Kids Birthday Party Ideas - Spider Party

Ever since my little boy Oliver saw the spider "smash" cake in the 2012 Donna Hay Kids Issue, he wanted it for his birthday.  He never wavered, despite my not so subtle suggestions that he may want something different because I was fairly doubting of my ability to make such a cake. His birthday is on the 21st December, and at the beginning of the month I decided to accept my fate and get on with planning a spider orientated birthday party - not as easy as I thought!  Lots of Spiderman and Halloween related invitations and decorations, but not much plain spiders.  Oh no  - I had to make something myself! Luckily, I found a great tutorial for a paper cut out spider web and put a cute little pom pom spider in the middle with the party details written around the edge - not high end stationery but adequate!

Once again Jordan Fearney from Oh Happy Day came to my rescue with some decoration ideas - actually, just one really huge decoration.  A spider pinata.  Although time consuming really easy, and really effective - and so much fun!

I did mine in a rush so it wasn't as robust as I would have liked, and I didn't think it would hang very well, so it guarded the DIY burrito bar instead.  To make it you need a  36 inch ballon - I got one for about $4 from a local party supplies shop and actually blew it up using my own lungs despite the staff telling me I would need a compressor! The same shop had some balloons with spider prints on them that I bought as well.

 I couldn't even find party favour bags and once again had to rack my brain.  I eventually went for red and white striped Paper Eskimo bags and found another tutorial for cut out paper spiders.

I filled them up with the lollies from the inside of the cake.

And finally the cake.  Not exactly like Donna's  - it is supposed to have a head and body but my head kept getting cracks in the chocolate so I gave up.  And I didn't want to use bendy straws for the legs like she did so I went to my local Asian grocer and got some coconut Pocky sticks instead and used melted chocolate to join them together.

And it was all worth it.  Oli was hitting the spider with all his might until it finally caved in and he was rewarded with a huge bounty of lollies.

Because it was a night time party I didn't do much "party" food, but if you were having it during the day some other ideas for spider-related food could be:

Red back spider sandwiches

Chocolate crackle spiders

Spider drink

If anyone else has hosted a spider party I would love to hear your ideas!