Blue's Clues -3yr- Cardboard Blues House

My youngest son wanted a Blues Clues Party for his 3rd Birthday and so for invitations we made a copy of the invitation from the video "Blue's Birthday" I cut out the shapes for Blue's head and body and printed off the info with a picture of the BC house (address) and tickety tock (time) and the phone (RSVP \*\*\*-\*\*\*\*) We also cut hats for Blue out of wrapping paper. Ian glued Blue to the paper and colored her nose with a blue crayon. He also glued on googly eyes and the hat with a very small pompom on the top. We used glitter glue to write "Your invited" across the top and make little swirly designs and then glued the info on a bit of hot pink paper and then that on the black paper that we used for the invitation. That was the front, the back said let's play a game of blues clues and had three pictures. The first was of a BBQ the second was of Ian (I just printed from Picture CD) and the third was party hats and confetti. I stamped all of these with a dog print stamp and decorated it with a few blue's clues stickers and sent them in plain white 6x9 envelopes with paw print stamps in a trail across the front.

I made my own pinata because all the chair ones were blue and it needed to be red so I just used paper mache and then spray painted it and covered it in lots of 1X2 inch strips of crepe paper. It was filled with assorted candy and I bought stickers, tattoos, and pencils in bulk and stuck them in there too. I just gave the kids empty favor bags for when they broke it and that was it for favors. As the children arrived we made hats out of paper. I had cut ear shapes and spot shapes in advance along with 2in strips (to go around the head) the kids used glue sticks to stick on the dots and then we stapled them to the strips and measured them against the childrens head and then stapled them so they would fit.

Next, we played a game of Blue's clues to see what Blue wanted to do next. I got some oversized crayons from Big lots (real cheap) and each child got one crayon. and I drew some chairs on red poster board and painted them lightly with a sponge dipped in burgandy paint to give them that fabricy look. I cut them out with 4 sheets of yellow paper each and used pipe cleaner and a hole puncher for the spirals. The clues were the CD player, a chair and a CD (I just printed these off of the Nickelodeon website) All three clues were found and of course Blue wanted to play musical chairs.

All this time my husband was busy on the grill and we had hotdogs (and hambergers mainly for the adults) and potatoe salad and beans and blue juice I bought from the Schwann's man. The potatoe salad and beans were served in (new) red buckets that I took a paint pin to so that they looked like pail and then for serving spoons I bought yellow shovels.  There were also soda's in an Ice chest for the adults. We also had cake and ice cream. The cake was shaped like Blue (you can watch a video on how to make it at the nickelodeon website)

We had streamer and balloons in dk blue, light bl, and hot pink and also some streamers had blue on them (I won on ebay) and curling ribbon. We had the whole party in the back yard so we put a sign out on the front that looked similar to invites + curling ribbon. We put balloons on the mailbox so people would know that they had the right house and we decorated it like mailbox with pink and purple consruction paper. We also rented tables and chairs pretty cheap from MWR (my husband's was a  Marine at the time)

But the biggest hit of the whole party was the blues clues house. We has a hard time getting kids to play the games because they were having so much fun in this thing. What I did was I went to wal-mart and they gave me 2 pallet size boxes. (they really weren't so much boxes as cardboard that went around a pallet of porch furinture or something.) Anyway, the top and bottom of the first box was was open and I used it for the walls. I cut the door and the two front windows from it. I only cut one side of the door so it would open. I painted the whole thing yellow (tried spray paint but it kept soaking in and so I ended up using like 4 bottles of craft paint) The windows and door I trimmed in black and the door was purple. On the inside I painted the blue's clues living room complete with chair on the side opposite the door. (I also put real felt in there in a red duct tape frame and cut peices for felt friends) (the peices I gave to my son after the party)

The other sides were the bathroom with slippery soap in the bath and blue's bedroom. I made tickety tock out of a paper plate and constuction paper and paint and glued it to the nightstand. The hands moved because I used a brad to hold them on. (it is very important not to put glue on the brad, only in a circle around the flat part of the plate) the other side of the door wall was the kitchen with salt and pepper on the table. The roof I spray painted red.(I guess the darker color made it work) I also make burgandy swirlies on it with a paint brush) I used half of the 2nd pallet box for this and the other half I cut into triagles and used red duct tape to tape them as the front and back of the roof and to support the top. (If I had it to do over I would have hole punched the cardboard and laced it together with yarn or twine instead of taping it because it would have lasted many many more months) I also cut a hole in one side and put a smaller box painted yellow trimmed in black for the chimey through which you could see down in the house to supervize. THIS WAS THE BEST PART OF THE PARTY AND MY SON PLAYED WITH IT IN HIS ROOM AFTERWARD FOR A FULL 9 MONTHS!!!

This party was a lot of work and I don't recommend it unless you have 2 months ahead to prepare (We did it in 4 weeks but were up till 2am the night before) but it was definatly worth it. Ian will be turning four in May and he still talks about his blue's clues party. Oh and we also used plates and napkins and table cloths and so on that we bought from birthday express. Thank you notes were printed off of the Nick website.