This was THE most elaborate party I ever put on. It actually began as an experiment with my friend, Tristan in that we (mainly he) wanted to run a weekend camp for kids. He knew my reputation as a party planner so enlisted my help. The problem was, the weekend camp never got off the ground (no pun intended) as Tristan was recalled into military service and sent to Iraq, Where he was killed in action.
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Before he was recalled by the military, Tristan somehow finagled his way into a NASA Space Camp for kids so he could experience one firsthand and know what the heck the two of us needed to do.​
But we'd done quite a bit of planning and prep together to hold some trial camp weekends at my home and I wasn't about to let all that work go to waste.
So when a client approached me to do a space birthday party for her son YAHOO! He was an only child his mother doted on...so I had no budget I had to work within. Whatever I wanted to spend on her son's party was fine with Mom!
(For his 4th birthday he told Mom he wanted to go to Turks and Caicos so his parents took him to Turks and Caicos! I was surprised a 4 year old had even heard of Turks and Caicos!)
As a party planner it's great when a client tells you that you have no budget you have to work within. But it's also a bit of a double edged sword in that you know this client's family is accustomed to the very best. Could I manage that with a Space Camp for her son? The pressure was on! I had to deliver and deliver BIG, (If Tristan and I hadn't already done as much work as we had, there's no way I would've taken this party on alone. As it was I recruited a volunteer to help me.)
background
There's some background I have to give you here about the venue. When my dad owned the house we constantly had hordes of relatives visiting, So my dad set up the basement as the bunkhouse" where all we kids slept. It had 4 bunk beds set up - so 8 beds. This is the layout of my basement.
Tristan and I had turned the bunkhouse into a barracks to sleep 8 kids for our weekend camp.
We also had a set of 8 metal lockers down there and a bar for hanging clothes. Most of the basement was wide open, where we planned to stage "space". There was also a large dining table.
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One of the rigs we needed was a bungi apparatus to simulate a space walk and thankfully, he and I had already installed and tested 2 of them in that "outer space" area.
Invitations
I wanted the invitations to be an actual badge the kids would wear as their admission to Space Camp.
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I designed the badge at left in my computer graphics program. Mom had gotten me a photo of each of the kids attending. I dropped out the background on those photos and laid them on the badge. I printed the badges out on white cardboard stock, then laminated them.
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I hole punched the badges then attached a lanyard so the kids could wear them around their necks.
(If you buy the lanyards with the clip like the ones shown at the link above you don't have to hole punch the badge.)
The last thing I did was round the corners of the badges with my scrapbooking corner rounder.
This is optional, you don't have to round the corners but it makes it harder for the laminate on the corners to start separating with wear.
In discussing plans with Mom, she decided she wanted the boys to have 'uniforms' to wear to camp.
I found 2 different types - a jumpsuit or an astronaut suit.
Since it was her dime, I asked her which one she wanted. She told
"I like them both so get them both." Okie dokie!
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So with the badge came the blue jumpsuit the boys would wear. I kept the astronaut suits and helmets so the kids would see them waiting for them when they arrived.
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Back then, we could get both of these suits for $20.
Now you'll pay around $30 for either one.
So here are some budget friendly alternatives:
Astronaut costume which is 1 suit that could double as both. $29
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Just do T shirts with a DIY space emblem on them
staging & Props
As I said, Tristan and I had already done quite a bit of preparation before he left for Iraq.
We'd seen these bunk beds from Tanglewood Design and really liked them. So being we both knew carpentry, we set to work on the existing bunkbeds in my basement.
We didnt' follow the photo at left precisely...we removed the front end space vehicle portion and the big red buttons. While Tristan built new ladders I framed in the bottom bunks.
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Then we painted everything.
We covered the wall the bunks were against in a space themed wall backdrop. We purchased 3 of them to cover the wall, $33.
I don't remember now where we got our cardboard astronaut standup figure but quite a few places carry them, including this one from Amazon for $55.
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We purchased a 10 piece hanging planets set that we suspended from the ceiling. $7.48
This left only the actual bed coverings for the bunks to deal with.
i wasn't about to buy full bed sets for 8 bunks.
I found throw blankets in a space theme on sale for $5 apiece that could double as matching bedspreads.
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The last thing I purchased was an astronaut small desk lamp the kids could use as a nightlight should they have to get up in the middle of the night. $8
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Budget friendly alternative to bedspreads:
Buy a pack of Mylar space blankets. The kids can take their Mylar blanket home as a party favor.
Space throws as bedspreads &
astronaut on moon night light
On to staging the "outer space" area. Tristan had made a list of activities from his visit to Space Camp that we'd need to replicate as closely as possible,
​Apparently, there were several components to space camp:
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Multi access trainer
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Orbiter launch and landing
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Moon gravity simulator
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Orion launch and landing
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Collecting moon rocks
NASA version - Moon Gravity Simulator
This was a much larger and more complex area to stage.
