Outer Space Glow in the Dark 7th Birthday Party

We are over the moon for our daughter who just turned 7! She is such an amazing kid, we love her so much! The only thing she asked for was a party where she could invite all her friends, so we had an out of this world celebration for this Space-loving birthday girl. 

We have such a large family that we haven’t really ever done a birthday with friends. I involved her in the planning, and gave her the option of going to a bounce house in a space themed room or the arcade, in the hopes that I could minimize the work involved since we had a renovation and my sister coming to visit and no time to party plan. Ultimately she asked to do a home party where we could have “science activities”. Thanks to my genius husband, my sweet sister, and the amazing birthday girl herself for making this possible!

Space Party Invitations

To get everyone excited for the party, we sent out digital invitations with some fun girly colors. L loved the planet! After we decided to do the glow in the dark section, we told everyone about it and encouraged them to wear white or glow in the dark garb if they wanted to. I used the invitation to make decisions about which colors to buy for glow in the dark paint, what color to make the table cloth and plates, and create coordinating signs and food labels.

First Off

I am so grateful to my husband, who used his skills as a teacher and builder to give my half baked ideas engineered life, improvise like crazy, and entertain kids with an energy that the rest of us burn up in half the time. He seriously led all the activities, set up the black lights, made the food, and really I have no idea what I did for any of this… Even my sister was a champ and baked cupcakes, cared for the kids while I ran errands, sliced up strawberries, and put together an awesome moon crater drawing for an activity. I definitely can’t take any credit for how great this party turned out!

We had the party at the church building by our house, and my husband spent the afternoon transforming one of the rooms to basically a fun house! Section 1 was the kitchen, which he hung black plastic table cloths from the ceiling and the serving area to conceal the background and serve as a backdrop. Section 2 was the eating area right outside the kitchen, so he laid tarp on the floor to protect it from food and set up tables and chairs for the kids, and chairs on the sidelines for parents. Section 3 was a “mission control space ship” made with small tables arranged to create a tunnel and covered with thin silver foil emergency blankets to look spacey. After they successfully landed on the moon on an iPad, they could crawl through the tunnel to Section 4—the Moon Room which was equipped with black lights, glow in the dark decorations, music, and a moon walk activity.

Space Food

We went to Costco and bought some delicious meatballs, which served as the main course in our outer space adventure since the party was at dinner time. There were some gluten free options like fruit rockets with marshmallows (a big hit with the kids), watermelon, and carrots. Someday I’d like to try to have gluten free cake and other foods for our friends who have allergies.

My little sis did a great job on these angel food cupcakes! I thought the lights would be off in this section, so we made everything white for the cupcakes so they would glow in the black lights. 

Still looked so cool with the black lights on in the day time! The following pics were taken before we turned the black lights on.

My husband made up this drink since we found out last minute that we were out of lemonade, and it was a hit at the party! It’s ice water with lime slices, a little bit of sugar, and a little bit of salt.

Film Canister Rockets

The kids had help from parents designing their rockets, and then we headed outside to launch them. We got to see the effects of alka seltzer and water pressurized in little film canisters, and the kids loved it! I got the film canisters from a little photo lab in Provo for 25 cents each. It’s kind of a lost medium now that everyone’s going digital.

Mission Control

Glow in the Dark Moon Room

This room was AWESOME! Jer covered the windows with black table cloth, removed most of the decorations that were already there like framed photos and banners to clean up the walls, and mounted black lights. We had two 24-inch strips to light this room, plus some glow in the dark light up balloons for fun.

We cut and taped the space elements we painted with glow in the dark paint to the walls for this room, and they looked so neat! L wants to reuse them in her room.

The giant moon was probably the coolest glow in the dark thing in here! We just made a giant circle with orange fluorescent paint, and then kept enlarging it to get the different crater textures.

There was a little trampoline in the corner for the kids to jump on and do a few other “astronaut skills” before doing their walk on the moon.

L insisted she didn’t want to wear white, so she came up with this striped shirt that worked well for glow in the dark. Her necklace was pretty cool, too!

Each kiddo received a Certificate of Completion when their activities were done. All our little guests participated and had a blast!

Space Birthday Girl

These glow in the dark marbled balloons were the best!! The kids loved them, they have lasted for days, and they are still glowing!

L is so excited to do all the science kits she received for her birthday, and to use this microscope we got her. She got some cool kid books about space and science experiments, her own dinosaur toy finally so she can play with her brothers, a big girl rubix cube, nail polish and lip gloss, clothing, homemade cards and drawings, and candy…

The birthday girl was absolutely thrilled to receive this from her cousins and Aunt. It’s a lab coat with her name embroidered on it, a bag with “Forget Princess, I want to be a Scientist” embroidered on it, and a clipboard and colored pencils to record all of her observations.Favorite color: Blue
Favorite things: Science, Art
When you grow up: Scientist