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Celebrating kids’ birthdays since Covid has been challenging. We haven’t had the same type of large parties we have had in the past, so I have tried to make birthdays extra special by doing other things to give my kids that same feeling of being special on their birthday. For my son’s most recent birthday he wanted to watch the new Paw Patrol movie at home, so we threw a movie night birthday and made lots of DIY movie night birthday decorations, props, and invitations to make his party feel like a movie theater.
Movie Night Birthday Invitations
Finding the perfect birthday invitations and cards at a good price can be overwhelming. I was recently introduced to Basic Invite which offers custom cards, invitations, and stationery. I was truly blown away by all the options for birthday invitations. I found five different designs that specifically fit my theme of a movie night in the birthday party category. I had my pick of several easy-to-edit invites that I could customize and order within minutes. I was even able to edit the invitations on my phone with minimal effort, which can often be hard to do with other graphic and design apps.
Basic Invite allows you to completely customize all the colors on your invitation. There is a themed color palette built-in, but you can change anything you want! There are tons of colors available. This can really save you a lot of time by allowing you to make your invitation exactly how you want it instead of searching and searching for the perfect design on other websites as you have to scroll past all the options that aren’t quite right.
The customization options don’t end there. Basic Invite even has different colors of envelopes you can choose from, and an address capturing service you can use to collect and print on the envelopes for free. I have personally used other card companies that charge quite a bit extra for address printing, so this is a huge value-added for me.
You can also request a printed sample of your invitation in advance so you can see how the physical invitation looks before you place your order.
Right now Basic Invite is offering 15% off with coupon code: 15FF51. If you have an event coming up, it’s a great time to see what Basic Invite has to offer.
Movie Night Birthday Decor
I found the idea of a huge popcorn box with balloon “popcorn” from searching Pinterest. I knew this would be a big hit with my kids! A basic tutorial for this larger-than-life popcorn is on this site. I designed mine slightly differently from the original tutorial by wrapping a cardboard box with white butcher paper and adding red duct tape for the stripes over it. I attached yellow and white balloons to the balloon arch strip and anchored it inside the box. The balloon arch strip is flexible and can be manipulated in whatever direction you want. All the kids loved it, and after the party was over my kids played with it for days.
Here are some of the supplies I used:
- Yellow Balloons
- White Balloons
- Balloon Arch/Decoration Strip
- White Butcher Paper
- Red Duct Tape
- Popcorn Label Printable
We also bought a Red Carpet for our guests to make a grand entrance into the party. We handed them their “tickets” at the door and some printable coupons that they could use to “buy” their popcorn, candy, and other snacks. To make the living room look (a little) more like a movie theater, I bought this Theater Stage Backdrop to put behind our TV. I cut a line up the middle to go around the TV mount. It’s not perfect, but it got the job done.
We used this tutorial to turn cereal boxes into movie theater food trays for the kids to put their drinks and snacks, just like at the movie theater! We served hot dogs and then had the kids choose their snacks and candy and placed them in our Movie Theater Popcorn Boxes and their Paper Food Serving Tray. Our trays kept the snacks fairly well contained and minimized mess, too.
Movie Night Birthday DIY Cake
The last highlight of our movie theater birthday party was cake, of course! My son wanted his cake to look like a movie theater camera. I was a little pressed for time so I wasn’t able to add much detail, so I kept it fairly simple. All I did for this was bake a cake in a 9×13 pan, and cut out two circles and a trapezoid shape, and reassemble the pieces to look (somewhat) like a camera, and frost it. It can be difficult to get the frosting to be a very deep color like black, but what helps is using AmeriColor Gel Food Coloring to get richer colors while using fewer drops of food coloring. Luckily my kids are young enough that almost anything makes them happy regardless of how messy it is!
Adding these few simple touches to my son’s movie night birthday party made him feel like he was extra special. I would gladly throw this type of party again in a heartbeat because although it took a little creativity and prep work, once the party started it was smooth sailing. Don’t forget to add these DIY birthday decorations and bday party invites to your next birthday party planning list if you really want to level up the fun for your kids.
Whatever your next special occasion may be, I highly recommend checking out Basic Invite. Whether you are looking for thank you notes, first birthday invitations, or surprise 50th birthday party invitations for your parents, friends, or family, you can find it all on Basic Invite.
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