Following on from the mighty ninja party (my Operation Sneaky Stealth Mode post)…

The first challenge our Ninjas had to conquer was to master the art of throwing ninja stars. In fitting with the beautiful and always tactile Japanese crafting, we created origami ninja stars from simple papers for each child. Next we needed something for our training ninjas to aim at: We thought about pots of rice (but then I didn’t like the idea of wasted food), or praps a scare-crowesque evil lord luring over them from a respectable distance. However as the number for the party grew in size, we thought teams might be the best way to organise the potential chaos, and creating four luring lords seemed a bit exhausting.

The discovery of an old motorbike tyre discarded on our street sparked the idea of having four demon tyre monsters complete with grubby teeth. I sent my hubby off to bat his eyelashes at the local tyre mechanic up the road, which seemed to work, as he came home laden with old tyres and tyre shop anecdotes.

Splodges of our mish mash of old paints (from the recycling depot) to create bulbous and slightly freaky eyes, along with paper teeth taped to the inner wall of each tyre gave a happily demonic impression. The final touch required were long, floaty, flicking tongues (made from the backing of an old curtain…and before that the material lived the life of a sari petticoat!)

P.S. We painted each tyre with the team’s dragon colours – I think this helped forge team spirit quickly, they lined up beautifully and threw their stars like mad things, over and over until they’d had several goes each.

Perched on long bamboo poles tied to our front verandah, I easily slung the demons over each pole on the morning of the party – lined up, open mouthed and ready for the assault of 35 six-year-olds.