A Boys iCarly Birthday Party

Monkeyboy Junior has developed a deep and abiding love of the iCarly show. A show which is about the life of a tweenaged *girl* and her friends and family. Yes, there are boys on the show, and yes, it’s not all talking bras and dates-with-boys themed. But still. You say that your son loves iCarly (to the point where he spends playdates and recess re-enacting scenes from the show) and people give you weird looks. Now, imagine having him decide that he wants to have an iCarly birthday party…

Let’s just say it took me a few days to get fully on board with the idea – more out of being at a loss for what to do during the party than having any serious gender issues with it, mind you. But, after watching a few episodes then researching iCarly birthday party ideas on the interwebs (and deciding to disregard the “girl-specific” ideas like decorating with “lots of fuchsia and ribbons” and putting “make-up in the goody bags”), we decided on some fun things that I thought we might share. Because I am fairly certain that mine can’t be the only 7-year-old boy who likes the show. 😉

1. The Invitations

With a little help from Google searches, we decided to make our own. We changed it to “iMonkeyboy” (in reality it was his actual name, but you get the idea). We also used more “neutral” colours and included the website for people to check the show out if they didn’t normally watch it. We e-mailed a few invites, then made a folding card for those that we didn’t know the e-mail addresses of (which was most of them).

2. The Decorations

We decided to go fairly simple in this regard, as it seems a little wasteful to me to have a whole bunch of decorations that you use only once. We hung our traditional birthday banner (which we’ve been using for 7 years now), put up several colourful balloons (which have since been used for another birthday and for game playing and Nerf gun target practice), and just made sure to have a nice open space ready for games and activities. We also papered the kitchen table (to protect it from the craft project and foods) and my son drew on it a little bit, but I’m sure you could go even more crazy with this one.

3. The Craft

Carly’s guardian on the show is her older brother Spencer, who just happens to be a sculpture artist. So, at the start of the party we had the kids make their very own sculptures using common craft items and recyclables. We also threw in a bucket of old toys that we were wanting to get rid of – you know, the ones from Happy Meals or Kinder Surprises or grab bags that your kids never play with. My husband and I helped the kids tie things together with pipe-cleaners or ribbon as much as we could (instead of using glue, which takes so long to dry), and the kids seemed to really enjoy this creative activity.

4. The Games

When some of the kids were done their sculptures, they had a few minutes to run around and play whilst the other kids were finishing up. When everyone was done crafting, we regrouped the kids by playing a “Sam” recording from the show (which my husband got on an iPhone ap) saying “Random Dancing” followed by some teeny-bopper music (like the theme song, other Miranda Cosgrove tunes, Miley Cyrus, etc.) The kids (and to be honest, myself) got some crazy dancing in, and when the music stopped, we were ready to move on to the next activity.

 

The first game we played was “Get Lewbert!”. Lewbert is Carly’s doorman on the show – a despised and freakish character. I put up a photo with Lewbert on one side and Freddy (one of Carly’s friends) on the other and let the kids take turns shooting at it with Silly String. The object was to hit Lewbert but not Freddy, and once we got the kids pushing down on the cans hard enough, the game was silly and fun and fast. And the kids just loved playing with the Silly String afterward.

Then there was more random playing followed by more random dancing followed by game #2. We decided against “What Am I Licking?” for obvious allergy-related reasons and “What Freaks Freddy’s Mom Out?” because hey, the party was already challenging enough without me getting freaked out, and decided to go with “What Am I Sitting On?” We blindfolded the kids in turn and had them each sit on a different object that they had to try and guess the identity of. We were very cautious about what the chosen objects were, using things like a dog squeeky toy, a roll of masking tape, a Hot Wheels car, a block of Duplo, a pillow, etc. and made sure nobody got hurt. Some of the guesses were really “out there” and kind of hilarious.

By this point, we were about halfway through the party and some of the kids were getting hungry. On the show, Carly and her friends do a daily web show called “iCarly“, so one of the ideas was to have the birthday boy and his friends put on their own version of a web show… but the kids really didn’t seem into that idea, so we decided to skip the making-up-skits etc. portion of the party and moved right into the food portion. After some more random dancing, of course.

5. The Food

We got the kids sitting around the kitchen table again (which had since been cleared of all the craft supplies) and put out a big bowl of chips. While they were snacking on these, I made several batches of smoothies – as the characters on the show like to hang out across the street at the Groovy Smoothie shop. When the kids were arriving, I had made sure that none of them had any allergies I needed to worry about, then for simplicity I chose ONE flavour – a simple banana-strawberry-vanilla smoothie. I used frozen fruit, a bit of vanilla ice cream, some berry juice and milk, and our very sturdy blender. Only one or two of the kids decided to have water instead, but several of them asked for seconds.

When everyone had a drink, we brought out the birthday cake. Pie has a prominent place on the show, but my son isn’t really a fan of it, or of traditional birthday cakes, so we opted for a Rice Krispie cake instead. We used food colouring in the marshmallow mix and made an orange base layer with a purple trapezoid top layer, and then we added his “i-name” in yellow and blue icing. We served the cake on a plastic swizzle stick, because another running theme on the show is eating food on a stick. The kids loved this idea, and played sword fighting and made magic spells after the cake was done. Again, only one or two of the kids opted to have a cookie instead of the cake.

 

6. The Gifts

When kids were done their food and drink, they went off for some more random playing followed by us rounding them up with some more random dancing. We sat the birthday boy at the coffee table and as he opened gifts, I recorded who they were from so we could send out iCarly-themed thank you cards (that again, we made ourselves). I especially loved that many of the gifted cards were hand-made and personalized. Awesome.

7. The “Goody Bags”

I for one am not a huge fan of goody bags. Most of the time they are filled with stuff that will either get easily broken, never get used, or sweets which our kids already get more than enough of. OR people go way overboard and spend just as much money on them as they would an actual gift. I’ve tried to avoid them over the years, opting for giving out small puzzles one year, mini-LEGO sets one year, toy vehicles one year…etc. This year was no exception. Instead of a bunch of useless garbage, I decided to give out home-crafted “penny” t-shirts. I’m pretty pleased with them (you can see a couple of them in the photos above), so I think I’ll dedicate tomorrow’s post on them (as today’s is already monster in length).

 

And then they went home. Okay. So there you have it – one boys iCarly Birthday Party. It was a moderate amount of work to put together and more than a little crazy having a dozen 7ish-year-olds running around the house, but Monkeyboy and his friends really seemed to enjoy the party, so I think it was totally worth it. It will be something he remembers for years to come, I am sure. Maybe one day I’ll do other posts on the Thomas, Bob the Builder, Superhero, and LEGO birthday parties I’ve thrown together (can you tell I love birthdays???) I can only imagine what Monkeyboy will come up with for next year. 😉