Whispers and Shouts: Space Robot Birthday Party

Since the boys are in love with all things space, since they spend a good portion of each day as space robots remotely controlling each other, since they are in love with NASA’s robonaut R2, and since they act out all the astronaut clips we’ve found them on YouTube, we did the only natural thing parents could do: we threw them a space robot birthday party. I found party plates with a space robot on them and so my friend Aimee, who does amazing cupcakes and cakes, designed the cakes around the plate scene.

How amazing are those cakes?

I asked people to save cereal boxes about a month before the party and as I got them I wrapped them each in white craft paper, poked holes for rope or ribbons straps, and stenciled their names on them. We have a friend who works at NASA and he hooked us up with all kinds of NASA stickers and cards and Hubble Telescope bracelets. We used a bunch of them to decorate the astronaut backpacks and the rest as favors. I also used astronaut ice cream, glow stick bracelet, robot finger puppets, stickers, and pencils as favors. We had a couple Smithsonian Institute space activity books from our friend and we also found the entire book as a downloadable file on their website, as well as many other fun coloring sheets.

Party favor bags and space activity books

Cereal box backpacks

Since the week prior we had been at Air and Space Museum and the Science and Engineering Festival, we had all kinds of NASA posters and bags that I cut out to use as decorations on the fence and inside on the walls. Free decorations always feel good.

We had beautiful weather once again for the party outside at Brian’s parents’ house, so we brought stomp rockets, bats and balls, tables and chairs, and a toy train kids can ride on that goes in a circle. Many of these things we borrowed from our great friends. Throw in a craft, dinner, cake, and the countdown and launching of three model rockets by Dad, and we had fabulously space-y third birthday party.