Glow in the Dark Birthday Party

My oldest son is a sports fanatic, but if I had to plan one more sports themed birthday, well....let's just say I needed a break!   I offered up the suggestion of a Glow in the Dark party and he loved that!  I had a lot of ideas and pinterest and friends helped fill in where I needed more!  We set the whole thing up in our family room with the windows covered with layers of blankets.  And without further adieu here is some photos of the fun!

 This was the cake in daylight.  I didn't do anything fancy because I knew it wouldn't show up in the dark (my goal was to do as much as possible in the dark!)  I used glue dots and attached glow in the dark planets and stars to plastic skewers.  These are the kind that you normally put up on your kids ceilings.  They worked great.  I had seen a few cakes online where people put actual glow sticks right onto cakes, I didn't want to do that.  I'm always nervous about putting anything that isn't food safe on my cakes, so this was a safe route for me.

 I used two liter soda bottles to create glow in the dark bowling.  It was super easy!  I took the label off each bottle and filled them halfway with water (all the way would have made them to heavy for kids to tip).  I then added glow sticks in various colors and set them up.  The boys used a basketball to bowl with.  

In addition to bowling we also did a snowball fight.  I gave the boys a whole bunch of paper and they crumpled it up and threw it at each other, in the dark of course.  This activity lasted forever and I ducked out for most of it :)  

We used clear cups and glow in the dark paint to let the boys splatter and make their own star scene.  Impossible to take a picture of unfortunately!

Our last activity was getting marbles out of a big bowl with ice, water, and of course glow sticks.

 I found glow in the dark balloons at Walmart.  These were awesome and lasted a long time.  I hung them from the ceiling.  I also used a night light that reflected stars and the moon onto the ceiling.  I had planned to use a black lightbulb in a lamp,  but it didn't work out for the room we were in.  These items combined with the boys gear was plenty to light the room up enough for the boys to be able to see just enough.

 I gave each boy a necklace glow stick, two bracelets, and a glowing straw.  

 The birthday boy with his candles all lit!

 And the cake glowing beautifully!

My daughter has already requested the same theme for her next party (: