Paper Airplane Birthday Party

Over the summer we celebrated our son's ninth birthday with a paper airplane theme. It was a really fun party to put together for our paper airplane building expert! He is constantly making airplanes so this was the perfect theme for him.

We planned to have a paper airplane flying contest so we included some race type details as well.

For our living room, I made a balloon arch in colors to reflect the sky. I tucked in some paper airplanes amongst the balloons and used poster board to make the giant paper airplanes. Then a large beige number nine balloon to finish it all off.

The giant posterboard airplanes were the perfect large size decor. They were heavy though so I used string and packing tape to hold them up, depending on where they were hanging. A simple airplane banner got hung across the mantel.

I filled some baskets with paper for paper airplane making along with a basket of airplanes that were made by our son for the party.

I hung a few paper airplanes from balloons but they were hard to keep afloat. Only a few lasted. I think it would have needed some bigger balloons to hold more helium for the weight (or smaller paper airplanes).

Extra airplanes got tucked around the house and on gifts.

I found this fun paper plane toss game banner years ago and have been saving it to buy when the opportunity arose. It was my original inspiration and such a fun detail. The first thing the kids did when they came downstairs was try to fly their planes through the holes to score points.

Outside we set up a paper airplane contest. We ran black and white checkered flags to mark the contest area.

Then we hung hula hoops from the tree to try to throw the paper airplanes through.

For the table I continued the black and white checkered theme with plates for contrast (and gold happy birthday ones). I found and saved these notebook paper napkins that came out during the end of the school year. Then everyone got a paper airplane to finish it all off.

I loved how these giant hanging paper airplanes turned out. I usually have some sort of inspiration or plan but it always comes together in it's own way when I actually set it up.

For the cake and donuts I printed some stripes and matching colors on cardstock for the paper airplane topper. Having a variety of sizes gave it some depth.