When you’ve been talking for YEARS about hosting an annual Star Wars Day party and your house is busting at the mudded seams with plants, what do you do? You host a party on “Endor” sponsored by the Ewoks. Oh, AND May the Fourth fell on a Saturday this year. This was our year! It was written in the stars.
My family loves Star Wars and I love the creativity that come with hosting parties. We (I… XD) didn’t want to host a generic Star Wars party…nothing wrong with those, I’ve done it before and I had a bigger creative scratch to itch. I wanted the party experience to be more immersive. Enter me asking tons of questions and doing a bunch of research: is there a planet that is really green? what happens there? what’s there? And finding myself in a rabbit hole of Ewokian language and replaying scenes from Episode VI.
And while I couldn’t import the Redwoods into my house, the yard and indoor plant cultivation we’ve done over the past few years really worked in our favor. Here’s a look at the details that came together for this year’s Star Wars Day party:
Transmitting the Message Across the Galaxy
First and foremost we had to let everyone know to save the date. Designing the invitations was really fun for me. I chose handmade Lokta paper for the really natural look. I imagined if Ewoks really were to send correspondence it would be on handmade paper. And of course it would be via snail mail, which I did send. To keep with the natural look I used brown kraft paper envelopes, which are conveniently my go-to envelopes I keep on-hand. I bought green wax seal stickers to seal off the envelopes. (Unfortunately i don’t have a seal recommendation; the ones I purchased were not sticky and I ended up hot gluing the seals to stay in place).
What We Served for our Star Wars Day party…
Food: the most essential part of any party (great friends aside, of course).
My charcuterie interest has piqued the past few months so after the algorithm obviously target me with an Ewok cheeseball I knew I wanted to recreate it. Making it was simply balling up goat cheese, adding a salami hood and cracker ears. Add in sprigs of rosemary and it’s an Endor board.
I debated making a Death Star cake to ‘destroy’ aka serve civilly. I made a smash cake version several years ago and it was quite consuming. SO, I figured a Death Star fruit pizza was an excellent alternative. (And it would have been gobbled up too, had I remembered to take it out of the fridge when everyone was still over =,) .) It’s a sugar cookie base with cream cheese frosting, and mostly fresh fruits (mandarin oranges as an ingredient are just generally better from a can!)
For a festive drink we made a mix of ginger beer, lemon-lime soda, and lime sparkling water. My only theme here was green things… and the fact that the ingredients ended up leaning moscow mule inspired was just to make sure the flavors went together. We put it in our usually-only-used-at-Christmas drink dispenser. Hooray for home items that can be reused for multiple things!
We also served smoked meats, pasta salad in a muted Ewok colors (from Costco!), skewered fruit and pretzel stick ‘light sabers’.
What We Wore…
I went for the ultimate bounding costume: Han Solo. Easiest white shirt, black vest, tall boots combo ever. T went a creative route and made his own Luke poncho costume. And for everyone under 4 feet it only made sense to make them the star of the moon:
I scrutinized stills from the scenes with Wicket and studied how the hood of this Ewok stuffy were sewn in order to make this Ewok costume come to life. A fuzzy fleece hoodie in women’s sizing gave the perfect cuddly, oversized look. I purchased a small piece of orange fleece and a few buttons from the fabric store. I had leftover embroidery thread from a previous project, which was perfect to add ‘x’ stitching throughout the hood. Assembling the hood was easy once I found an easy hood tutorial online (the hard part). The rugged look of the Ewoks ensembles made this project very low threat.
What We Did…
I’m a firm believer in having an activity to ground a party and I KNEW a Death Star Destruction celebration would need the destruction of the Death Star. With endless other projects in my life, I didn’t want making a piñata from scratch to be another one. So, during a trip to the city I found a piñata store. They had one last soccer ball in stock so I gleefully brought it home. I bought a can of gray spray paint and duct taped details. Besides using duct tape to make the former soccer ball look more like the Death Star, I also needed to be strategic to make sure as it was hit the duct tape wasn’t unintentionally keeping the piñata in tact. I used an wooden dowel from one of our deconstructed closets to make a makeshift lightsaber for hitting the piñata open. For added details on the dowel, I used matte black and glossy blue spray paint, more duct tape, and electrical tape.
The Four Things that Didn’t Happen…
Despite a couple months planning there are a few things that didn’t pan out. Not deal breakers for the success of the party but things I want to execute better as we host more gatherings in the future. Consider these as additional ideas for hosting your own Star Wars party!
1) Extra Ewok Hoods
I had a handful of extra furry pompoms. Although making the hood was ‘easy’, I didn’t budget myself enough time to make extras as I had wanted. I thought it would be so fun to have extra hoods so as all the kids ran wild around the property during the party, as I knew they would, it would have really set the environment.
2) Corn Hole Boards embellished as a Death Star for target practice
We ordered a corn hole set as I had intended to paint a Death Star onto the board. Unfortunately we learned about 3 days out that they did not arrive in time. We ended up renting a corn hole set so guests could at least have an additional activity. However, since I originally intended to paint the Death Star directly onto the board, I did not have a last minute temporary solution ready for the rented boards. Many guests still played but as a detail-oriented person it’s one of those things that I noticed.
3) Cafe Lights Strung Across the Living Room
As a very plant-focused home, the forest moon of Endor was an obvious choice for “easy” Star Wars setting. Year-round there are cafe lights strung outside. BUT, along with the plants, I wanted to blend the indoors with the outdoors by hanging these similar cafe lights inside. This is one of the tasks I should have added to be done earlier in the week before the party. As we host more I continuously learn what is a “ahead of time” task and what is a “day of” task.
4) Party Favors
I had played around with the idea of party favors leading up to Star Wars Day. It wasn’t until the last weekend before the party during a market stroll that I spotted engraved wood magnets. Immediately I imagined Ewok magnets and pins. The color! The reflection of the outdoor in the woody material! I happened to mention that I was kicking myself for not thinking of it earlier to my sister out-of-state who does engraving work. After mocking up a couple images based on what I could find on the Internet she said she could make some and try to send them in time! The estimated arrival date was the day before the party. Even though I’ve had a streak of receiving/people receiving packages early, this was unfortunately not the case for the souvenirs <insert crying, distraught face>. As I type this post, the package still hasn’t arrived. =,( (I’ll share a picture of them after they arrive.) I still plan to share them with our guests but gosh it would have been perfect if they arrived for the party.
Overall we had a great time and hope our guests did too. We look forward to making a Star Wars party an annual tradition. What planet/moon/galaxy should we travel to next?!
