Spy Birthday Party

This was Mr. T.'s 8th birthday party. It was a lot of fun. The guests all enjoyed it, and my kiddos did as well. I found some ideas here, and some of my favorite ideas came from Birthday Blueprint. I believe she even has some free downloads of the awesome things she made!

Guests young and young at heart enjoyed our spy disguises!

The invitations were a puzzle to figure out, it was inviting them to spy training school. We took apart a pen and put the invite inside. It was easy enough to figure out, but set the spy theme! I found the idea at Crack of Dawn Crafts, along with other fun spy party things we added to our party. We found ball point pens at the dollar store and took them apart, we printed the invite info pretty small and then rolled it around the inside of the pen and reassembled them. I think we printed the invite in reverse so that the kids would have to hold it up to a mirror to read it.

I got to do two runs at this party, since we did it with his cousins for his family party too. But we did a little more for his friend party. Both groups loved it!

When they arrived we gave them their spy id.

I had taken photos of the kids when delivering the invites. This party was almost three years ago, and just this month Mr. T's spy id resurfaced. The kids loved their badges. I bought the badge holders from Oriental Trading. Along with the spy id, and a few things for their loot bags as well. I downloaded a barcode font and each child had a different barcode on their id. It gave them an agent #, said their name, and had the barcode. On the back side had a space for their thumb prints. I provided washable ink pads to add their thumbprints to the cards. The kids loved it!

The cake:

It is a bomb, I got my use of my Wilton Ball pan (I also used it for the Golden Snitch cake for my daughter's Harry Potter Birthday Party). The hardest part is getting the frosting to look black enough. We added a licorice fuse, and easy peasy cake!

You can see how much my son loves his cake by the smile below!

We played a few spy games...

Pass the Dynamite.

I covered toilet paper tubes in red tissue paper, but you could do pvc pipe, rolled red paper, whatever. I attached a kitchen timer from the dollar store, and set it for one minute. The kids had to pass it in a circle and if it went off while they were holding it, they were out. We eliminated until there was a winner (I typically avoid party games that denote a winner, as then other kids can feel sad they lost, but there were no hard feelings thankfully.) You can see them frantically passing the dynamite here.

 and the battle between the last two above. And his cute friend that won the dynamite, with his triumphant smile, below.

This was our laser maze, made with red yarn and painters tape,

 They had to wiggle their way under, over, and through it, without touching any yarn. Their spy supervisor was watching. But they were pretty honest kids anyhow. This first time I needed hallway access for the family adult party guests. so I made the maze under our kitchen table, this was a little trickier, especially for Mr. T's twenty something cousin that gave it a try. The second time I made it in the hallway, which worked much better.

Then we had a spy mission for them to go on. They were led to envelopes that contained clues and spy messages.

A message to decode. I just used the wing-dings fonts.

There was a puzzle with a room full of balloons, each balloon had a piece of a message that had to fit back together after all the balloons were popped.

We had another clue game that required them to find the "bugs" in the room. They were actual plastic bugs, each one had a letter on it, and they had to figure out the word on the bottom to lead them to the next clue.

I had a few other puzzles, I even had them all saved on my computer to share here, but alas, I made them in PrintShop and saved them in some format only used by them (a .sig) and so now that I don't have that program, I can't access them. :/

 Here they had to melt the ice cubes to reveal clues

 This message led them downstairs

Their loots bags were a spy envelope that had their spy number on it, so they had to find the right one. They included a magnifying glass, a key chain gadget that had a light, compass, and whistle, and they also got to take home their spy hats (we found at the dollar store and removed the gold band from), and their disguise glasses.


And here is my cute spy with his new spy glasses that he got for his birthday. :)

This was such a fun party (I know, I always say that!). The kids all seemed to enjoy it, and I know my boy did.