Our Pirate Celebration was one of our best of the year. Something about Pirates just lends itself well to a good party! The best part was that I split the children up into teams and had them plan and execute everything. Goldie and Teddy did decorations and invitations, Daisy and Teddy planned and led a treasure hunt activity, and Junie was in charge of a Pirate craft activity. I took charge of food.
Daisy found the idea for this amazing treasure chest online. It was made from papier-mâché in the original, but she and Teddy just made theirs out of cardboard. They spent multiple days painting it, "aging" it, and adding all the textural details. It turned out so well!
Junie planned out a design for a Pirate Ship and then made the base form for it. During the party, everyone helped add the railings, mast, and flag to decorate the ship.
So much fun! Gus and Clem took a ride in the vessel when it was finished.
We were all happy because Malachi thought he was going to have to work, but then got to come home early and join our celebration. (He doesn't LOOK particularly happy in this picture, but I'm sure he is!)
Goldie's table decorations were wonderful. She made palm trees and little island, set out candles and skull candlablras, strewed out a few bottles with messages inside them, and filled chests with gold and jewels. Oh, and she used our model ship too.
She also found a bunch of old plastic bottles we'd used for a sand bottle craft at our family reunion a few years ago, and decided they would make good rum bottles. We made homemade root beer, and she labeled it with her own labels she designed on the computer. They were so cute! "Caution: extremely fizzy. Caution: dark color." There was a "contains no alcohol" on there too, just to make sure. :)
Teddy and Goldie have their serious pirate faces on.
Ooh, I think that's a countdown-to-Abe-coming-home chain up on the window.
For dinner, I made salmagundi, which is basically just a big composed salad platter of things pirates might only get on special occasions. I read that "t
he name is supposed to come from the French salemine (meaning highly seasoned), but it’s believed the word salmagonde was coined by the French writer Rabelais in the 16th century from 'salmagondis', which means a mix of widely disparate things. These two definitions sum up the pirate dish." I just kind of threw together things that seemed like they'd taste good and everyone would like, but I drew inspiration from pictures and recipes here and here. The dressing in that second link was really good. I made our salmagundi with cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, salami, shrimp, salmon, and hard-boiled eggs. The dressing (sort of a hollandaise sauce) was good on all of it!
Junie also made the little jello "jewels", and Daisy helped with the orange wedge "pirate ships." Everyone helped decorate a cookie pizza as a "treasure map." We loved the treasure hunt Daisy and Teddy planned. They'd made the clues on carefully singed scraps of paper and we had to piece them together to form a map once we'd found all the clues.
The treasure at the end was, naturally, their wonderful treasure box, filled with a mixture of chocolate coins and pretend gold coins. Spilling out of the chest bountifully, of course!
We watched "The Pirates of Penzance" to end the night. We love that movie so much. And I love my little band of pirates!
