Aloka's Pirate Party "Arrrrrr me hearties!"

So, after we had the 'family' birthday on her actual birthday, as promised, we had a pirate party for Aloka and her friends. It was an insane amount of work, and I swear I could liken it to planning a wedding, but it was worth it.
I wrote out little rhyming clues for the treasure hunt, and made them look old by printing an old font on paper, and then soaking the paper in coffee. I let it dry and then painted lemon juice on it and burned the paper with a heat gun. They looked so cool!

Before

After

The other clues

The first clue was a letter that Captain GoldenEye had left for the kids, stuck on a tree at 'base camp'

And here I am reading the letter from Captian GoldenEye. The children were mesmarized! Is it real??

And by the way, my eye patch was awesome! It was a sunglass lense with a skull on it, so I could see easily (with the exception of a slight skull obstruction)

We used an old chest of Richards and made loot bags out of old burlap coffee bean bags (free from the coffee shop!) and filled them with river rocks we collected and spray painted gold. They looked so cool, even as Richard was painting them, he was gleefully saying how much he would've loved them when he was a kid. They were really fun. We also stuck stickers, bubbles, tattoos, and little cookies wrapped in tinfoil (silver dollars) in the bags along with some other glass "jewels" of different colours.

Painting gold nuggets

Josh made swords, and the children covered them with foil and decorated them with glitter and jewels, also so fun!
I told the kids to come wearing a white shirt, and then we tied a red sash around each childs waist and a black bandanna around their heads. Arrrrrr!

Pirate Josh manning the pirate sword craft table

The swords

They were adorable running around the park looking for the clues. They found the last clue in a bottle washed up ashore, and the bottle had an 'old' treasure map in it showing where the treasure was buried.

Richard had buried it in the sand on the beach so all the kids dug it out and carried it back to the base camp.

Running across the beach to find the "X" marks the spot. They are way off in the distance there, hard to spot.

The children digging up the buried treasure chest

Everyone carrying the treasure chest back to base camp

There is all but one burlap loot bag left in the chest (there were 15 total i think) and this is Aloka opening hers. You can also see a smattering of gold still left in the chest. I think the kids thought it was real gold, ha ha!

Holding up the treasure map!

Larissa and I were up until 2am the night before, getting ready for the party. I baked two cakes and put them on blue posterboard to look like islands. I covered them with graham cracker "sand" and stuck Aloka's playmobil all over the cakes, they turned out great. The cake was dairy, egg and wheat free to accomodate our guests with allergies, but of course, no one even knew! I love that kind of baking! It was a chocolate cake with a raspberry custard filling and almond-vanilla buttercream, yummmmmmmy.

birthday girl

And here are some of our party guests. We had about 15 kids.

Andreas

Sienna, Jazmyn, Abi, and Aloka

Aloka and Jazmyn

Abi holding a water balloon!

Pax and Kelton, eating cake

Junie's friend, Zaira

Opening presents

And some of us grownups

Richard and Junie

My friend Sarah with Zaira, and me

Me, making a slightly weird face

Pirate Josh

Nick and Nile

My sister, Larissa