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When my son told me he wanted a Minecraft-themed party for his 9th birthday, I have to admit I was not thrilled. I knew (notice the past tense here) nothing about Minecraft and really had no interest in learning about it either. And to throw a properly-themed birthday party without blindly copying other people, I’ve learned you really need to know about the theme. Don’t worry, there is tremendously good news here. You are here because you also have a child that wants a Minecraft themed party. And I have, in fact, done all the leg work learning much more than I ever wanted to know about the Minecraft world so that you don’t have to! Just blindly follow along my friend. You’re welcome! So let’s dive in, shall we?
I’m just going to give you an overview of things here. And for more details make sure you check out each individual blog post.
Minecraft Birthday Invitation Template
Starting with the invitations, I designed these in Canva and an editable template is included in my Minecraft Printable Party Pack. Just open up the template in canva and you can change the child’s name, age, and all the party information in just a few minutes. You can also change font or colors if desired. Super easy.
Minecraft Party Decoration Ideas
My goal when it comes to party decor, is to immerse party guests into the world of the theme as much as possible. So rather than say getting a big creeper head backdrop (no shade), I tried to actually create the Minecraft world. I also find it helps if you can concentrate your efforts into one space. For us that is usually the dining room that I try to transform (rather than the family room, dining room, entry way, kitchen etc). But depending on my ambition, I have been known to let the decor bleed into other areas as well. So let’s break it down into a few different elements:
DIY Minecraft Backdrop
Like I said, the big creeper head backdrop seemed to be a popular option when I was scrolling pinterest for some inspiration. So that’s definitely one route you could take! I opted to try and recreate the Minecraft world itself on one wall of my dining room (set yourself parameters so it feels more achievable!). I used plastic tablecloths, square paper plates, and my cardboard box creations to do this. For all the nitty gritty details check out this post.
DIY Minecraft Characters & Blocks
For the Minecraft characters I made Steve, a creeper, a pig, grass blocks and TNT blocks. My kids let me know that a creeper by a TNT block can make a big explosion, so apparently I had the potential for a fatal chain reaction, watch out Steve! I used boxes I collected from all my amazon purchases, as well as 12X12 boxes I purchased (that one hurt, who buys boxes?!) to create all of these guys for our centerpiece for the Minecraft backdrop. For all the details on how I created them you can check out this post.
Minecraft Party Tablescape
The tablescape I kept pretty simple and reused some elements from previous parties. I DID use this “minecraft” themed tablecloth (what? what? what?) I know, not my usual style but after attempting to make a layered one on my own I thought it did look better to just go with the pixelated look. Then I used this faux grass table runner I got for our Mario party down the middle. On top of the artificial grass I used these grass block boxes and these minecraft character centerpieces keeping it pretty simple. Then these plates for each place setting along with their own potion (more on that later). The center of our table was the amazing grass block cake my mother in law made.
Again for all the details on our Minecraft decorations you can check out this whole post dedicated to just the decor. I just gave you a little overview here, I don’t want to overwhelm you with information!
Minecraft Party Food
For our party food we had some fun snacks that each represented different items from the game and chicken tenders (aka “cooked chicken”) for our main course. And then the delicious cake for dessert. For drinks I covered kool aid bottles (because they looked the most like potion bottles to me) with potion labels. The food and potion labels are available in my Minecraft Printable Party Pack.
Notice the hunger bar over the food table? I was pretty proud of that idea. In the game you have a hunger bar indicating how hungry you are. The more of the chicken legs that are filled in, the less hungry you are. That hunger bar banner is also included in my Minecraft printable party pack. The chicken tenders were placed in the middle in an aluminum foil tray after they were air fried.
And we can’t talk about Minecraft food without talking about this amazing cake my mother in law made, check out that crumb coating!
For more details on all the food at our Minecraft party check out this post. This is just a quick overview!
Minecraft Party Quest
I really wanted to create a big quest for the party guests to embark on, similar to our Lord of the Rings party. It just seems like the natural fit for the theme rather than separate disjointed activities. I’ll give a quick overview of the quest here, but for a full run down with all the details head over to this post.
Minecraft Quest Sequence
This is the sequence of “missions” that the party guests had to complete in their quest to slay the Ender Dragon:
- First they needed to collect the correct materials and craft their swords & shields
- Next they needed to construct a shelter strong enough to survive the night
- Next they had to complete the portal the the Nether and travel through it to the Nether collecting special materials
- They then had to use those special materials to craft what they needed to complete the End portal
- Finally they traveled through the portal to the End and defeated the Ender Dragon.
Phew, if that all sounds like gibberish to you, dont worry. I got you! I did all the homework, created all the printables, and came up with a way to implement each of these missions. The printables are all part of my printable party pack and this post gives you the step by step for this party quest.
Once they completed the quest it was inside to celebrate with a banquet (the food mentioned previously)!
Minecraft Party Shopping List
Here’s a list of the items I purchased (or a slight variety if mine proved insufficient in some way) for our Minecraft party:
- Minecraft Tablecloths
- Artificial Grass Table Runner
- Minecraft plates & napkins
- Grass block boxes
- Minecraft character centerpieces
- 12X12 boxes
- Inflatable minecraft swords (better than I expected!)
- Cardstock
- Glass bottles for blaze powder
- red cardstock (for TNT)
- orange sand for blaze powder
- variety blue cardstock (for steve)
- variety gray cardstock (for iron ore blocks)
- gray tissue paper
- packing tape
- brown square plates (for trees)
- green square plates (for trees)
- black wrapping paper (for the nether portal, 17inch didn’t quite cover the boxes, but close enough for me. If you are a perfectionist get the 24 inch).
- balloon dragon (for ender dragon)
- purple balloons
- light blue, green and brown tablecloths
- Purple fringe (for Nether portal)
- Blue gems (diamond)
- Lava ( for Nether)
- Green wrapping paper (for grass blocks)
Minecraft Digital Party Pack
While it did take me hours and hours to create all of these printables for my son’s party- lucky for you they are now all ready to go for your party! And I made some tweaks to them based on some things I learned doing this for my son’s party. The printables include things to help you with decor and the party activities (the big quest). I will say: The quest is somewhat complex so I do not recommend it for kids under 8. You could do a simpler version, however, if you are doing this for younger kids. You can purchase all 30+ pages of these printables that will be delivered to you as a google drive link by adding to cart below.
The digital party pack includes: food and drink labels, crafting recipes to be displayed on the crafting table, canva birthday invitation template, 7 quest prompts to guide you through the quest, signs for each location in the quest, crafting table banner, hunger bar banner, some files I created in cricut design space to make Steve, and more.