Our Low Budget Star Wars Theme Party

First of all, we lucked out because a lot of Star Wars items are on sale as the latest movie will premier this Friday, Sep. 3. I found the Stormtrooper cut-outs in the clearance bin at Party City and the Nerf gun with laser light also on sale at Target. (You can always print from the Internet. We tied these to strings instead of gluing to cans or bowling pins to save ourselves the trouble of raising them up whenever they were hit. And the kids liked flipping over the targets that got hit).

But many of the props and materials used at my nephew’s 7th birthday party are easy to put together:

Luke Skywalker Costume

My husband gladly donated his old plain white t-shirts (size L), and all we had to do was remove the sleeves and cut the front. Extra brown fabric from a curtain became belts/sashes, and voila!

Pool Noodle Light Saber

This one is a no-brainer. The first activity after our young Jedi apprentices donned their Skywalker costumes was to build their own light sabers, of course. They had silver and black duct tape at their disposal, and their choice of green, blue, purple, and red noodles ($1.99 each at Target). The celebrant decided he was going to be Darth Maul, and wrapped his tape around the middle.

These two simple things were enough to keep the kids engaged for hours. Best of all, the young padawans got to keep their costumes and light sabers. That was cool, because we didn’t have to bother with party bags.

Death Star Game

All we needed were two black poster boards ($1.70) cut and put together as a circle plus more duct tape. I did buy a black plastic table cloth from the Dollar Store as backdrop — decorated with foil stars (used a cookie cutter) — and ping-pong balls (a pack of six cost $1.50).

Optional feature: these cool TIE Fighters and X-Wing Fighters came from a boxed set of action figures on sale at Target.

So the party was relatively a success, until the celebrant had a meltdown when his guests started to leave. I don’t think any of the kids actually wanted the party to be over.