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My walls are rough hewn shiplap so we had to cover them. I found 100'x3' rolls of starry night gossamer space fabric to cover those 2 walls. $35. We stapled this to the shiplap to hang it. Yes, it was a pain removing all the staples after the party but it was worth it for such and easy and inexpensive way to cover those large walls.
To address the ceiling we used my LED projector and instant starry
sky.
The floor was gray cement, we left it as was.
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The next thing we needed was space capsules.
We had 8 boys so constructed 2 capsules and divided the boys into 2 teams, one team per capsule.
The Makedo space pods aren't available anymore but here's a more budget friendly alternative if you don't want to completely DIY.
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The Makedo had cost $40 each.
I liked everything about them except the fact the interior knobs and buttons were painted on.
I'm sorry but boys like to play with actual buttons and knobs!
If you don't that, just watch an adult male when he gets in a new car. He will play with every switch, button, knob on the dashboard.
So this was a problem I needed to fix. I found an easy and inexpensive solution.
You can find a 125 piece collection of knobs, switches, etc. at Temu for $4. To install them correctly I had to cut duplicate pieces of corrugated cardboard to match the instrument panel, glue those duplicate pieces to the backs of the capsule instrument panel, drill through the corrugated and glue the buttons, switches and knobs in to make the instrument panel strong enough for the boys to be playing with the buttons, knobs and switches.
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The other problem (as you can see in the picture of the capsule above) is that there are 2 round windows but you don't see space when looking out those windows.
Easy fix.
2 piece 3D outer space wall stickers. $12 for 2 sets.
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The next thing we needed was a docking tunnel for each of the capsules.
We went with the Pacific Play Galaxy 6' crawl tunnel with glow in the dark stars. $45 each.
There are somewhat cheaper versions but we wanted the space theme.
Budget friendly alternatives:
Build your own tunnel out of cardboard boxes. Tutorial at left.
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For covering a wall, see the video below.
The last thing I had to stage was the kids dining table. I wanted something to dress up the chairs a bit so
made some DIY jet packs I could hang on the chairs and that the boys could wear and use.
Very easy and inexpensive to make...they're basically 2 liter soda bottles and crepe paper. They really dressed the dining area up and the boys wore them most of the time they were in their astronaut suits.
Then I threw an inexpensive vinyl space themed tablecloth over it with a moon light as the centerpiece.
If you're wondering why there's a alien in that illustration above, well that's a bit of a story.
My friend, Cash and I had worked hard that day so decided to stop in for a drink at a bar some friends of mine own. I don't drink...but Cash and his buddies do and we tend to be a somewhat mischievous lot without any booze in any of us.
Cash and I happened to mention we were busy staging a Space Camp party. Now as it happens, my bar owner friends have a 'UFO' sitting on a hill next to their parking lot.
Photo at left.
1st somewhat inebriated neighbor:
"Hey! We should haul the UFO up to your house and make the kids think an alien has landed!"
2nd somewhat inebriated neighbor:
"Yeah we could load it on the snowmobile trailer and haul it up there after the kids are asleep!"
3rd somewhat inebriated neighbor:"Yeah, they'll think an alien has landed!"
This is why one doesn't drink while party planning. Or hang out with people that do. With each drink, this scheme began sounding better and better to Cash and at this point, I'm just along for the ride. I'm in the 'whitewater' just being swept down river...and I'm imagining what a disaster this could be if this alien scared the kids and we ended up with hysterical kids and a bunch of very pissed off parents on our hands.
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A somewhat inebriated Andy decides he's going to get an alien costume, be the alien and come a knockin' on my basement patio door while the kids are having breakfast the next morning. He and Kash now have this all figured out. This 'alien' is named Ta'avi, he's from Sirius, he was traveling through space when he got lost and while he was looking at his map, he crashed into earth - and my yard.
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Cash and Andy had their whole spiel worked out, including an alien jibbrerish language they'd speak to each other. So....at midnight when a more sober Cash and I are exhausted from our day with the boys, here we are digging a small trench in my yard to set this UFO in to make it look like it crashed. And here come my neighbors with the UFO on a snowmobile trailer and we put this UFO in the trench.
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The next morning my neighbors were back, hiding out upstairs because they had to see how this all went down. Cash and Andy had also concocted a plan where Ta'avi would bring his own "ET food" contribution to the boys' breakfast. My neighbors upstairs were making waffle fries that would be ET pancakes.
The boys are eating their breakfast and there's Ta'avi at the patio door. I think the boys were too shocked to be scared.
