Pokemon Party -9yr- Bingo Game

I planned a Pokémon Birthday party for my twin 9-year old boys.

INVITATIONS: First I ordered their invitations from a lady on ebay who made them exactly as I wanted with the Pokémon theme and even included pictures of them on the invite.

DECORATIONS: I hung up a sign on the door that was shaped like a Pokéball and said, Welcome" on the top and "Trainers" on the bottom. I bought a Pokémon banner that I hung up and a Pokémon table covering.

ACTIVITES AND GAMES: I filled a "Pokéball" with candy and had the kids guess how much and the winner got to take it home. It was a half red/half white ball that I found at the party store and I just put black tape around the middle and a white circle to make it look like a Pokéball. We played Pokémon Bingo that I printed for free onto cardstock from www.dltk-kids.com website. I also printed their Pokéball markers for the game. I also used their free craft idea from the same website. You use CD's and print off each character and cut them out and glue them for a decoration. The boys loved this. I put a CD in a sandwich baggie and cut out each of the characters shapes and placed them in the baggie with it. (I wasn't sure if the boys attention span could handle cutting them themselves.) All they had to do was glue the pieces on the CD by looking at the picture of the character on the front that I taped to each baggie. (This could also be something they could take home but I needed it to kill time.) When each kid won the Bingo game they would get to go and choose their Pokémon character from the table and start working on it.

We also played "Pin the Tail" on Pikachu. I had a friend make it and it was so cute. I also ordered a large amount of ping pong balls from Amazon and colored them with permanent markers to look like Pokéballs. I had my husband place them all around the backyard. (I figured with ten 9-year old boys we needed them to burn off energy back there.) I called it "Got to get 'em all" race. The boys loved it and wanted to keep the balls. -I made sure there were clear rules of no pushing shoving etc or they will sit out. We then played another game with the balls by having the boys line up and each got 5 turns to try and earn points by dropping them in an inflatable baseball thing with pockets and points in each. (I bought that for their last year's party at Party City.) The kids had fun doing this. We then played a game of "Togepi Egg Race" he is the Pokémon character that looks like an egg and they raced with hard-boiled eggs on spoons in two teams. We also played "Catch Pikachu's Tail" where the boys all held hands and the one at the front tried to tag the one at the end (the tail) then the tail would be the head and so on until everyone had a turn. It gets a little crazy and when people would fall down I would have them stop so nobody would get hurt and then move on to the next kid.

PARTY SNACKS: For their food we named everything as the characters. The kids ate so well when things were Pokémon names! We had Pokéball pizzas made with a top layer of pepperoni black olives in the middle and just the mozzarella for the white bottom. I actually made the pizza dough in my bread machine rolled it on the pizza pan baked it a bit decorated it and froze them until the day of the party. I just needed to thaw them the day of before cooking. We had "Voltorb Tomatoes" "Charizard Wings" (Doritoes) "Raichu Ranch Dip" "Caterpie Cucumbers" "Pikachu Tails" -I cut a large block of cheese into strips that looked like the shape of Pikachu's tail "Jigglypuff Jello" -jigglers "Staryu Sandwiches" -star-shaped sandwiches "Pokéberries" - stawberries and blueberries "Magcargo Lava" -Kool-Aid and "Vanilluxe Ice Cream". I just taped a picture of the character and the name of the food to each dish.

CAKE: I had a friend make really cute Pikachu and Pokéball cupcakes that the kids loved.

FAVORS: For the favors I ordered Pokéball shaped bags from a lady on Etsy. They were cloth and so cute and will last for the boys to keep. Included in the bags were: Red and white gumballs from the party store Pokémon stickers a Pokéball cookie (I made these earlier and froze them) and a few other Mario items just because I couldn't find a lot of Pokémon stuff and these boys all like Mario too. I think everyone had a really great time since they are all Pokémon lovers and it was so fun to plan especially since I had no idea of any of the characters ahead of time. "