Emergency Response Team Birthday Party

.  This year we decided to have an Emergency Response Team party.  I am lucky to be able to have my boys birthday party together. I accidentally deleted the invite pictures but they were cute.  I used a free candy wrapper template I found on the Windows website and I used pictures from ishareprintables.com for the logo and I covered a candy bar.  For the firetruck labels and cupcake toppers I used the same template I mentioned from ishare.

The invite said "Calling all Emergency Response Teams" need to report on March....... My 7ry old wanted a police man party so his invite had the police car and my 4yr old wanted a firetruck party so he got the fire engine logo.

Theme: Emergency Response Team or Fire Engine/Police Man party

Decor: Red polka dots, turquoise and red

Food: Sloppy Joe sandwiches, bowtie pasta salad w/ veggies

Popcorn Bar: with 2 different flavor popcorn: caramel orange and chocolate

Punch: Flamin Hot punch (sprite and kool aid mix)

Dessert: Police car cake made from chocolate cake 

Fire Engine cake made from yellow cake

Frosting: White Chocolate Clay and White Chocolate Icing

Cupcakes: Buttercream frosting and spice cake

Activities: Relay Dress up- we had various costumes:paramedic, doctor, fireman, police man

Red Light, Green Light- from a box make a police car & a fire truck. play this and have races

Fire Dept. sticker fun- I bought this from Oriental trading co.

Put out the flames:  I made flames and laminated them with contact paper and then had the kids shoot water/foam at it to put fire out. they loved putting on the goggles to do this.

Target Practice: we used Nerf guns w/ the velcro bullets and they shot at the target

Party Favors: I bought various colored boxes and used the cupcake topper template mentioned above and glued them on the box or put string through them and attached it to the box.  We put goodies in them like candy and my SIL got from her local fire dept. donations like erasers, crayons, pencils, coloring book and we also gave them a fireman hat.

Originally this was going to be held at the park but it wouldn't stop raining that morning so an hour before the party started we looked outside the window and it was looking gloomy and we looked at our kids and they were ecstatic they didn't know what to do with themselves.  So I decided we can't call the party off we have to make it work plus we have a butt load of food.  So I called/emailed all the guest and changed it to another location.  Our apt. is small so I made an emergency call to the private school that we work at and begged to use their covered court outside.  Changing locations at the last minute was very chaotic but my kids didn't notice. Because it quickly got out of control and time was upon us many of the little details that I had worked hard on were lost in the shuffle:(.

This was my first time doing a popcorn bar and I loved the idea!  Also for the first time I used large, long vases to put the punch and chips in and transformed it into loviliness.

I HIGHLY recommend Chocolate Clay and White Chocolate icing over Fondant!  It taste SOOOO much better. Cake decorating doesn't come easy for me but I know my kids love it so alas I give into their little smiles and spend hours trying to give form to powdered sugar by making it look like something edible and fun. We made the sloppy joe meat a day before and kept it warm in a crockpot super EASY!

We had a lot of sloppy joe meat left over because a lot of people didn't get the location change notice.  I added some spices and made taco salad with it.