The Scooby-Doo birthday party

The three things Maren loves most in this world, in order of importance:
1. Her bedraggled and well-loved Sea Lion stuffed animal.
2. Scooby-Doo.
3. Her family.

It was a no-brainer that we'd have a Scooby-Doo birthday party; I've been planning on it for months, but only in the last week before the party did I really get my inspiration. Thank goodness for all the creative people who share things online, because I took a bunch of the Scooby-Doo party ideas I read and stitched them all together to make our party. This post will be lengthy, but I wanted to share what we did in case it can help anyone else!

It wouldn't be a Scooby-Doo party without a mystery to solve, so we decided that would be the main activity for the kids. I hired my neighbor to make a Scooby-Doo cake for Maren--she did a wonderful job and as much as I love to bake, it was SO nice to not have to worry about the cake!

When the kids came over, we seated them at the table and let them work on Scooby-Doo coloring sheets I had printed. Once all of the guests arrived, I told them that we were going to do things a bit differently and eat the cake first, since I had this wonderful Scooby cake. I brought over one of my vintage cake aluminum cake domes and pulled it up to reveal that there was no cake! Instead, there was a note from the Birthday Phantom with a poem and instructions to follow the clues to solve find the cake. (I found the poem when Googling, but I didn't save sources for everything so unfortunately I don't have links)

For each clue activity, I made a Clue Card. I printed them all on bright green cardstock and copied and pasted appropriate Scooby-Doo pictures I found using Google image.

click to enlarge

The Clue Card had the instructions for the activity and on the back, there was an envelope. The envelope contained part of a coded message and instructions on where in the house to go for the next activity. The coded message was made using a simple A-1, B-2 cipher and was printed on purple cardstock. Because we had four activities, I wrote four rhyming lines and cut it into four pieces. The message told the kids where the Birthday Phantom had hidden the cake.

The first activity was called Daphne Disappears, because it seems like in almost every Scooby-Doo episode, Daphne gets kidnapped by the bad guys. I printed out a coloring page of Daphne and had Maren color it in, then cut it out and hid it in the family room. I used a series of rhyming clues (also found online) that led the kids all throughout the house and front and back yards, then finally back to where they started, where they had to find the picture of Daphne. Once they found her, we took the coded message and followed the instructions to the next room.

The second activity was Velma Loses Her Glasses, another standard occurrence in every Scooby-Doo episode. I got the idea for this game online as well. All of the kids sat close together on our huge sectional couch with their hands behind their backs. One kid was Velma, and had to turn her back and count to 15 while the others passed a pair of glasses back and forth behind their backs. Then 'Velma' got to turn around and had three guesses to see if she could catch who had the glasses. If a child was caught, then he or she had to be Velma.

Because we had so many kids, it was hard for Velma to guess correctly, so in the interest of time we just had each child take a turn at being Velma even if they didn't guess correctly. We played until the kids got bored, then opened the envelope to get the coded message and followed the instructions to the next game.

The third activity was Snack time for Shaggy and Scooby. In every Scooby-Doo episode, Shaggy and Scooby get hungry and find themselves something to eat. For this game, I drew a huge Scooby head on a piece of cardboard and Maren helped me color it with crayons.

I altered the picture slightly so that his mouth was open and we and taped it to the wall. I printed out a clip art hamburger from Microsoft Word for each child, and we played Pin the Hamburger on Scooby's Mouth. Everyone got a turn, then we took our coded message piece and followed the instructions outside for the final activities.

Thank goodness the weather was sunny so that we could go outdoors! For the previous two years, the weather had been terrible (cold and snowy) on the day of Maren's party so we were limited to what we could do inside. Being able to go outside (even if it was chilly in the shade) was so wonderful and made the party much more fun!

The fourth activity was Run from the Phantom. The Scooby Gang does lots of running from the bad guys in every episode, so the kids had to practice running from the Birthday Phantom by playing a game of "Scooby, Scooby, Phantom!" AKA Duck, Duck, Goose.

They played until they got bored, and then we moved onto the next activity. At this point, The Mister slipped away while the kids were busy and headed out to the garage, where he dressed in the black robe and mask from a leftover Grim Reaper Halloween costume and waited for his signal.

The final activity was to Make a Disguise and Set a Trap. I brought Maren's big bin of dress-up clothes outside and let the kids dress up in disguises.

Once we had our disguises on, we had to set a trap to catch the Phantom. We used a long piece of rope and the cargo net from the back of our car and the kids decided how we would capture the Phantom if he showed up. While they were busy, I surreptitiously sent a text message to The Mister, and in a few moments he ran into the backyard screaming and yelling, straight into the trap the kids had laid. :)

I handcuffed him with a pair of plastic cuffs, and then the kids got to unmask him and find the Phantom's true identity--and of course he had to say the classic line, "And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!" He surrendered the key to the code, so we all trooped back inside. I divided the kids into four groups and gave them each a copy of the key, and they worked together to decode the messages and put the lines in the proper order.

The message led them to the garage, where they had to enter a numeric code on the keypad and eventually found the cake in the back of the car. We all went back inside and had cake and lemonade and Maren opened her gifts.

For party favors, I purchased purple and turquoise paper sacks at a party store. In the sacks were Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, Scooby-Doo Band-Aids (I broke up a box and gave each kid a few), Scooby-Doo Silly Bandz (again, I broke up a larger package and each kid got a couple), Scooby-Doo stickers, a little plastic magnifying glass, a ghost sucker made from a Tootsie Pop and a white coffee filter, and a gummy hamburger.

It really was fun--even The Mister remarked on what a good time he'd had! It was pretty inexpensive--the only costs were the cake, balloons and the party favors, which weren't terribly expensive. I found the Scooby-Doo cups, plates and tablecloth on 75% off clearance at Target, so they cost literally pennies. I used cardstock I already had to print out the clue cards and used free images I found online. The coloring pages were available online for free. The poster board was actually the back of the insert from a poster frame I bought a few weeks ago. Clean-up was a breeze too, especially compared to last year's cupcake decorating frosting-and-sprinkles mess!

I know Maren had a great time, and I'm proud that The Mister and I were able to put on a creative, inexpensive, and memorable party for her!