pinata to paint, after all. But it’s starting to look like a party around here already.

 How to Make a Hobbit Birthday Party Pinata, Part I

Step 1: Blow up a large balloon.

Step 2: Be glad you bought two balloons.

Step 3: Gather flour, water, newspaper, and a basin for paste. Preferably outside. A pack of wet wipes will come in handy, too.

Step 4: Mix one part flour and one and a half parts water, adding more water as needed to make a paste the consistency of glue. Pour into basin.

Step 5: Tear newspaper into strips 1-2 inches wide (torn edges fuse better). Full length pieces were somewhat unwieldy. Maybe tear the section across at the fold first. Dip individual strips of paper in paste, using your fingers as a squeegee to remove excess (my highly sensate birthday boy loved getting his hands in the goop). Layer wet strips of paper everywhichaway over the balloon, which will be getting very slippery and rolly, like wallpapering a greased piglet. Smooth the paper as you go, adding extra paste over any dry patches.

Step 6: When balloon is entirely coated with a layer of newspaper, hang it up to dry, hoping that wasps don’t mistake it for a fancy new high rise development.

Step 7: Check it the next morning. Realize the pinata may need reinforcement if it’s not to shatter on the first blow, and that it could be days before your troll head is ready for hair and makeup. In the meantime, go to Pinterest and research party bunting. Become quickly exhausted. Retreat to Facebook, where you can feel like you’ve accomplished something if you’ve managed to put pants on.

Today, it’s onto bunting, and probably another layer of papier-mâché (the application of which takes about 30 minutes from start to finish, by the way). Meantime, here’s a cute pin-able quote from Winnie-the-Pooh for all you energetic pinners. Just click the photo to go to the pin!

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The “baby” is turning nine this weekend, and he wants a Hobbit birthday party to celebrate. He has been reading the leather-bound edition of the book I gave his father years ago, and is as captivated by it as J.R.R. Tolkien could have ever hoped a child would be. When he got as far into the story as the recent movie goes, we watched it together, and he declared it to be the greatest cinematic work in history. His enthusiasm has been contagious–his dad and oldest brother are now rereading it, and I’ve been listening to a beautifully narrated version. We are all on board with a Hobbit birthday party theme.

Anyone familiar with my blog or book knows that I love a homemade birthday party. We’ve done wizards, dragons, fancy dress, video gaming–you name it. I haven’t met the theme yet that can’t be easily adapted to pin the tail on something. But I’m terrible at time management, and I always wind up in a mad panic the day of the party.

So I turned to my magical, make-it-happen book, and I made a plan.

The plan is to work on the party a little bit each day this week, and see if that cuts down on the last-minute crazy. I also thought I might blog each day’s work, to help keep me on task and to create a resource for anyone else looking for Hobbit birthday party ideas.

Sunday, we printed up and assembled the Hobbit birthday party invitations. And by “we,” I mean “I.”

For these, we used a 20-count pack of specialty printer paper, and gold rings found in the jewelry-making section of the craft store. The total cost was less than five dollars, and I asked his teacher to help hand-deliver them at school, so no postage cost. I will follow up today with parents via email, though, just to be on the safe side.

The birthday boy/head burglar was very particular that the invitations should state “You Have Been Chosen.” It’s more of a command than a request.

After school today we’re going to papier-mâché a punching balloon and see if we can’t turn it into a pinata that looks like a troll. Come back tomorrow to see how that goes. Any tips?