Davy Crockett Party Prep!

For Justice's birthday, we finally enacted a plan we've had in the wings for several years now, but the timing had never worked out. He has long been a fan of Davy Crockett, and now (after having visited the Alamo) Davy and his life-story is a staple landmark for our family.

I'll post soon about the actual party, but if you want the nitty-gritty of resources and prep, you've come to the right place!

I posted on Memorial Day a history of Davy Crockett's life that Justice and I wrote to send with his invitations, and I have a PDF of that here that you are welcome to print and use (note the bibliography at the end where I attribute our research and the clipart). When you print this two-sided, you can fold it in half and have a booklet. 

This is a sample of our invitations, which you can use as inspiration for your own invitation (I printed all mine on white paper (no colored border), then cropped it by a 1/2-inch on each side and mounted on dark brown and dark green cardstock; the fonts we used for all of this are Fave Script Bold Pro (on Microsoft Office), Butch and Sundance Platinum (free download), and Algerian (which came with Microsoft Office).

There are also printable favor labels, which I trimmed around each and then mounted on alternating forest green and dark brown cardstock and tied to each favor bag filled with gummy bears (teddy grahams would also work). Also here's a printable poster for your favors.

Along with the bear favors, we had water guns and squirters from Dollar Tree and Walmart, which kids could take home and the winners of the boat race got of a fun "Gator" squirter that I picked up at a Dollar Tree and the winner of the shootin' match (with bb guns) got a copy of Davy Crockett's autobiography. 

For Games: 

1.) A "boat race" where we made little rubber-band-powered boats kind of like these (we used butter dishes and popsicle sticks and they weren't a huge success...but I was working with the materials I had. There are lots of simple and fun designs out there if you want to try another). We have a cowtank pool where we hosted the "race."

2.) A shootin' match with our two BB guns at tin cans full of water set on some logs next to our wood pile (we thought it was the right ambiance...plus it meant no one would be down-range of our shooting!) Each kid got three shots, and the kids with the most hits got another round until the final two contestants, who then competed shot for shot until one of them missed when the other hit. (Danger ended up being one of the top shooters! Who knew?) We had all the dads helping with this part for safety, and many of the kids in our group are used to real firearms for hunting, so this was an easy group for this activity--if you don't have parents to help or kids who are already versed in gun safety, definitely use caution with this activity!

3.) The (water) battle of the Alamo! This was our pièce de résistance and it was PERFECT, since the party day ended up being absolutely swelteringly hot! My sweet husband filled up 200 water balloons for Santa Anna's men (and they had the pool for endless refills) and the smaller company that went into the Alamo had three dishpans of water for re-loading. It was, appropriately, a massacre, and the end result was a very tattered Alamo and a horde of soaked kids playing in the cowtank pool (with some lightly damp adults as the occasional wild shot escaped to where we were all watching/sitting/eating. Justice was the final defender of the Alamo, and he definitely gave as good as he got! All the kids had been warned to dress to get wet, and it was a good thing they almost all showed up in swimsuits! 

For Decorations:

I used this awesome "Insta-Theme" stone wall backdrop, cut into the shape of the Alamo for the trampoline (it would look great anywhere, and is SUPER easy to work with!  It's basically the same material as disposable plastic tablecloths. I literally sewed it to our trampoline net with fishing line). 

We also painted some old woodcuts as signs for our games and the food table (all the kids helped). We pulled out our USA flags and Texas flags and general Americana 4th-of-July decor (we have a ton of this stuff that I've collected over the years since we do a big 4th of July setup almost every year.) If you don't have any of these types of things, I recommend looking at the Dollar Tree's 4th-of-July stuff--we often find things there that we use year after year.

Other than that, we used a lot of the kids' cap gun rifles, cowboy dress-up, coonskin caps, and memorabilia that we've collected over the years with two boys who love western play, Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone. (We got a toy version of Ol' Betsy--similar to this--and a set of Alamo Army Men when we visited the historical site a couple of years ago). 

For more ideas and inspiration, you can find my Davy Crockett party board on Pinterest. 

For the Cake:

Justice told me he wanted an "Alamo" cake, which I told him might not be possible...but as it turned out, it a piece of cake! (ha ha). I researched how people did castle cakes, it occured to me that Hershey's Cookies n' Cream bars look an awful lot like that white limestone the Alamo is built out of...and so I ended up getting about 6 giant candy bars to "brick" my cake and to design that iconic front of the Alamo mission. 

The cake itself was a double layer 9x13 chocolate cake. Since I was, as usual, in a hurry, I used two box mixes (Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Cake) and store-bought tubs of frosting (I'm still perfecting my semi-homemade recipe to adjust the texture of box mix cakes; they taste good but they need to be a little denser so they don't crumble as bad when I frost them. Saving that for another party, I guess...) I really needed the frosting to be denser and stand up to a hot day, though, so I experimented and added powdered sugar and mixed it in my Kitchen Aid till it was stiff, and that worked out perfectly. I frosted the whole thing with chocolate icing (it took two tubs) and then with a tub of white frosting as mortar I started "bricking" my cake. 

I only cut out the front facade of the Alamo out of the giant Hersheys, and then walled the rest of the cake. The key here was to let the chocolate get nice and room-temp so that it wouldn't shatter, but not so melty that it messed up the nice brick-like-shape. (Also, since it has cookies in it, I needed to gently saw through the candy bar, not just chop candy pieces as I carved out the outline of the Alamo front). I used dark chocolate to make the doors and windows and then attached all of it with the extra-powdered-sugar-reinforced white frosting to glue it all on. After piping and attaching the front of the Alamo I frosting "mortared" all four sides. It came together beautifully. I still can't decide if I needed to frost the top and edges with the white frosting, but I think it adds a little finished look, and helped hold on the cannons and give our little Texanos some cover against Santa Anna's men below. (These army men, plus a vintage Davy Crockett action figure were what I used on top of the cake.)

My amazing husband had the brilliant idea of the cannons--he found the Pirouette cookies (which we cut in half) and mini-Oreos and we connected it all with leftover frosting. In retrospect, I should've made as many as candles for the birthday boy, because we ended up sticking one of the candles into a canon and it was a total delight for the kids. Every kid wanted a canon on their slice, so if you do this, you might make extras (they're so easy, it really is worth it!)

Sidenote: Obviously, historically the Texanos fighting Santa Anna were on the walls around the Alamo, not the roof of the iconic mission itself. If you are more crafty/have more time than I did, I highly recommend looking up an aerial view of the actual Alamo building--it incorporates a very cool and unique cross-shape, which could be made with a cake if you wanted to mess with multiple cakes! But I was not so worried about historical accuracy with my cake (this time!). Also, the roof should be white and we did brown because we wanted a chocolate cake.

For the Food: 

Table decor was a simple picnic setup with my handy galvanized tin gear that we use for EVERYTHING. We grilled burgers (which we labeled "Bear Meat,") and had the usual sides of chips, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, grapes, etc. labled, "Victuals." To drink I had an ice bucket and then big dispensers of water and old-fashioned lemonade, where guests were invited to "Wet Yer Whistle". 

That's about it! Feel free to ask if you have any other questions!