When I set out to plan for my son’s Minecraft-themed 9th birthday party — I’m not gonna lie — I hit up Pinterest. Hard.
There are so many great ideas out there that sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to know how to roll with it.
Since my kiddo only had three guests, at his insistence and despite our urging him to consider inviting more classmates, the party was small (even with our three other children thrown in for good measure).
However, I still believe in the details which are very simple to execute on a budget, with room for little splurges. Plus we dispensed with games since the first hour of the party was spent at Newmarket’s Airborne Trampoline Jump Zone. By the way, this is a fabulous way for kids to burn off energy — energy which they regained ten-fold when the sugar rush hit back at home.

10 Minecraft Birthday Party Ideas that Won’t Break the Bank
1. Invitations
Every party begins with an the invitation, which I designed and printed on 5″x7″ photo paper. When I can, I snatch up photo paper at Dollarama and since I only printed four invitations, cost wasn’t a big issue. For a free pdf of this invitation scroll down to the end of this post for the link. Simply open it up in Photoshop to edit (you will need the Minecrafter alt font.)

2. Photo Booth
Decorations were all homemade by my design team: Laura, my daughter, Hannah and me, with the exception of the character heads which I splurged on. The sword was a gift to the birthday boy. The Creeper photo booth backdrop was ridiculously simple. I happened to stumble on a two-pack of lime-green plastic tablecloths reduced at Target. The Creeper face was made of black duct tape.
Tip: Laura blew my mind with this: If you place duct tape, sticky side down, on parchment paper taped down onto a cutting mat, you can cut your desired shape easily with an X-Acto knife & ruler, then peel it right off the parchment paper and stick it onto your desired surface. This was a real time-saver and gave crisp results.

3. Grass Blocks/Dirt Blocks
The grass blocks (which you can see in the above photo) were made from discarded cardboard boxes which my daughter and I marked off in a grid pattern and randomly filled in with different shades of brown marker. The green was made made of two shades of green duct tape.
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