K-Girl is BIG into Super Mario Bros. right now. She (and E-Man) love playing it on the Wii. So she wanted to have a Mario party this year. There were a few other ideas in the runnings but I told her since she was inviting so many boys that they would like this idea the best. We started working on the party a few months ago.
This was the outside of the invitation. The inside was just the typical who, what, where, when party info. I put this together in Photoshop after downloading the Super Mario Bros. font and grabbing pictures on Google Images.
For each party I like to have the kids in an outfit that fits with the theme as much as I can. I didn't really get to do it for
Scooby Doo, but for K-Girl's
Hello Kitty Party and E-Man's
Umizoomi Party and his
Monster Party I did have fun making sure their outfits matched the theme. About an hour before the party I threw together these shirts for the kids using iron on transfers.
I made all the decorations. Most of them are just printing images out on the printer onto cardstock. I made a Happy Birthday Banner with the help of my Cricut. I made the circles, glued the letters on, put holes in the circles and put them onto yarn. For the ends I drew pictures of 6 of the "bad guys" and colored them. I also made her a Happy Birthday poster to put on her bedroom door after the party. E-Man has one from his Umizoomi party so she wanted one too. I also had two white balloons that I put spots on with green sharpie to make Yoshi eggs.
OOOH and I have to share this, because it was the weirdest thing. About 30 minutes before the party started this dog showed up at our front door -
Last year a little while before K-Girl's
Scooby party was about to start this SAME dog showed up at our house. A while ago K-Girl said how weird it would be if the dog came back this year. And then it did! So it's a really nice dog and I found out where it lived seeing it tied out front of the house. So I put it in my car and I took it home. I knocked on the door - which the big door was open and cars were parked there. I knew they were home but I knocked three different times and no one would come to the door. I went to their immediate neighbors and although I saw a lady she wouldn't come to the door. I went across the street to that house and no one would answer. So I went to the house directly behind them and their garage door was up so I HOPED they would answer. When she came to the door she said "Oh Ziggy!!" and I told her that the dog was at my house and I thought the dog belonged to her neighbor but that they wouldn't answer the door. She came out and went back to the house with me. She knocked and then yelled in the door. This old drunk guy finally came out and got the dog. They had no idea the dog got out. He did say thank you. When I got back the first kid was showing up. I had stuff still to do so that kind of put me in stress mode. *L* But I thought it was so weird that the same dog showed up both years now.
Ok so back to the party.
The favors for the kids were little Mario boxes that I ordered online. I put a sheet of stickers in them. They also had all the candy from the pinata (cow tails, starbursts, dum dums, and bubble gum) and some had prizes from the different games. And then the last favor I made them Mario "Bigs" - Mushrooms. I crocheted one for each kid - 15 in all. They took be about two sitting sessions, probably about 3 - 4 hours each. I've been working on them for the last 2 months - completing the first May 3rd. I didn't finish the last one until the day before the party - June 25th. I'm so relieved to be done with them. And I'm glad that the kids loved them. At the end of the party they were all up in the playroom throwing them around. :)
The first game we played was "Get the Goombas". The night before the party I used the air compressor to blow up 72 balloons and then I drew the faces on with black sharpie. Prior to blowing them up, we put little paper mario coins (found the image on the computer, shrank it down, put about 70 or more on a page and printed out a couple pages and cut them apart) in each balloon. Some had 1, some had more up to 5 coins. I gave the kids a little white paper bag with a question mark on the front with their names. They needed to pop the balloons and get the coins. The kid with the most coins won. The winner had 29 coins. K-Girl who didn't like popping them only had 3. The average was about 10 - 15.
The next game was "Pin the Mustache on Mario". I made a Mario using a projector The Husband brought home. Then I made mustaches with brown construction paper and wrote each kid's name on them. I used double-sided tape to stick them. I blindfolded each kid. I think it was too easy though because we had at least 4 or 5 kids that won. I only had 2 prizes so everyone got lollipops and we went on to the next game. Perhaps I should have had Mario standing on his head or something to up the difficulty a bit?
After that we played "Boo Races". I believe this is just modified red light/green light. I had King Boo around my neck and stood at one end of the yard and the kids at the other. When King Boo turned his back to them the kids ran. When King Boo turned to look at them they had to freeze. Anyone moving was sent back to the start. We played one practice run and then twice for prizes.
After the races we went in to play Mario Bingo. We played twice and the kids enjoyed that. Since I then already had them sitting we did cupcakes from there. The cupcakes I got just had red frosting and I took some white chocolate chips to sprinkle over them to make like the spots on the mushrooms. It didn't look great, but you get the idea. Afterwards everyone was stained red though. *LOL*
After the cupcakes we did the pinata. I made the pinata this year. I made the Mario Question Mark Box. I used a soda cube and cut out the faces of all the sides except for the top. So there was a frame of the cube. Then I wrapped it in a single layer of newspaper and then did two layers of paper mache over it. Once it was completely dry I painted it. It turned out so good. We were afraid of it breaking too easily, but it didn't. The kids did one round with blindfolds, and then another round without. By then there were some pretty good cracks, but nothing was budging. So I stuck my fingers in the cracks to make them loosen up and let K-Girl swing until it came open.
The last activity we did was The Husband's idea. He wanted the kids to beat Bowser with water balloons. The kids thought it was the greatest! I made The Husband a Bowser mask our of poster board and tied it on with yarn. And then the kids went to town. There were over 70 water balloons so they had a lot of ammo. ;)
And just so you know, The Husband wasn't the only one to be rockin' the Bowser mask. ;) My only regret with it was using washable marker. Once the kids started soaking Bowser, his face started running quite a bit.
OK so that's it I think. I had so much fun doing this party, but it's a huge relief that it's over.
I don't want to take credit for coming up with all the ideas. So to give credit where credit is due check out these links to the blogs and websites that had the ideas that help me put this party together.
I got the ideas for the Happy Birthday Banner and playing Pin the Mustache on Mario from this blog although I changed them up a little bit. I was also able to print out the playing sheets for Mario Bingo. A huge thank you to this blog owner!
http://www.executivehomemaker.com/2010/04/super-mario-bros-birthday-party/
A few others that I looked to for some inspiration...
http://www.coolpartyblog.com/mario_party/
http://www.chicaandjo.com/2010/05/20/super-mario-party-featuring-princess-peach/
http://aimeeaustin.wordpress.com/party-time-super-mario-bros/
I got the goodie boxes, plates, napkins, and stickers from:
http://www.birthdayexpress.com/Super-Mario-Bros-Party-Supplies/42092/PartyKitDetail.aspx
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