May the Fourth be With You

So, to welcome Four with some fanfare we decided to train some Jedi Knights in the backyard. You know, how people do.

As is my wont, I am mashing what should be four posts into one gigunda post. Because I am tired.

The invitation promised that we would arm & outfit our potential Jedis. The light sabers (light-up & inflatable for $2.99 a piece!) came from here. I made the robes out of craft felt. They were fairly simple--just a long rectangle, folded in half with a slit cut up to the fold on one side. I made a couple of 2" seams for arm holes and freeballed cutting out the Jedi symbol from black felt (still don't have full feeling in my hand after that. I suffer for the cause). The belt was burlap ribbon from Joann.


Action shot!


I am a gift bag obsessive. I didn't want to fill them with garbage, but I also didn't want to spend a fortune on Star Wars stuff. So I made a lot of the goods and bought a few key items.


These are little personalized coloring books. I downloaded the Star Wars font (free) from here.


The coloring pages came from here.


I also bought a lot of 25 Star Wars Pez fairly inexpensively on Ebay. Ebay is awesome.


And I made pretzel "light sabers." Just pretzel rods dipped in melted dark & white chocolate. The white sabers were sprinkled with red, blue & green sugar and the dark chocolate ones got some stars. I figured this stuff--along with a few magnets, colored pencils and the light saber & robe--was a fair haul.


I'll spare you pictures of the food. I have the amazing ability to make all photographs of food look absolutely disgusting. But here are the little tags I made for each item on the buffet table. Yoda Soda is Sprite mixed with lime sherbet and was even too gross for Dash to bother with--and that's saying something. I know that the Star Wars Cookbook has an actual recipe for Wookie Cookies, but I just made chocolate chip cookies. Cloud City Subs were sandwiches from ToGo's & I think everything else is pretty self-explanatory.

I'm clearly off the rails for meatball picks. Since we had regular & vegetarian mini-meatballs, I made different kinds of picks so people could differentiate. I'm a giver.

These are the cupcakes I made. I made the light sabers by cutting strips from rainbow-colored candy (Airheads Xtreme) with a ruler & pizza cutter. Then I dipped the ends into melted chocolate to make the handles. And yes, I do know that I'm fucked in the head.


Now onto the hot Jedi action. We have the great good fortune of being friends with a dude who is 1. excellent with kids, 2. totally hilarious & 3. willing to put on a costume and train 4-year-olds in the way of the Jedi. Friends, meet Jedi Knight Mursyn Cassio (aka Mike Cass).


Once we gave them the light sabers they pretty much just beat the shit out of each other with them.


That is, until Darth Vader arrived.


Then they beat the shit out of him instead.


The universe is just a little bit safer (if slightly less predictable) with these newly knighted Jedis.


Here are the certificates I made. I printed these on resume paper that looked kinda like parchment & added each kid's name in silver Sharpie.


I don't know why I insist on crafts at every party. I don't know about what happens at your house, but here the only people even vaguely interested in making whatever crazy shit I dream up are the half-drunk adults.


Awesome.


Here's the amazing cake Aunty got from a local bakery. You'll notice that little hands removed most of the figurines & poked holes in the frosting in the full ten seconds it took me to grab the camera.


Also, bouncer. Always bouncer. No matter what else, bouncer.