Shell-a-brating LP's 5th Birthday Ninja Turtle Style

I cannot believe today marks one month since our oldest, LP, turned 5 years old!  I can still remember his "birth"day so vividly, so it is crazy to think he is now 5.  As he has gotten older, he has gotten into the whole birthday party thing a little bit more each year.  This year it was so much fun planning his family birthday party with him because of all his excitement and ideas he suggested.  When LP and I sat down to start talking about his birthday after his sister JP turned one, he had the theme all ready to go - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

LP has discovered the world of Ninja Turtles since starting Pre-K.  Despite only seeing maybe three episodes of the cartoon, he thinks they are awesome!  He plays "Ninja Turtles" at recess with his classmates and the coolest part according to LP is that his Dad likes Ninja Turtles too!  That's right, back when My Farmer was a kid, he was a Ninja Turtles fan.  It really is amazing that four mutant turtles have had so much longevity.

So when we started planning his birthday party we had three main things to think through - invitations, food and decorations.  The first thing to get out the door and into the mail were the invitations.  The kids and I have always enjoyed making homemade birthday invitations, so for LP's invite we used blank card-stock cards, construction paper and markers to create them.  We made invitations of all four Ninja Turtles.  LP enjoyed pasting the construction paper to the cards and writing his name on the front of each card.  Here is a look at one of the finished Leonardo (LP's favorite) cards:

Next, to think through was food.  LP insisted on having pizza for supper that night, because it is the Ninja Turtle's favorite food.  So we picked up some pizza from our local pizza restaurant, and served it with a Ninja Turtle veggie tray made with celery, carrots, olives and veggie dip.

And of course cake and homemade ice cream!  The best part for LP thinking through how he wanted his cake to be, he also got to think through how he wanted his birthday treats for school to be.  For the birthday party he said he wanted a chocolate cake that looked like the sewer and had all four Ninja Turtles on it, and for school he wanted chocolate cupcakes of all four Ninja Turtles.  So I did some searching on Pinterest and kind of combined the two ideas to come up with this:

I made a two-layer circle chocolate cake that I decorated the top of to look like a sewer cap.  I then used a cupcake of each Ninja Turtle cake to put on the top of the cake, and we made additional white cupcakes that we put around the outside.  I even researched NYC sewer caps to get my design right for decorating the top of the cake.

The final aspect of getting ready for the family birthday party was decorations.  Now this is where a soon to be five year old's imagination can go a little wild and big, but I think we did a good job of doing what he wanted while still keeping it simple.  We decorated our upstairs door to look like a Ninja Turtle using two table cloths, card-stock and markers:

And then I always like to do something to showcase photos of the birthday kid from over the past year.  LP drew some Ninja Turtle pictures that we then added photos to, and we also made a Ninja Turtle face of each turtle using a paper plate, paint, felt, googly eyes and a marker.

We also used a couple pieces of poster board to make a Ninja Turtle #5:

Overall I think LP had a great time sharing his love of Ninja Turtles with our whole family.  In the words of LP, the party was "cool"!

Clockwise from the cake: LP, My Farmer, JP,
myself and MP

Were you a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Did you ever have a Ninja Turtle Birthday Party?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Be sure to check out LP's other Birthday Parties from the past too:

1st Tractor Birthday Party

2nd Train Birthday Party

3rd Curious George Birthday Party

4th Rocket Birthday Party