Welcome to Neverland

Jake and the Neverland Pirates were firm favourites in our house over the summer. H expressed a wish for a 4th birthday party with this theme. As I am a bit of a hater of characters (and a mean mummy!!) I suggested we go along the route of Neverland.

I have to say I loved planning this party, it has probably been my favourite so far. What is there not to love about pirates, mermaids, fairies and treasure. The invitation’s were so simple and turned out great. I used green juice bottles with a red feather washy taped to the top (think Pans hat) and made a treasure map on brown parcel paper. I added simple parcel paper tags to the top of the bottles as labels and then we delivered them to our guests.

We are lucky that my parents have a really big back garden, so the venue was an easy choice. We put up a large marquee and had a very large blank space to work with. I decided that I didn’t really want to play any led games so I set up a few different game stations around the garden and in the marquee. These included Pirate Play Dough, a Bouncy Castle, digging for treasure in the sandpit, a Walk the Plank and some pirate small world play. This worked really well and the children enjoyed all of these. I got lots of inspiration for these from Pinterest .

For the decorations I continued with the red and green theme from Peter Pan’s hat and added gold, cream and black. I used lots of bunting, paper lanterns and pom poms to transform the marquee and garden into Never Neverland. One of my favourite features was the flower arrangements I made using hydrangea’s in jars. I added food colouring to the water to make these look more interesting and placed them on tree stumps with lots of treasure around them.

Another great decoration was the signpost. This was made by The Primative Pantry you can find them on Ebay here, at Not on the High Street and at their store at Blake End Craft Centre. They also made a fantastic wooden 4 which I used on the dessert table.

For the table decorations I used my go to party supplies Party Pieces and I picked up some pirate plates from Asda for about 50p in the sale, bargin! From Party Pieces I ordered table clothes, napkins, balloons, serving plates and bowls, popcorn pots, pompoms, bunting, a pirate ship centre piece, gold coins and treasure bags for the favours. Everything came quickly and was perfect.

I absolutely love Dessert Tables and I have to say I do like to do a little drawing of what I am planning. On party day I think my Dad thought I was crazy as I got my plan out and started creating. You can see the gorgeous 4 from The Primative Pantry in the photo above. I used the brown paper again to make some little signs and added little details using things I had gathered around the house, such as the trophies and the anchor. To get height I used upturned drawers and a large wicker cake stand I borrowed from my mums kitchen. I made jellies, cupcakes and filled pots with sweetie necklaces, chocolate coins and other treats. My mother in law made some fabulous cupcakes with treasure rings and pirate patches on and we added a brought a treasure chest cake and a selection of other treats from good old M&S.

My Mother in Law also created this fabulous fruit Pirates Ship which took pride of place on the buffet table. It was absolutely amazing. Alongside this we ate Dominos Pizza and sides, as well as a selection of vegetables for dipping and salads. It was very yummy!