Camouflage/Army Theme Birthday Party

Still catching up on my backlog. Here are some shots I took of my oldest son's birthday party last month. He is very much into all things military (games, toys, etc) so I thought that an army party would go over well.

I made sure all of the little soldiers were set up with helmets, binoculars and dog tags. Since the girls were revolting a little (not so into army stuff) I added little pink bows to their helmets/party hats and that seemed to make everyone happy.



To keep the kids occupied I gave them a scavenger hunt, disguised as military "missions". As they completed each mission a clue for a new mission was waiting for them. They had to:
~ Rescue their comrade (I tied up a teddy bear and put him in the laundry room)
~ Observe and report (Tell me about some objects in a particular room)
~ Cooperate to help our allies retreat (Get 5 army men and bring them back)
~ Traverse a mine field (Obstacle course in the living room)
~ Sneak through enemy territory (Get to the kitchen without being seen by the adults)



At the end the little soldiers were victorious (of course) and located their prize bags.

The cake I *thought* would be really easy. I looked up a few camouflage cakes on the internet and tried to duplicate them but as soon as I started frosting I quickly had misgivings and thought I'd made a mistake instead. I pushed on, however, and am glad that I did. All in all I think it actually turned out pretty nice. I just used some army toys (well washed) that he had received at Christmas time to top it off. The frosting is a homemade powder sugar/butter mix with half colored brown by the vanilla and half colored green. I just poured the brown mix over the whole thing and then put the green in spots. Since the frosting is pretty runny when first made this was very easy and then I refrigerated it for about 10 minutes to set up the frosting before I added the toys.



Joe had a little help blowing out his birthday candles.



Luckily, he seemed to think that it was a great joke and all was well.



9 years old already. Wow.