Robot Birthday Party

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My oldest son turned four. And on the heels of watching Star Wars (the tame parts) and an old episode of Lost in Space, he decided he wanted to have a ROBOT themed party.

The invite: Cruising the craft store for inspiration, I found a pack of yellow blank cards and envelopes on discount. I thought it the perfect bright color to off-set the grays and silvers of the robots in our future, so I went with it. I also found super-cute brads that have screw head imprints. So I made the retro-cool robot stream a message on his chest, saying, “Hi… my name is L-U-K-3. Will you come to my party?” This happens when the reader turns the wheel of the card. The info on back was printed to look like dot-matrix on old-school computer paper.

The favors: Luke wanted to make robot tees for everyone since we made some other shirts so recently (and I finally bought a Yudu of my own). So I told him to draw a few robots… and he did. And he drew and drew and drew!! We picked the best four (since he was turning four) and I scanned and added the “Robot Party! At Luke’s” design. We found dark gray shirts for under $5 each and used yellow ink (girls got pink shirts with silver ink!). Each shirt got rolled up and wrapped with silver curly ribbon and adorned with a robot head tag of Luke’s creation. He’s been excited to cut with kid scissors lately, so I let him draw and cut each one. He gave the girls’ tags eyelashes! We put twisty straws in each as an added bonus, too.

The cake: Well, it was a LUK3 robot, of course! I’m not the best baker, so I used two boxed white cakes and baked two 9×13 pans to construct. I just started by cutting, leveling and stacking squares for the body and smaller rectangles for the head. I put them both on small squares of cardboard for support (pre-pop a hole in the center of the head-piece!). Luke wanted strawberry cake, but I knew I’d be freezing and was worried the fresh strawberries would seep when thawed. So I used strawberry jam – and it was good! The buttercream frosting (and layered as filling) was homemade and a cooked version from Williams-Sonoma. Very good! So I filled, and layered the body and head separately. Crumbed them, then added a dowel down the center of the body. It stuck out high enough that I could later add two marshmallow pin wheel cookies and still pop the head on deep enough for support. Freeze the pieces apart, as is – no wrap. The buttercream used to “crumb coat” it will keep the moisture in. Cut leg and arm pieces and freeze them after crumb-coating as well (I didn’t layer or fill these, just chunks of cake). Day or night before, I pulled it out to frost and assemble then put it in the fridge until a couple of hours before. It held up okay, but started to slide a bit more after it got pretty warm. The frosting was gray buttercream, and I found a silver “graffiti spray” from Duff and gave the cake a silvery coating. I used Oreo cookie thins in hex shapes for his eyes and buttons and used a fork to make the hex-tread texture for the body. Too hard to attempt perfect smoothness and I’m not a fan of the flavor of fondant (though it would have looked great on this cake!!) so I made it textured rather than smooth.

The decorations: Like I said, my son was really into helping with the decorations. So I had him draw robots on triangles and incorporated those with cut sheets of fun printed paper and pre-cut robots from the craft store (sprayed silver) and taped them to a ribbon for a flag banner.

I took regular silver paper plates (there are squares out there too that would be perfect!) and added cut out arms and heads with double stick tape so they’d have little bot-plates to eat off of. The setting has the robots holding the knife and fork. Red cloth and yellow naps and cake plates add the needed color.

Finally the robots. We went for retro-robots for sure. A couple smaller ones inside were spray painted silver boxes just stacked with paper towel tubes taped on for arms and legs. My favorites were the large silver trash can with the dome head (big plastic salad bowl and a plastic red cup for the light, with pipe insulation for arms), the one on the wheel (old silver rim from a set we’re trying to sell) and the little white guy I made from a rice cooker. I just used odds and ends and recyclables from around the house. I turned the indoor trash can, still useable, into a domed bot, too. I almost brought out my bread machine to create another one but my husband intervened in my robot-making-mania. Each bot held a helium mylar balloon that we drew robot heads on one side and “Robot Party” or “Party – Robot Style!” on the other. We had about 7 robots throughout the house, I think.

Other general decor was just air-filled yellow and silver balloons floating around. Kids love to bat them around and many were taken outside to play with. Good cheap fun! Another idea would be to draw a robot head onto your bathroom mirrors with dry-erase markers.

The food: We just had lasagna, so nothing robot-related. But the snacks were “nuts and bolts” of large twisty pretzels and round “bagel-style” pretzels. This little food hint I found listed on several sites on-line. I put the snacks in foil mini-loaf pans and had all the serving dishes in metals and silvers if I could.

The fun: Other than just playing with toys and general rumpus, I planned for the kids to make robot heads. I got silver gift bags and had the parents cut out eyes and shoulder notches. Then I had all kinds of stickers, glittery sticky paper, silver cupcake cups, metallic pipe cleaners, pre-cut papers and an assortment of tapes and glues. They came up with some great creations. Of course my son was the one to claim not to be finished when all were plenty done (he loves the crafty things!). For background music while pure chaos was happening at the craft table, we played “Mr. Roboto” and another song “Robot Rock” with the iTunes screen saver running on the TV screen. Some where mesmerised, some could care less. Funny how that happens!

All in all the party went well. All the kids played well together and I think all had a good time. Luke said his favorite part was blowing out his candles. He announced today that his favorite color is no longer red. Now that he is 4 years old, his favorite color is green. Also, he has plans for his 5-year-old party next year… apparently I need to start working on a banjo cake and decorations!

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