May 23, 20214 min read

Yo Ho Ho! A Pirate Birthday!

For Landon’s 7th birthday this year, we wanted to make it really special. It’s the second birthday in a row during pandemic lockdown, spending it just as a small family. He wanted a complete surprise. I love planning birthdays for the kids because it gives me a creative outlet and fun project to keep me busy!

We picked pirates as our theme, so even though we kept the theme a secret until that morning, I got the kids in the pirate spirit by taking out a stack of pirate themed books from the library a couple of weeks ahead. Before long, the boys were consumed with everything pirate related. Landon was drawing pirate ships, writing pirate stories, and making treasure maps.

Planning a birthday during a pandemic can be trickier than usual ... the stores here are mostly closed to in person shopping or can only sell items deemed “essential”, which doesn’t include birthday decorations. So I planned ahead and ordered what I needed through curbside pickup and online delivery. My Dad saved me some large boxes for our biggest surprise!

It took us about a week of late nights to put together our cardboard pirate ship. We started by turning the two largest boxes inside out and taping them together to make one large box for the back of the ship (stern). Then we took a couple of the medium sized boxes to make a nice sturdy roof. Thomas cut a hole in the roof to make a hatch. It’s attached with a thin strip of cardboard so it can bend open, and there is a rope with a loop through the hatch to open and close it. We cut a large arch through the front of the box for the kids to go in and out.

The next step was making the bow of the ship. We used about 4 collapsed medium sized boxes (and lots of packing tape) to make this. We cut an opening for easier access for the kids, and used the X-acto knife to also cut the front of the stern into the curved shape we wanted.

I hadn’t really planned on painting the ship when we first decided to make it, but once I saw how much tape we had used I wanted to hide some of it. So I picked up some acrylic paint at Michaels and got to work. This took several nights to let different sides dry before moving it around to paint. I painted waves at the bottom, lines to look like wood planks, and gold trim all around. Thomas named the ship “The Seventh Serpent” and painted a snake in the shape of a 7 at the front of the ship. He also made some nice cannons from bristol board and attached them with tape. And we cut two port holes on each side of the stern.

I ordered a Jolly Roger style flag from Amazon and we used an old broom handle taped in the corner of the stern to support it as our sail. We made some extra cardboard accessories including an anchor and two each (because you need one for each kid if you don’t want fights) of steering wheels and spy glasses. I made the spy glasses from paper towel rolls, which I wrapped in black paper and then strips of gold paper.

We also had a treasure hunt planned for birthday gifts. I ordered a super fun “escape room” style puzzle game on Etsy from Lock Paper Escape. We printed it and cut it out to get it prepared ahead of time. The night before Landon’s birthday, we hid the clues and wrapped the birthday gifts in shiny gold wrapping paper. We rearranged furniture and brought up the ship, which was in three separate pieces (roof, stern and bow) to assemble upstairs in the living room. We set out new pirate costumes for the kids along with accessories like a pretend parrot, earrings and swords. We blew up a ton of blue balloons and surrounded the ship with them as water. We found some good pirate playlists on Spotify. We made the last minute cake accessories. And I think we went to bed as excited for the morning as the kids!

Landon’s birthday was a blast! The kids were up by 7am (which is early in our house). In fact we woke up to Landon already playing in the ship! We had a quick breakfast, and then we gave Landon his first clue to start the treasure hunt. The hunt was fun for all of us and took about an hour to complete all the puzzles, then Landon was able to open all his gifts. We followed up with lots of excited FaceTime calls, lots more imaginary play, a trip to the park, and takeout from Landon’s favourite restaurant. Then of course came the cake, and singing Happy Birthday with grandparents over FaceTime. I usually bake a cake for the kids birthdays but being so busy with the other projects, this year I ordered this small sheet cake from Walmart and spruced it up with sails made from BBQ skewers and cardstock.