I’ll have to admit that this year’s birthday theme for our handsome 8yo was largely influenced by my inner sadness of letting go of this past Halloween’s amazing home and yard decor. Needless to say, the Zombie Nerf theme was easy and largely based off of much of our previous nerf party supplies.
Nerf Parties are a crowd favorite, both with the kids and the adults! We did a military themed one for his 7th birthday and I decided to double down on this idea by adding the zombie theme – my kid was all for it.
To set the scene, I wanted to make a little town for the zombies to take over. I spent a month hunting for large cardboard boxes and eventually got enough to paint. I used basic interior black paint and acrylic yellow paint to create buildings, then I taped cut out zombie targets to different sides of the buildings once everything dried. I think it was a cute touch…
Another fun detail: zombie survival kits! With the help of my neighbor-friend and her Cricut, we used vinyl to add some details to the zombie survival kits (ahem, goody bags) … each kit had mini flashlights, gore tattoos, glow sticks, bubblegum as the ‘Zombie anti-virus’ and skittles for ‘infection protection’. Instead of Twinkies, I purchased the birthday cake versions – I saw somewhere that apparently these treats don’t expire quickly, making them the perfect post-apocalyptic snack… Don’t quote me on that.
My neighbor-friend also recommended adding my son’s age to his Zombie shirt. The extra vinyl details sold me on buying a Cricut – it was cuteness-overload!
I also decided to try my hand at baking a birthday cake again. You won’t see many of my posts with a homemade cake anytime soon… I usually prefer to purchase themed birthday cakes but in the last few years, I’ve tried to save money on this party element so that I could fund more of the fun details. Plus, my kid says I make the best cakes ever. He’s hard to resist.
This Zombie cake banner helped to tie in the theme while I focused on making sure the cake tasted good. The Chocolate Chip Cookies and Milk cake was a hit! The sigh of relief I had may of been heard on the other side of base. Everything else tied together easily…
My favorite darts for nerf parties have to be these glow in the dark waffle darts from EKIND. When all the fun is over, I can wait until after dark to find them glowing in the grass. Also, if you don’t have a big arsenal of nerf guns, B.Y.O.N (Bring Your Own Nerf) works perfectly to make this an even more fun party. Just be sure that families have appropriately labeled their nerf gun to avoid any confusion later.
The props that helped me pull this theme off were entirely from Amazon:
My Extra Mom Verdict? Nerf parties are timeless with kids, especially if you keep an arsenal of nerf guns and darts on hand. This theme was overall cost conscious, particularly the goody bags but they took time to put together – labeling and filling the anti-virus and infection protection took me about two hours. I have no regrets though, because the survival kits came out perfect with that extra touch. The zombie city didn’t take long to create and gave the kids cover during their nerf war. Once the party kicked off, it was low maintenance and I even got to enjoy a few rounds of playing with the other adults!