Despicable Me Party -4yr-

My daughter turned four and wanted a Despicable Me themed party.  I think that movie is hilarious and welcomed the challenge of coming up with the decorations pretty much from scratch as they are not readily available (at least until the sequel next summer.) 

INVITATIONS:  I used Microsoft Word to create invitations that looked like movie tickets.  I made two on a page, tall and skinny like a ticket.  It said ADMIT ONE across the top, underneath Maddie is turning 4! Then copied and pasted an image of Dr. Gru, the three girls, and some minions from the movie including the title.  Beneath this I did stripes of color and ticket-ish font the list the date, location, time info, ONE DAY PASS, then copied and pasted a bar code beneath which I typed RSVP and my number, in the same ticket-ish font.  At the bottom in a line of color I put VIP PASS.  Some people thought it was an actual movie ticket! 

DECORATIONS:  I blew up yellow balloons and drew minion faces on them with a Sharpie.  I printed several signs with copied and pasted movie images for different areas of the house/games.  With a picture of Dr. Nefario I typed Dr. Nefario’s Anti-Gravity Serum, Testing in Progress and released some yellow helium balloons with minion faces on them up to the ceiling (as in the movie).  I also drew a Vector with his squid gun on a piece of foam board and set it pointing toward a Dr. Gru (also drawn on foam board) and set a rubber big eyed toy that resembled a squid on the lamp.  (It appeared to be fired from the gun and just missed Gru).  On the bathroom door I printed out a picture of Vector saying Curse you tiny toilet!.  I printed out a picture of the Bank of Evil and wrote Present on top and that was where people set their gifts.

ACTIVITIES/GAMES: The Assemble the Minions! Craft (complete with sign) was a plate of yellow sponges, strips of sticky back felt with google eyes glued to them, square blue sticky back felt cut to look like overalls with ribbons and such glued to them, and small black mouths also out of sticky back felt.  The kids could assemble their own minion to take home with them.  This was incredibly inexpensive as most of the supplies were from the Dollar Tree and having done the work ahead of time it was pretty easy for the kids to create them.  The Box of Shame was a giant box with title painted on as in the movie, and the kids had a blast playing in there.  Before the party I actually had to scold my kids If you don’t get out of the Box of Shame I’m going to The irony is not lost on me.  I also printed out the alien/spaceship from the movie which I found online onto cardstock and taped it to an empty plastic juice bottle, inverted so that it was easy to Knock Over! With a little suction-backed dart gun.  I also drew a fluffy unicorn on a piece of cardstock and used a piece of felt with tape on the back and purchased an eye mask from the Dollar Tree for Pin the tail on the fluffy unicorn.

COSTUMES:  My oldest daughter dressed up like Margot with a blazer, plaid skirt, sneakers and reading glasses with the lenses popped out of them.  My next oldest was Edith in a pink hat, pink striped sweater, skirt and fuzzy white boots.  The birthday girl was Agnes in overalls, striped shirt and a pony tail.  My baby was a minion (the cutest ever in my humble opinion) with overalls, a yellow hooded sweatshirt which I attached a giant eye and goggles to with sticky back felt.  They were pretty stinking cute, overall.

PARTY SNACKS:  I found a template for the Coconutties box used in the movie and printed it out and assembled it out of cardstock to set beside the Caramel Delight cookies.  (We had a friend who is a Girl Scout and gave us a couple of boxes for our party.)  My husband twisted a wire hanger to look like legs and we set a cookie on top of it for cookie robots.  We also had Caterpillars that didn’t turn into butterflies (ie Cheetos), Gummy Bears,  Moon Juice (blue Kool Aid) in yellow cups with strips of black and google eyes glued to them to resemble minions, and minion cupcakes.  These were made with the last box of Twinkies in my entire city apparently.  Half of a Twinkie on top of a frosted cupcake with white smarties attached with frosting and black icing piped around them for goggles and faces.  They were really, really cute.  I also purchased a dog food bowl from the Dollar Tree and filled it with candy similar to the movie.

CAKE:  I frosted a layer cake in pink and created a large moon out of Rice Krispie treats and gray icing.  On the moon I piped in black icing Happy Despicable 4 Maddie! And a silhouette of Dr. Gru.  I did a skyline in black fondant around the edges and piped an Eiffel Tower (the small one, from Vegas) and Statue of Liberty (also Vegas).  We ordered figurines of Agnes, Edith and Margot from Ebay for a reasonable price and they stood on the pink cake as well.  

FAVORS:  I purchased packs of the blue fabric bags with straps from the Dollar Tree and folded yellow tissue paper to look like Minions.  In them the kids put their assembled minions from the craft, I also bought little packs of squirt guns and stuck a label with a picture of Vector which read Vector’s Squid Gun, twirled marshmallow sticks that looked vaguely like unicorn horns, and of course the fluffy unicorns.  I couldn’t find anything cute for a reasonable price so I just got a pack of pompoms and used extra felt and google eyes to make tiny fluffy unicorns in a variety of colors. They were pretty cute and SO FLUFFY! As my daughter said.

It  was definitely a party as unique as my 4 year old which she will always remember. Some of the ideas I found online on Pinterest and other sites, and some I came up with just by watching the movie 83+ times.  I would highly recommend this party theme because it was a lot of fun.