Just like my son, your child is into Minecraft. How do I know that? Simple. Minecraft is insanely popular.

So popular it’s downloaded 53,000 times every single day. Most of that is for Pocket Edition at $6.99 a pop. That’s an impressive feat in an environment ruled by freemium style apps that cost nothing to download.

Being a good parent you pretend to listen and even understand when you child talks about Minecraft. But it’s hard, right? He uses weird words like mobs, nether, and sticky piston. He complains of his house being blown up. He even goes to bed (in game) the moment it starts to get dark. If only he would do that in real life.

WTF!?!

Now he’s talking about a Minecraft themed birthday party, and you’re about to get called out for all those times you weren’t really listening while he yammered on about the game.

Bla bla bla spawner.

Bla bla bla enchantment table.

Bla bla bla creeper.

It’s understandable. He never stops talking, and you were trying to make dinner.

The good news is you only have to understand one thing about Minecraft to throw an awesome Minecraft party.

Everything. Is. Square. 

Technically everything is a cube but you get the idea. 

When my son turned seven, we threw a Minecraft birthday party for him. I’m going to share everything we did for the party. When possible I’ll included links to where you can either purchase or download the items. Think of me as your own personal nether fortress loot chest.

Invitation

Once we agreed on a theme, I started working on the invitation. In college I used Quark Xpress and Adobe InDesign for page layout but today it’s Microsoft PowerPoint. It’s robust enough and probably more accessible for a majority of you reading this. You might even be able to get the job done in Google Slides.

Here’s a customizable template to get you started. Simply add your own child’s picture and information to make your own Minecraft themed invitation.

Envelopes are boring so I skip them instead opting for a tri-fold design. You can see an example below. In order to print correctly, the first page has to be upside down.

The blank center on the first page is where the mailing address, return address, and postage go. Opposite that is this image.

You can easily create this by taking a picture of your child and removing the background. This can be done in PowerPoint or an online image editor like Pixlr. You will need to enable Flash for Pixlr to work.

As you open the invitation, the following image becomes visible.

On the inside was the actual invitation and party information. You might notice that there’s no RSVP listed. Think about the last party you had. How many people actually contacted you by the RSVP date? If I omit the RSVP, I can’t get mad if people don’t tell me they are or are not coming. Besides it doesn’t really matter because regardless I’m going to have a ton of food available.

Later I had Benson pose in various positions so that I could put him into the drawing. Again, you can use PowerPoint to remove an image’s background. It works best if you do it in front of a uniform high contrast back drop from you subject.

After inserting them into the layout, I removed the backgrounds leaving me with this final image.

There is even a website that creates Minecraft themed text. I used it to make a custom Minecraft themed Bensoncraft logo.They have other designs too like Pokémon.

Pro Computer Tip #1
If you plan on removing the background from an image, take the picture in front of a uniform back drop.

Plates & Decorations

With the invitation done, I start purchasing party essentials. Remember what I told you earlier. Everything is square in Minecraft so don’t be tempted to buy traditional round plates.

Minecraft Party Rookie Mistake #1
Buying round plates. Yes, they are cheaper but don’t do it. Remember everything in Minecraft is square.

There are lots of options from the game, but I settled on the creeper and TNT for three reasons:

1. They are iconic Minecraft.
2. Benson and his friends would think they were cool.
3. I thought they would be easy to make.

In hindsight, I could have also done a dirt block by using a brown plate with a green printed label on top.

To create these plates, I printed the TNT letters a five row per page on a full sheet of sticker paper. For the creeper, I colored the sticker paper black and then cut out the eyes and mouth. It wasn’t hard work but the creeper turned out to be more time consuming than I thought.

My wife was on the fence with my plate design. Something about eating off of laser toner coated stickers, but my son thought they were cool when I showed him the prototype.

For the tables, I purchased a heavy duty plastic banquet table roll in red. After covering the tables, I added printed sheets with super sized text that read, TNT. 

Food & Snacks

All the food was Minecraft themed. For example, Hershey silver and gold foiled nuggets for iron and gold ingots, red and blue ring pops for redstone and lapis lazuli, starbursts for colored wood, pretzel sticks for sticks, cheese puffs for carrots, and (my personal favorite) potato stix with easy cheese for torches.

Cake

Every mom who makes her child’s birthday cake knows it’s the party’s centerpiece. You also know those other moms are silently judging you on your cake decorating skills.

Oh boy, have I seen some birthday cake disasters. I’ve seen a cake melt on an unbelievably hot day. I’ve also seen a cake that had to be microwaved because it was frozen. I’ve even seen a cake implode on itself from not having enough time to cool.

Minecraft Party Rookie Mistake #2
Making a 9″ round cake. Or a rectangular sheet cake for that matter. Everything in Minecraft is square so skip the round shapes.

Since everything in Minecraft is square I needed square cupcakes. Amazon sells these silicon square cupcake molds. I bought two dozen. They really worked well too. I have since reused them for a rubik’s cube birthday so you’ll probably get your money’s worth out of them.

After looking around the web for cake ideas, I settled on a diamond sword cupcake cake. Here’s a PDF of some popular minecraft shapes mapped out on a gird. This should make it easy to recreate any of these items.

I ended up doing white cupcakes with two shades of blue for the two toned diamond blade and brownies for the wooden handle. The one blue is just frosting. The other cupcakes are frosted and them dipped in blue sprinkles. Personally, I’m terrible at frosting so I’ve found ways around this domesticated deficiency. I often dip the cupcake in sprinkles which masks my poor frosting skills.

Father of the Year Birthday Party Tip #1
Skip the cake. Make cupcakes instead. No cutting. Easy serving. If someone has to leave early, they grab a cupcake for the road.

It you aren’t one for frosting, you could also make a “wooden sword” constructed from brownie squares. I made so many brownies that I made a wooden sword to for the party Minecraft noobs.

Right before the party my son suggested we put the sword in a chest just like the game. We managed to make it work. We added some Hershey nuggets wrapped in silver and gold foil to the chest to be our ingots of iron and gold. 

I thought it looked really good. Only one grandma thought it was a coffin. 😂

Party Favors
Every guest got a lunch sized paper bag and was told to fill it on his/her way out. Less for me to eat later.

Was it worth it?
Just look at all the excited kids as everyone helps blow out the magic relighting candles. Priceless.

Father of the Year Birthday Party Tip #2Purchase magic relighting birthday candles. Lots of fun as everyone huffs and puffs but can’t blow the candles out. 

You can see more pictures from the party here.