10 Easy Ideas for a Football Themed Party

Birthday parties are hard to plan! And they get expensive if you buy all the decorations yourself! For my son’s first birthday party, I was planning a Dr. Seuss theme. I bought table clothes, napkins, plates, cups, silverware. I made signs, started designing the invites…

 

 

 

And then I was informed that my husband’s favorite football team was playing against my brother-in-law’s favorite football team that day and they asked if the game could be on. Me being a pretty theme-focused party thrower, was planning on having The Lorax playing in the background for entertainment (our place was just a 1-level, 1,200 square foot townhome, so not much room for people and I wanted entertainment for the 2 kids who would be attending)

I thought about the party theme, and decided to change the theme all together to football! I figured this party was for the adults, and not for my child, so I decided football would be our theme! Now to re-plan and figure out what we needed. No brainer about the theme colors since we would have the University of Miami playing against the University of Florida (go figure Florida teams are the favorites of the two guys who were born and raised in Minnesota). Now on to the decorations…

I made a lot of the decorations and some were store bought. Here are 10 easy decorations for a football themed party!

Table Presentation:

1. I used yellow napkins as football “flags” to go with the theme! So easy and everybody loved the reference!
2. Underneath all the food, I painted a football field on an artificial turf rug. I bought stencils to be able to paint the numbers onto the rug. I used the cheap foam paint brushes so I could mostly just dab the white paint around the stencil instead of using a paint brush.
3. By covering boxes with paper and decorative tape, I added dimension to the food table. The sandwiches and popcorn were on “bleachers”. I made these by cutting apart 2 diaper boxes and used colored duct tape and duct tape sheets to cover the diaper boxes up! 
4. For the drinks, we offered sport type drinks with Gatorade and bottled water. Since the Florida Gators were playing, it was appropriate that we used the Gatorade. To keep it cold, instead of using a cooler that people may not notice on the floor, we used a long storage tub and put a bag of ice in it! Very simple to keep all of our liquids in this and, luckily, we didn’t have to purchase anything extra since we already had the storage bin. 

Signs:

6. I made a sign on my computer for our front door by downloading the ESPN font onto my computer and I googled the ESPN college football logo to put as the background. 

6. We had a blank canvas and some chalkboard paint so I whipped together a scoreboard as a decoration. I used some chalkboard paint markers to draw on the canvas after painting the blank canvas with the chalkboard paint. Stencils could have been used to make it look more neat, but I was crunched for time to get it done! (I used my son’s birthday for the top numbers and then the 1’s for down and quarter areas and the time he was born for the middle numbers on the bottom)

Others:

7.  For the centerpieces, I used the leftover artificial turf rug from the food table and cut it into small rectangles. I painted a goal line and 10 yard line on the rectangle. Then I formed some colored pipe cleaners to insert into the small rectangle. (I cut a small slit in the turf rug with a box cutter.)

8. This has nothing to do with making any decorations, but to go with the theme, we instructed people on the invites to wear their favorite sport’s team shirt! Everybody was dressed up in sports themed shirts, even the birthday boy!

9. For the cake, we had it made by a local bakery, but if you are a good cake baker/decorator, this is a somewhat, not complicated design! It turned out amazing for us!

10. The last theme idea is the most obvious! The football game on the TV! I had to make sure there was entertainment for the adults since, let’s face it, 1st birthday parties are not for the child who’s turning 1. It’s for the adults to celebrate!

The football theme was very fun to go with and I love how it turned out! I’m glad I switched it up from the Dr. Seuss theme as I think people enjoyed the football theme and decorations more! I had other decorations that I purchased from oriental trading to put up that said Happy Birthday.  We also purchased balloons to have around.

I hope you all got some ideas from the party we had! Does anyone have any other good theme party ideas? I now have my little girl coming up on her first birthday that I will have to begin planning!