Indiana Jones Party -8yr- Crate Favors

This year we did an Indiana Jones themed party for our son's 8th birthday.

INVITATIONS: I made formal invitations from the Barnett College Archaeology Club to celebrate Dr. Hunter Indiana" Rose Jr.'s birthday. I used an Art Deco font. The outside of the envelopes were addressed using a font called SF Fedora which is just like the Indiana Jones logo.  My husband spent months recreating many of the Indiana Jones props and what we couldn't make we purchased on eBay. 

DECORATIONS:capuchin plush monkeyrubber snakes plush rats fake bugs staff of ra headpiece fertility idol sankara stones peacock diamond bag of gold doubloons (Lao Che's) blue antidote in vials voodoo doll grail diary ark of the covenant grail tablet gong for Club Obi Wan sankara sanskrit cloth cross of Coronado holy grail grail Knight Painting friar's tale illuminated text Belloq's chest plate Bible page with the ark Emperor Nurhachi's remains and museum tags. I may even be forgetting some...  Our dining room we transformed ino the Pankot Palace banquet. 

FOOD: We made 10 loaves of french bread shaped like a curving snake the entire length of the table. We made this into a huge submarine sandwich. My husband made a lot of ceramic monkey heads which we put Jell-O brains in we had chocolate bugs made from a candy mold we had breadstick baby eels and blood punch with gummi eyeballs representing the soup. We even had a bowl of "bad dates" and the plush monkey lay next to them with his arm over his eyes.  The backyard was supposed to be Club Obi Wan and we served Chinese appetizers as well as "poison" sparkling cider in champagne glasses.  The rest of the house was supposed to be a museum with all of the artifacts Indy found in his lifetime. These all had museum tags filled out. One of the games was that the guests hasd to go around and write down as many as they could that they knew were from the movies. We also had Indy's desk set up with his Dad's grail diary family pictures Elsa's lucky shamrock lighter telegrams Irina Spalko's FBI file Toht's LIFE magazine and more.  On the stairway we hung a paper mache gray-painted exercise ball (the biggest we could find)so it looked like the giant boulder rolling down the stairs.  In the laundry room my husband hung spikes from the ceiling along with a plastic skeleton (Forrestal maybe?). 

COSTUMES: The birthday boy was dressed as adventurer Indy and my younger son we dressed as the young Lifescout Indiana Jones.  

GAMES: Upon arrival we gave the guests the code cards from Disneyland's Temple of Mara with a slip of paper to be decoded. The message read "Fortune and Glory". When they finished deciphering it they brought it to us for an offical Archaeology Club pin. Next they were told to view a set of over 40 grails we had made and write down the number of the one they thought was the true grail. We told them to "choose wisely!". We asked them to vote for the best dressed guest as well. Since we knew children don't spend much time eating at a party we had tribal looking necklaces for them to paint during this time too.

The first main game we had after everyone had eaten was a search for a diamond and antidote vial like in the Temple of Doom movie. We had a swimming pool filled with faux gems blue Gatorade filled vials ice and balloons. We divided the kids into 2 teams and each child had to find one diamond and one vial before tagging the next in line. It was difficult! After that the 2 teams went out into the front yard and we had a Steal the Grail competition. It was just like the game Steal the Bacon but with a plastic goblet in the middle. We had purchased 24 goblets and just told each child to take the one he got back to his team. When all 24 goblets were gone we asked each team to count how many they had grabbed to find the winning team. Then the goblets were divided up equally so each child got one to take home. For the last game my husband had laid down 40 stepping stones on the side of the house each with a letter painted on it. The children had to correctly jump from letter to letter spelling I-E-H-O-V-A-H. At the end they got their goody box. We had stacked these on a toddler race car bed that my husband painted to look like the army duck from the most recent movie. 

GOODY BOXES: We found a man who had a wooden crate business on Craigs List selling mini wooden crates (about 6" long). We bought them and filled them with an Indiana Jones maze from aa valentine set a museum tag a mini sankara stone a small cross of coronado antedote vial diamond gold coin spider snake rat and bug. Their plastic grails wouldn't fit so they got those separately as well as their club pins. 

CAKE & ICE CREAM: I made two 9 x 13 sheet cakes and put them side by side on a large piece of cake board. I frosted with gray frosting and then piped the Latin text of the Grail tablet onto it in black icing. I didn't get it all on there but it looked OK. I also put this on the bottom: "felicem diem natalem Hunter" which is supposed to be Happy Birthday in Latin. 

PARTY FAVORS: The adults got Club Obi Wan matchbooks that I made by printing the covers taking matches out of a generic book and then gluing the striker strip onto. Everyone also got a Springerle cookie stamped like the Headpiece of the Staff of Ra. The center had orange hard candy melted into it and then we brushed them with gold petal dust so they were just like the real headpieces only edible! Everybody also got an Indiana Jones action figure (we found these for $1 each at Walmart!). 

PRIZES: There was a prize for the first correct true grail guess drawing and that person got a handmade clay grail that looked like the one from the movie. The best dressed kid got an Indiana Jones Ultimate Guide book and the kid who named the most Indy artifacts got an Indiana Jones action figure playset. 

THANK YOU'S. Mrs. Grossman sticker factory has really neat looking travel stickers so I glued a piece of a map to some folded cardstock and then put on a couple of those stickers along with gold letters spelling out "thank you". My son filled in the inside and we were done!  We had so much fun with this one. We took it very seriously and put a lot of time into the research and production.  

RESOURCES: eBay Dollar Store Oriental Trading co Walmart library book stores indyprops.com. "