Cash rushes over to let Ta'avi in, speaking their alien jibberish with each other and maybe it was the fact Cash and Ta'avi were acting like long lost buddies that put the boys at ease.
Cash invites Ta'avi to sit down and have breakfast with us and Ta'avi launched into this whole spiel about leaving Sirius to
travel space, he got lost and while looking at his map to get unlost he crashed on earth and in my front yard. It was all I could do to keep a straight face when one of the boys said to Ta'avi "Don't you guys have GPS?!"
Of course, the boys want to see his ship so out to my front yard we go.
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We had to keep the boys away from the back of the ship where one of the gals had the prepared waffle fries wrapped in tin foil packets and was handing them off to Andy/Ta'avi to share with the boys at breakfast. Cash told them they couldn't get too close to Ta'avi's ship because it was "radioactive".
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My worries about this whole charade backfiring in our faces turned out to be groundless...Ta'avi was the hit of the party, to the point the boys didn't want him to leave so he hung out with us the rest of the day.
That night after the boys were asleep, my neighbors came and loaded up the UFO to make it look like Ta'avi had taken back off into space. I can just imagine the looks on these boys' parents faces when they told them "This alien from Sirius, Ta'avi crashed in Pat's yard and he ate breakfast with us and we had ET pancakes!"
Moral of the story: Don't mention your Space Camp party planning at a bar full of tipsy friends and neighbors that happen to have a 'UFO' next to their parking lot.
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But back to staging...
The shelves that held the boys' astronaut helmets looked kind of sparse so I got some canvas basgs at the dollar store for $1 apiece and ironed a NASA logo on them and spelled out "ASTRONAUT TRAINING" with iron-on letters.
Budget friendly alternative:
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Use shoeboxes or similar size boxes, wrap them in space themed gift wrap and write their names on them with a marker.
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Or Temu offers 6 piece space candy bags for $3.98
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With that, we were ready to blast off!
We filled them with space themed goodies like GoGo Squeeze Space Explorer juice packets, Moon Sand, Space Rocks, Milky Way candy bars, items from the Astronaut Food Store like astronaut freeze-dried ice cream or fruits or make bags of homemade treats like galaxy popcorn.
food/menu
Because we had the kids for the weekend we had 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches and 1 dinner to serve. You won't need to serve that much food so this is just to give you some space themed food ideas and recipes.
Slide #1 - Breakfast Casserole
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Slide #2 - French Toast Rockets
You can make this 2 ways - straight French toast no eggs or French toast with scrambled cheesy eggs. For the French toast, remove the bread crusts, make the French toast as you usually would, then cut it into the forms to make your rocket ship. Use a slice of strawberry for the window.
You can do the same thing with pancakes!
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Slide #3 - Fruit Rocket Ships
We served this as a side to the French toast. Watermelon, cantaloupe, kiwi and pineapple.
We also served fruit Pop Tarts because they come in foil wrapping that looks like something an astronaut would eat in space.
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Slide #4 - To the Stars Sandwiches
You'll need bread, slices of lunchmeat, a slice of Swiss cheese, slice of cheddar cheese cut into shape of a triangle, sliced black olives, we used carrot shreds rather than pepper strips for the rocket flames. Use a cookie cutter to cut out slices of cucumber to garnish the plate if you like.
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Slides #5 & 6 - Space Lunch Board & Alien Pretzels
Ingredients for lunch board:
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Vons freshly sliced deli meats and cheeses + sandwich bread + condiments.
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Snack packs - I find these in the produce section of Vons and they are super convenient.
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Signature SELECT™ Cheese crackers.
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Fresh Blueberries
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O Organics® Star Fruit Snacks
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Laughing Cow Cheese
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Signature SELECT™ chocolate chip cookies- for a fun treat.
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Star fruit - or any other fruits that look fresh and delicious!
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The rocket ship sandwiches can be made with any lunchmeat and cheese, then cut them into a rocket ship using a rocket cookie cutter. Here's a 10 pc. space theme cookie cutter set
We served our lunch board with a side of Alien Pretzels. Get that recipe here
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Slide #7 - Galaxy Cupcakes
For dessert we served the kids Galaxy Cupcakes. Get that recipe here
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Slide #8 - Star Trek Enterprise Pizza
We served small side garden salads with the pizza with a variety of salad dressings.
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Slide #9 - Galaxy Rice Krispie Treats
We served these as dessert for their pizza dinner.
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Slide #10 - Capri Astronaut Drinks
For drinks, we served Capri juice in the foil containers. Turn the label on the containers to the back and apply your own printable labels, downloadable. The kids loved this one!
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Slide #11 - GoGo Squeeze Space Explorer Drinks
activities
There were 5 activities Tristan discovered at the Space Camp he'd attended. While he was at Space Camp I was doing my own research. What It’s Like to Go to Space Camp
I thought the obstacle course in the video at left might be a little much for the age group I was dealing with, but if you have an older set of party guests you could do your own version of this obstacle course.
