We love to throw parties in our house and especially theme parties! Choosing a theme for Elliot’s 5th birthday was easy because everyone in our house absolutely loves the MINIONS!

These days you can find lots of Minion party supplies in the stores, but the year we chose this theme there wasn’t much out there. Good thing we love DIY projects in our house! Since Elliot’s has a summer birthday we usually have traditional backyard parties, complete with games, a piñata and plenty of mayhem.

Party Games

Our main party game was Pin the Goggles on the Minion. We played this just like any “pin the… game” but we replaced the traditional blindfold with Minion goggles! Each child was provided with a pair of cardboard goggles which they tried to “pin” to the minion!

I thought this game would be so easy for the kids, but surprisingly it was just the right amount of challenging! I recommend using blue painters tape so you can reuse the game later or even hang up the cute poster in your child’s room after the party!

Creating the poster was easy, we found an online image of Dave the Minion and had the image enlarged and printed at a large format printer.

The Piñata

If you want to make your own Minion Piñata you can find directions here, but for this party I was able to find a fabulous Minion piñata at an authentic piñata seller not too far from our home. This is always a huge hit with the kids and to make sure everyone walks away happy we make little treat kits and wrap them individually, one for each child. Everything was banana flavored of course!

The Cake

The birthday cake was chocolate with a fondant finish. To make Dave the Minion we used various colors of Wilton modeling chocolate. Dave’s hat and party favor are little cardboard pieces and the “bananas” are marshmallows. No one wanted to take Dave apart, so we kept him around and he lasted a year!

How to Make Minion Iron on Shirts!

You’ll need the following supplies before you get started: cotton t-shirts, transfer paper for dark fabric if you decide to use yellow t-shirts, inkjet printer, lint brush, hot iron, scissors,wash and dry the t-shirts before getting started.

While you can probably find minion goggle images on the internet, most are not available in a high enough resolution to enlarge for a t-shirt. I’ve had great luck finding images on Etsy. I used these same images for everything from the t-shirts to the favor bags and game pieces.

Before printing the image onto the transfer paper it’s a good idea to do a test run with a plain piece of paper to make sure it’s in the paper bin properly. My favorite brand of transfer paper is Avery. Use the normal or best ink setting on your printer for the best results. Cut the images as close to the edge of the images as possible making sure there is very little white space.

In preparation for pressing your image, iron the t-shirt by itself to remove any wrinkles or moisture in the fabric. I also like to run a lint brush over the shirt to make sure there isn’t any laundry lint that could show through the images once they’re pressed on.

Press the images onto the t-shirt using the hottest setting on your iron and make sure to apply quite a lot of pressure with both hands. Move the iron around until you’ve gone over the entire image. Depending on the size of the image you’ll need between 30 to 90 seconds of pressing.

I purchased the t-shirts at Michael’s Craft Store for $3.99 Although they are not your traditional party favor, the kids love wearing them and it’s so fun to see them getting use long after the party is over!

The Party Decor

Just as we did for the party game, we used enlarged images of the Minions and decorated the house and yard. We also made our own window clings!

Making your own window clings is easy! We used the Klutz Window Art Kit and our own images. Do keep in mind that this project takes a full 24 hours to dry.

Adults Need Party Favors Too!

BANANA!