Epic Lord of the Rings Birthday Party Ideas

It was epic, according to the birthday boy! (Who, like this blog, turned 12 this year! Unbelievable!). Yes, we have avid Tolkien fans in the house. Our oldest has read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy no less than 10 times. The LOTR set was among the few books hubby brought into our marriage. (haha, fun fact!). So, unsurprisingly, I had a request for a Lord of the Rings themed birthday party this year! Here’s how it went down and all the Lord of the Rings birthday party ideas for you!

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So which is it? LOTR / Hobbit / Middle Earth!?

To be honest, I still can’t keep the LOTR and the Hobbit straight in my mind. I love them both. And, since there are certain scarier elements I wanted to keep out of our party because of some younger guests, we decided to do a mashup of the two for more of a “Middle Earth” themed party.

To give credit, many of my ideas and inspirations came from this blog post (and if you like an extravagant party, you should definitely check it out! Total eye candy!).

We’re so excited to celebrate our little boy hitting this “young man” birthday milestone! Of course, mom never did get a great photo with him at the party, but such is the life of a birthday-party throwing mama!

JUMP TO THE FREE PRINTABLE!

Lord of the Rings Birthday Party Ideas

I love to start with the decor and work from there. Since there is a birthday party featured prominently in both the Hobbit and LOTR movies, we styled our decor after that event.

Party Garland

I created a simple green and gold party garland by cutting out triangle pennants from felt (10 cents a sheet at the fabric store!) and stringing them on twine. I even cut some smaller pennants from the scraps to extend our garland a little further. If I can use up all my material scraps, I do, because storing scraps is usually pointless.

Travel Posters

Because both stories feature a journey, I purchased these fun retro-inspired Middle Earth travel posters and framed them to have in the background of the dessert table. After the party, they became room decor for my son! (the linked one is a bit larger and paper, mine are 8×10 and a plastic canvas, but unavailable right now).

Wall decal

I love this RoomMates peel and stick wall Lord of the Rings wall decal featuring the Fellowship of the Ring (although I realized I never got a great photo of it during the party!). I put it right on the dining room wall to showcase the main characters. My son drew a Middle Earth map to go with this decor. (I tried buying a printed map of Middle Earth, but when it arrived it was dinky and poor quality, so I returned it). It’s another party decor item that continues on in his bedroom!

Natural Elements

Most of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings takes place outdoors, in the woods, in the shire. So natural elements were a must. Here are some ideas:

I found an amazing large leaf platter at Big Lots to hold the lembas bread. It fit our decor perfectly! I also had some a cut wood platter and a bark candle holder from our rustic Camping Birthday Party to add to the outdoor motif.

To create a Shire feel, I laid a moss runner across the dessert table. I love the lush and woodsy vibe it gave the decor.

Cute fairy garden items at the Dollar Tree – pond, stairs, lamp, signposts. They were adorable scattered about the tables.

I used an old grapevine wreath and two strands of leaf garland (Dollar Tree) to create a leafy “Party Business” wreath. Then I happened to have some greenery from a recent bouquet of flowers, so I wove these stems into the wreath as well (sometimes, inspiration just strikes with what is on hand!). I printed out a “No Admittance Except on Party Business” sign and stuck it to the wreath with glue dots.

Beeswax candles added just the right “ancient” touch to the birthday cupcakes! These are lovely, natural candles for any event.

(see bottom of post to download the signage for this party!)

Hobbit Party Food

For a hobbit, food IS the main event! We had a great time deciding which dishes to serve. I created a Pop-Out sign with the Prancing Pony logo (found online), and brown kraft paper food labels. I used “gold” party napkins, plates, and utensils from the Dollar Tree to call to mind the gold of the One Ring (or Smaug’s gold, from The Hobbit). Many of my LOTR menu ideas came from this Family Focus Blog menu guide.

Finally, our menu looked like this:

Appetizers

Dead Marsh Chips & Dip
2nd Breakfast Honeycakes (mini cinnamon rolls) and Scones
Prancing Pony Potables (I found this antique looking glass bottle at Trader Joes, then we added root beer, ginger ale, and other beverages).

Main Course

Hobbit Stew (beef)
Sam’s Po-Tay-Toe Soup (boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew!)
Shire Garden Salad
Gandolf’s Turkey & Pickles (I happened to have a free turkey I received at Thanksgiving but didn’t use b/c we were at my mom’s house. I would recommend just getting a large chicken for this!)

Desserts

Lembas Bread (could be placed with meal but it is a sweet shortbread that felt better with the desserts). I used this lembas bread recipe and template to make the leaf wrappers.
Hobbit Hole Cupcakes (I dyed the cookies green-ish with natural food dye)
The One Ring (organic gummy rings from Whole Foods, apple rings, pineapple rings – yes, those are actually three rings! So we love our snacks! 🙂 )
Gollum’s Goodies (swedish fish, gummy worms, Annie’s bees and bugs fruit chewies, goldfish crackers).
Ice cream – I mean, what is a party without ice cream!

More Party Ideas

The party t-shirt. Anyone following my party posts from the start might recall that I usually sew/create party t-shirts for the boys. However, this has been quite a year for our family! Moms, there is NO need to keep up a tradition if it means you are exhausted as a result. The most important thing is spending time with your family. So this year, I opted to “meet myself halfway.” I kept the birthday t-shirt tradition, but simply bought a shirt already decorated in our theme. I wanted to be very subtle about this as I’m generally not a fan of licensed products. I found this Rohan banner t-shirt that was so interesting and fit the theme. Bonus, only true fans will recognize the banner when my son wears it in public!

Bilbo’s library. Since the boys have gotten older, part of the fun of throwing them birthday parties is they now have their own ideas about how we should decorate. Although I love DIY party decorating, (and even wrote a book on it), I am not too highfalutin’ to allow them to display their own creative efforts. It is their party, after all! My youngest created a “library” out of all of our Tolkien books. Taking his lead, I displayed the Silmarillion in our decor as well!

LOTR Lego Builds. The Lego is strong with my boys. So naturally through the party week they were creating more and more Lego builds they wanted to use at the party. But we settled on only having the minifigures out for display. After all, the Lego themed party was last year, right?!

Costumes. Oh yes, every good party should come with costumes, right? Thankfully, we have fellow LOTR fan friends. One of them lent our son his Gandalf costume! Truly this was the cherry on top!

I hope you have enjoyed these Lord of the Rings birthday party ideas! However you choose to throw a Lord of the Rings / Hobbit / Middle Earth party, may it be filled with food and cheer and song. For as Tolkien wrote, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded goal, it would be a merrier world!” and, “It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”

Download the Lord of the Rings / Hobbit Party Printables File!

I made these for our party, and maybe they won’t exactly fit what you are doing, but they might be a helpful start! Please sign up on the form below for my blog newsletter, and you will be sent to the PDF file!