Space Invader Level 1 Birthday

Finally time to share one of the most difficult birthday party themes I ever had to deal with - Space Invader.  Because our baby boy always invaded the space of his twin sister when they were younger, my husband dubbed him our little space invader and really wanted this theme for his birthday - and what a challenge. If you missed out on our baby girl's berry themed birthday party, click here.

As with the berry theme, I kept the decorations simple. The entrance hall was decorated with printed space invader characters, specifically the one that represented our little boy's moves, with text indicating our little boy's game begins. Outside on the patio I had two sets of printed decorations, the first was a collage of photos, as with our little girl, one for each day of our little boy's first year, with a level 1 description on top. Our little boy's name was printed with letters filled with little space invader characters falling down. As mentioned in the berry theme blog, one wall wasn't large enough for all the photos because I was hosting a party for two, so it had to run over to the wall above the snacks table. The main decoration for this wall was printed letters with space invader characters hiding behind the letters, to spell our little boy's name together the number one.

The snacks for the space invader theme focused on the savoury side, whereas the berry side of the table was full of sweet treats. The first few snacks I served were salted pretzels representing game controls, as well as biltong and cheese straws which I named megabytes. No party table is complete without salty, crisp potato chips and I decided to call it micro chips. I also served mini blue meringues which I initially bought to use on the cake, and decided to serve the leftovers as space foam.

For something to eat with more sustenance I served mini margarita pizzas which I baked in the oven and called flying saucers. I also baked cheese puff pies as well as spinach and feta puff pies which I dubbed gigabytes. For the last food element of the space invader theme, I served a variety of sweet and savoury popcorn - aka ammunition. The ideas was for each guest to build a cup of their choice of popcorn using the green muffin liners. The nice thing about this was that the guests didn't have to carry a plate around with just popcorn but rather the easy to use cups.

To quench the thirst, I served coconut and lime cordial. The colour was perfect and was exactly what I was looking for to fit with the theme. I also made a few straws with space invader characters, as with the berry theme. I also made cupcakes for the guests to enjoy, as the cake was for the little one's cake smash. I baked green coloured caramel and coconut flavoured cupcakes, filled with caramel and topped with deep chocolate frosting which I tried to colour black. I finished off the cupcakes with space invader cake toppers I made.

I served red sweetie pies as thank you gifts to fit with the space invader theme, with a cute little note saying "game over".

​For lunch, we served delicious lasagna with cocktail buns - easy to serve and warm for winter. Not all guests ate the food because they filled up with too many delicious snacks! I didn't make paper plates and cups this time around, but rather used the plastic plates and cups I used for my 80's themed birthday party (click here).

To make the occasion more special, I designed and printed a shirt for each twin to wear on their special day, to fit with the individual themes. For the cake smash I only made a small 15cm one layered cake. The cake was plain vanilla cake, decorated with green frosting at the sides and white frosting at the top. To make the cake more fun to eat for our little boy I added a few Flings chips and blue meringues as decoration - sadly I couldn't find any green ones. I also plotted the letter I with cream soda flavoured green marshmallows cut into smaller pieces. There was also a candle with the number 1 which we blew out on behalf of our little gamer.

Although this theme was one of the most difficult themes I had to work with, it was really fun to create something fun and unique. If you missed out on part one, don't fear, you can get all the info on the berry theme right here.

The Invitation