Super Mario Bros. Birthday Bash

We had an early birthday bash for Wildman at our house on Sunday.  The theme?  SUPER MARIO BROTHERS!  It’s his latest obsession.  I knew nothing of Super Mario Bros. prior to planning this party so I consulted the Internet for some ideas.  Most of my inspiration came from here and here.

The children each got their own Mario or Luigi hat and mustache.  I had some tiaras for the girls to be Princess Peach.

I made felt mushroom head pouches for the children to keep their collected coins in.  There was no sewing involved!  Score!  We played several games for gold coins: a Yoshi egg hunt, zip-lining onto colored squares that had coins taped to the back and the pinata was loaded with them!  The child with the most coins won a Mario t-shirt.  The winner was Wildman’s friend, O, who collected a whopping 35 coins!

One of the Yoshi eggs contained a “w”.  The person who found that lucky egg won a Mario Bros. cartoon DVD.

The children also played ladder ball for a prize of a Christmas book.

I served lots of veggies and dip, that awesome pineapple salsa, queso, pizza, lime sherbet/7-up punch, as well as lots of beer and wine for the adults.  A paper pieced goomba marked the adult drink tub.

In lieu of a sheet cake or layered round cake, I made mushroom head cupcakes.  The white dots are white chocolate discs used for melting and making lollipops.  I made 3 dozen cupcakes for our herd of 20 children.  Half were white cake and half were carrot cake.  All were a hit!

Luckily the weather cooperated and we had gorgeous sunny skies for the party!  It rained at 11 AM and by 2 PM (party time) all the bad weather had moved out.  Whew!  I didn’t know what I was going to do with all of those people if it rained.  All of our games took place in the yard!  I’m so glad it all worked out.

I made each child a Yoshi treat bag to fill up with their choice of candy from a candy buffet that I had set up on our glass dining table.  The kids were over the moon to get to choose their treats.  I had containers of chocolate coins, Mario fruit snacks, rainbow lollipops, rainbow candy canes, Sunkist gummy candies, gumballs, and extra mustaches laid out for them.

I’d definitely call this party a success!  I had fun preparing for it and the kiddos had a blast all afternoon long.  But given how much effort I put into making all of the favors and decorations, I think I’m going to institute the every-other-year birthday plan.  Next year, I think the boys will get to choose a fun family activity for their birthday.  It’s exhausting hosting birthday parties!!!

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Star Wars Craft/Cooking Class

They had us at Yoda Soda…

It sounded like a fun recipe for the boys to make!  I signed them up for the two-day Star Wars Craft/Cooking class when I saw it advertised in our city’s summer activities brochure.  It was one of the few classes offered that Wildman and Cutie Pie could do together and Wildman is a Star Wars fanatic these days.  So, it sounded perfect!

I was a little disappointed with the class setup, however.  Instead of doing a craft and cooking each day, it was set up so that Tuesday was the craft portion and Thursday was the cooking portion.  The boys were sad that they didn’t get to cook on the first day.

They rushed through painting their plaster Vader figurines then anxiously awaited the cooking part that never came.  The instructor did not explain how the class was structured.  After 10 minutes of waiting for the next activity we finally realized that we were done for the day.  It would have been nice to do multiple crafts because my boys were done with their figurines after about 15-minutes and the class was supposed to last for an hour.

Thursday brought the second class meeting where the children were asked to create Star Wars characters out of icing on cupcakes…  My boys don’t quite have the fine motor and artistic skills to accomplish such a feat yet so I let them just go nuts with all of the colors.

Can you say SUGAR HIGH?!

After the boys scarfed up their cupcake creations it was time to make the Yoda Soda.

This was the highlight of the entire class!  My boys were in the group responsible for pouring the lemon-lime soda into the fountain.  I have to admit that the instructor did a great job decorating the fountain.  All of the children loved seeing the Star Wars characters on display.

While the class was not exactly what I had expected and not really worth the money I paid, the boys did have a fun time.  And that’s all that really matters, right?!

Ironically, after I signed the boys up for the Star Wars class I received a Williams-Sonoma catalog in the mail with these awesome Star Wars pancake molds advertised.  I knew Wildman and Cutie Pie would get a kick out of them so I ordered a set.  They arrived last week!  We tried them out last weekend.  The boys report that my pancakes taste much better in the shapes of Star Wars characters…

I am also thinking of ordering this cookbook.  We saw it in the gift shop at the Air and Space Museum but it was super expensive.  I thought maybe I could find it cheaper online.  I was right.

Looks like it’s shaping up to be a Star Wars summer!