Long live Blacklights, Pinatas and Taquitos! | Week 44 | #52wonderfilledweeks

WOW.  Let me say that again. WOW.  The parties were AWESOME...and I have to admit that I stole the title for this blog entry from a friend in attendance at P's "Land of the Dead" Coco party...it really was that fun.  Unfortunately I burned the candle at both ends for a few to many days and I came down with both Strep AND an ear infection, just in time for my birthday...and I have been in bed for about three days straight with the exception of a concert, an audition and a rehearsal! I'm finally able to be upright for longer periods and I am determined to get this #52wonderfilledweeks challenge back on track.

I had a few little projects to take care of for our kids party.  I'll share those projects first but be sure to read all the way to the bottom to see how it all came off (spoiler alert, AMAZING).

If you missed the previous posts you can catch up here:

One week to go, Picado's all a glow!

DIY Piñata - ala Disney's Coco

Paper, glue and dowels - Oh my!! (Photo Props!)

Felt? Who knew? (Mama Imelda's Mask)

Halloween Costume, Mama Imelda - Check

Packing a Punch with Paper (drench your ofrenda in affordable Marigolds)

Personalized Skeleton Water Bottles

I'm going to be real honest right now...this goodie take home was more about kids not getting liquids all over our basement during the party! I grabbed these skeleton cups at Dollar Tree and I had to go to I think three different locations before I had enough. I spent a dollar on each cup (and I think I bought 11 just to be safe) and I had the black matte vinyl on hand so this project goes in the very affordable category!

I jumped onto Silhouette Studio and used the "Coco" font to write each of the attendees names and click "cut"! (Easy right?)

With the names cut out I weeded the larger, outside area of the names and the tiny inside pieces, leaving just the names as seen above.

I picked up the tip to use contact paper as transfer tape for vinyl application and so far it has worked fairly well for me.  I do have to really press and make sure the vinyl is stuck to it but the negatives do not out weigh the fact that I have a ton of this stuff on hand! I cut small rectangles of contact paper for each name application and pressed the contact paper (sticky side down) to each name.  If parts of the name stuck to the backing paper I just used my tweezers to help it along.

The name all stuck to the contact paper and ready for application.

I washed each cup and straw before I started this project but then also cleaned the area where the name was going to go with rubbing alcohol as well.  Next I just had to line up the name (I eyeballed them all).

Time to burnish, burnish, burnish... aka - rub, rub, rub!

Viola! Cute right? Not only was this a cute take away for the kiddos, it kept drinks from spilling and the kids from grabbing the wrong cup! Win-win!

The only drawback was that these did NOT glow in the black-light.  I was sort of devastated when we realized it but...pick your battles!

The Rivera Family Ofrenda

One of the most important parts of the Dia de los Muertos celebration is the family ofrenda or alter.  I showed you ours last week when I made all the marigold flowers.  The ofrenda plays a pivotal role in the movie Coco and I knew we needed to have it at our party, but with it being a black-light affair I knew I had to tweak a few things.  First I needed the pictures...which are basically impossible to come by.  Eventually I had to play the movie on my laptop and screen shot the scenes with the photos I needed.  Cue up some Photoshop and I had all the pictures I needed!

With the pictures printed and cut I grabbed some left over cardboard from my pinata project to make some picture frames.

I measured the photos and made the opening about 1/4"smaller to create a lip.

I used a box knife to make the internal cuts.  Then I just had to use my Cameo to cut a few different "frames" out of my black-light cardstock.  It worked like a charm! See below for the finished ofrenda!

Tic-Tac-Toe (that glows!)

We really wanted to play up the whole black-light thing and I thought it might be cool to have a few games for kids to play if they didn't want to color the skeleton masks or take pictures.  Since we bought a pack of black-light gaffing tape we thought why not make a few tic-tac-toe boards? I used left over cardstock and cut large X's and O's using the Coco font.  

After the letters were cut out I laminated them with index card sized sheets.  Super easy and now we have game pieces that we can use for much longer than just the party! (scroll to the party picts to see the finished product!)

The PARTY!!

Without further ado!! Here's our Coco's, Land of the Dead, Birthday Party!! (A BIG thanks to my FIL and MIL for the videos and some of the parents for the extra photos!)

To go the the Land of the Dead you have to cross the marigold bridge...

and follow the petals...

The first glimpse of the electrifying world.

Skeleton mask craft I printed and cut with my Cameo.  

We tested several brands of highlighters to find the most black-light responsive.  The STAPLES brand was by far the best! (Also we added more papel picado confetti pieces to the table right before the party started, made it all much brighter!)

Photo props and skeleton cups waiting for their owners.

I think we had almost 60 of these LED tealights throughout the basement.  It was all very magical (and safe!).

Looking towards the toddler cage (for Bubba and a friend).

We used a combination of Dollar Tree table cloths and moving blankets to block off parts of the basement we didn't want seen or people to access.  

In addition to the papel picado we hung paper lanterns throughout as well, each with a flickering LED tealight.

Photo backdrop all set up and ready!

We bought the gaffing tape to wrap around the basement posts but had so much left over we decided to tape off everything we we could, tic-tac-toe boards, random squares on the floor, chair edges, the toddler cage...it was awesome.

Our finished ofrenda! In all its black-light glory!!!

One of the smartest things we did was hang the pinata in the toddler cage.  This allowed the kids to really take a crack at it but kept others at a safe distance.

More gaffing tape fun.  We wanted the toddlers to have some black-light fun so we taped up some of the toys and balls.  

Pin the tongue on Dante!!

The lights we bought were incredible! We bought two of these black-lights from Amazon.  They were amazing...

Looking back on the party entrance. We served taquitos, cheese and grapes...the kids (and adults) devoured the food and everyone raved about our Costco Taquitos! (LOL)

P enjoying her highlighter coloring.  

Playing pin the tongue on Dante.

Musical marigolds! Played just like musical chairs! We thought of this when we realized we actually didn't own enough chairs to play.  We drew with a large sharpie marigolds on the large poster-board and cut out the flowers.  It was really effective and when it came to my party later that day we taped the flowers to the pony wall for an extra punch of color!

There weren't too many pictures taken of the adult party later that day, but P made sure we took these...she got a group of us together and snapped the above photo and got another party goer to snap this one with her in the group, ha!

So much work went into this and the pictures just don't do it justice.  Now that it is over I feel like I have so much more time on my hands...just in time for the holiday season to start!