We were going to replicate the other 5 activities as closely as we could.
​GRAVITY SIMULATOR & SPACE WALK
We suspended the kids in the harnesses, each child getting the same amount of time in the harness. We just let them bounce in the harnesses and "walk in space" to their little heart's delight. They LOVED it so much we actually ended up doing this activity twice.
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We used the harnesses for a related second activity. Tristan and I had purchased different sized sytrofoam balls at the dollar store. I loosely covered them in tin foil to look like meteors and asteroids. We'd strung monofilament fishing line through the length of each of them, hot gluing the line in place. We then thumbtacked our asteroids and meteors to the ceiling.
The kids had to complete their space walk with my helper and I swinging these asteroids and meteors in their direction, without getting hit by one. The child hit by the least number of meteors/asteroids won the Space Walk game and was awarded a prize. (They were dressed in their astronaut costumes for this so it was much harder than one would think!)
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We did another round of this in which the kids had to repair their space capsule in their harness while dodging the meteor and asteroid shower. We had fastened 3 bolts with nuts through the capsule wall. The kids had to unscrew the 3 nuts then screw them back on - while dodging the meteor/asteroid shower.
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LAUNCHING & LANDING THE SHUTTLE
I already described this one further up the page. Just leave the kids to their own devices (supervised, of course) and let them use their imaginations.
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COLLECTING MOON ROCKS
I'd found some small canvas bags with drawstrings the boys could put their moon rocks in and take home with them.
We'd hidden the moon rocks so kids had to hunt for them to collect them.
We awarded a prize to the boy who collected the most moon rocks.
LANDING THE SHUTTLE
An astronaut better know how to swim in case his/her capsule sinks on splash down! We let the kids swim in the lake to burn off some of that excess energy they have and to let them cool off.
Note: We ran into our only hiccup in the party here in that we had a little boy afraid of the water and who didn't know how to swim. We put him in a life vest and I got him to go into the water with me right beside him. Once he saw he'd float and there was nothing to be afraid of, he got comfortable dog paddling around with the other kids, as long as I remained in the water with him.
If you're doing this as an activity, know who your non-swimmers are and have life vests for them. Also make sure the kids have adult supervision while in the water.
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We had to plan an entire weekend of activities for the kids, so here are some of them as well as some other ideas for you.
Zap the Aliens
You'll need alien balloons and a can of Silly String for each guest. You'll also need something to anchor your balloons down in your yard. (THIS IS DEFINITELY AN OUTDOORS GAME!) Fill the balloons with helium and anchor them in your yard. Let the astronauts zap the aliens with Silly String.
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Tip: If you can afford to, get each child 2 cans of Silly String. They go through it really fast with this game.
Stomp Rocket
Even if you're not throwing a space camp party, if you have kids you need to go out and get one of these things! The kids had an absolute ball with it and didn't want to quit playing with it.
I raffled one of them off as a prize the last day of the party. The winner was the envy of every kid at the party! LOL
The birthday boy got the other as a birthday present.
Consider renting a space themed bouncy house.
Musical Planets
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Get some bouncy balls large enough for the kids to sit on. You'll need one less ball than you have number of guests. Stream music into your venue. When the music stops the kids must grab a 'planet' ball to sit on. Just like musical chairs only using 'planet' balls. Remove a ball each time a child is eliminated. We awarded a prize to the winner.
Obstacle course
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I set up an obstacle course for out little space Rangers that we told them was part of their astronaut training.
But Kate at Kitchen Floor Crafts set a space party obstacle course for her boys and made up an Astronaut Training List and Astronaut ID cards to go with it - both printable at the links provided!
Take the kids to a Planetarium
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If there's a planetarium near you, consider taking your party goers there.
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Make an anti gravity galaxy in a bottle
These are just the coolest things ever and what's great is they have a very calming influence on kids if you have a little partygoer that's fussy or upset.
They make a great party favor too!
splash down
The boys had pretty much emptied their NASA tote bags so we collected them all again and filled them with some goodies for the boys to take home with them.
We wrapped up our party by awarding each of the boys a certificate that they'd completed spacee camp and a patch to go along with it.
We added a couple of Out Of This World candy bars, space themed pencils with astronaut erasers.
Last but not least we made up a glossy pic like the one below that Andy/Ta'avi personally autographed. The kids thought that was the coolest thing ever.
I always ask the kids to rate the party before they leave. I was so relieved that the boys gave the party a 5 star out of 5 rating. Mom was beyond thrilled and had me plan several future parties for her.
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As for Ta'avi? He returned home to Sirius. And promptly installed GPS on his UFO.