This Party was Dynamite!

So, first of all, if you haven't seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite, or you just didn't like the movie, you should probably just skip this entire post. You just won't get it.

Usually a party is either hit or miss. This party ended up being both, depending on who you ask. For me and my husband, it was a definite hit. For some of our guests who couldn't remember anything about the movie, it was definite miss. I realized something got lost in translation when a party guest asked me if Zac just really liked tater tots. Oh dear. Zac and I both really love the movie Napoleon Dynamite and we sit and watch it a few times a year and laugh at the same lame jokes. Here are the invites. I just set the scene, took the picture, printed, and sent. Like my attempt at a unicorn? Me too.

Here's Zac all posed next to his pinata. He thought the shorts and tall socks would help him look like Kip, Napoleon's older brother. We're pretty sure no one realized why Zac had his socks like that.
Here's the baby all dressed up as Rex, the tae-kwon-do instructor. Zeke was also dressed up as Rex, but he had no business getting his picture taken with the pre-party tantrum he had going. My mom made the pants and I knew it was meant to be that Wal-mart carried this patriotic doo-rag. Seriously, who would wear this in real life??
I googled "Napoleon Dynamite cakes" and found something similar to this. If you remember in the movie, he feeds his llama Tina her dinner from a casserole dish. And he calls her a fat lard. So this is referring to Tina, the llama. Not my husband. Pretty sure our party guests didn't remember this either, I'm thinking they went home thinking I'm a really rude wife. On a side note, can you believe I actually took a cake decorating class once? Obviously I didn't learn much.
I made this happy birthday banner a few weeks ago. Totally love it. I found a similar sign done on eighteen25 and had to do it for us. The one part of the evening that the guests actually understood.
Here's our little "Time Machine" for Zac. Just some pictures from the past I thought everyone would enjoy seeing. I'm thinking they think we always have our bookshelf full of Zac's childhood pictures.
So now here are the activities. We just got a new dance video game, Dance Central, and we played that upstairs in the living room and then we had the movie Napoleon Dynamite playing downstairs. The dance game was awesome and we had a lot of good laughs making fools of ourselves. When everyone came in, I had them draw their rendition of Zac's face. (Remember in the movie when he draws a picture for the girl he wants to ask to the dance?) It was pretty funny to see what everyone came up with. I also had Glamor Shots by Deb all set up, but the person I had planned to be "Deb" got sick last minute. And I was too busy running around to do glamor shots, so we didn't end up doing it. I also forgot to take a picture of the hubby riding his bike around the neighborhood while I ran around throwing rubber dog-toy steaks at him, ala Uncle Rico.
I had this great idea to make some boondoggle keychains like Deb did in the movie, but here's what I ended up with. 4 keychains. That's it. And do you know how long it took me to make these 4? You don't want to know. Way too much time for an ugly keychain, so I gave up the idea that I'd include those in the party favors.
Here are the party favor bags.
And here's what was inside. Classics from the movie. The bags doubled as a way to hold the candy from the pinata we smashed.
Now for the food. Here are the cupcakes. From a box. I know, lame. For cupcake toppers, I wrote out some of my favorite quotes from the movie.
This one was my favorite cupcake. Living in Idaho and all.
I ordered a couple party trays of sandwiches from Jimmy Johns.
"Chicken Farm Protein Shake" It was really orange juice. If you've seen the movie, you would actually think this is funny.
The Dang Quesa-dillahs. I actually just used the chicken taquito recipe from Our Best Bites and omitted the chicken and turned them into Quesadillas. They were a big hit and I think it's the only part from the movie that people remembered!
"Deb's 1 % milk"
"D-Qwon's Dance Groove Energy Drink"
"Fun Pack Chips" "Napoleon, you know we can't afford the fun pack!"
The Birthday Boy!
And here's the two of us at the end of the night. Super fun, super exhausting. I decided that the best part of planning a party is the actual planning, but it was worth all the effort for all the fun we had. Happy Birthday Zac!!!