Super Mario Party Theme

For my son's 1st birthday party, we decided to go with a Mario theme to match his nursery. And maybe also because we are geeky enough to have really wanted to throw a Mario themed party.  I thought I would share some of the ideas I came up with.



I enjoy creating my own cards and such, so I decided to try and make my own invitation instead of using a stock one from online. The above is what I came up with.  I had this picture of my son in his overalls and it reminded me of the Mario overalls. His shirt was brown, but that was easy enough to change in Photoshop. I added the G to the front of his overalls and found a picture of the Mario hat online and added that as well. I also took out the background (my husband and our living room) and added the Mario hills.  I downloaded several Mario-ish fonts from the internet and used those to create the text on the side. I wanted to keep it fun.



These were so much fun to come up with and create. I've seen so many of those 2-Liter labels on different sites, but never Mario themed soda. So I put my thinking cap on and started coming up with ideas for the names.  Mountain Boo is my favorite...hehe!  Once I came up with several ideas, I selected my favorite, found Mario art online and got to creating. I used a Word document set to landscape, inserted the Mario art, and used a Mario font to add the names. I printed these out onto 8.5X11 paper and used double sided tape to stick them onto the bottles. You may need to crop off some of the paper to make it fit on some of the bottles, depending on the shape.  They were very easy to make, but I think add a lot of fun.



A simple star balloon that I found on Pinterest.



I just used primary colored card stock to make this banner. To make the letters, I used one of the Mario fonts again and printed out the words onto primary colored card stock and then cut them out and attached them to the banner with double sided tape. I used red yarn to string the banner.



A friend who has a cake business made this cake for us. The mushroom on top is a cupcake. We used it for the smash cake.  The cake was tasty and so cute!



The smash cake.



I made a onesie for him to wear. I just bought the plain white Gerber onesies from Walmart.  I used the freezer paper method to make this...I printed a picture of a 1UP mushroom onto freezer paper, cut it out to make a stencil, ironed it to the onesie, and then used fabric paint/paint pens to color in the design.  I also added "1UP" below the mushroom but forgot to get a picture of it.  I used the Mario font and freezer paper method to add it.



For door prizes, I decided to do a "Guess how many" game.  I used Cinnamon jelly beans (readily available at Easter time), Swedish Fish, White speckled malted milk eggs (Easter time again), and Marshmallow bananas (and also an Easter candy).  Not sure what happened to my picture of the other 2 jars.  I used the same method as above for the 2 liters to make these labels. I used cleaned out sauce jars to hold the candy.

Fire Flower Seeds - jelly beans
Cheep Cheep Chews - swedish fish
Yoshi Eggs - malted milk eggs
Donkey Kong's Banana Peels - marshmallow bananas

Guests placed their guss of how many candies were in each jar and the closest guess got to take the jar of candy with them.



Sticking with the theme, I made labels for some of the food items. We made some buffalo chicken dip and called it Bowser's Blazing Buffalo Chicken Dip.


I hope you enjoyed these ideas and that it has inspired you to do your own Mario party. I love seeing the different ideas that people come up with.  If you do a Mario Party, I would love to see your pictures.

Yoshi Egg Sugar Cookies

So it has shamefully been many months since my son's first birthday. We did (unsurprisingly) a Mario themed party for him and I thought everything was awesome. I am no party planner, but besides using many ideas found on Pinterest, I also came up with several of my own ideas for things to make within the theme.  I am going to try and blog about some of these ideas soon, but you know how that goes. For now though, I figured I would start with the easiest.  This was an idea I came up with and delegated to my MIL. She did an excellent job and I wanted to share the end result with you. These cute cookies are certain to be a hit at your party. Be careful though, you can't eat just one. :) 

For the cookies:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. 
2. Cover, and chill the dough for one hour or more.
3. When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
4. Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Use an egg shaped cookie cutter. My cookie cutter was approximately 3 inches long.  Place cookies 1 inch apart on cookie sheets. I line my sheets with parchment paper, but it is optional. 
5. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven.

For the icing and garnish: 

Ingredients

         2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese

            1 cup confectioners sugar
            1/4 cup milk
            1 tablespoon vanilla extract
            1 package dark green candy melts or M&Ms 

Directions

1. In a mixer, add the cream cheese. Beat until it is light and fluffy.
2. Beat in powdered sugar until fully incorporated.
3. Add milk and vanilla. Beat until smooth.
4. If icing is too thick, add milk one tablespoon at a time unti desired conistency is reached. 

Decorating:

Once the cookies are completely cooled, frost with the icing.  Garnish with green candy melts or green M&Ms. You could also use blue, yellow, or red candy melts/M&Ms to make the different colored Yoshi eggs.  

You could also use green Spree candy, if the kids are old enough that it wouldn't pose a choking hazard. Or you could dye some icing green and use a piping bag to make the dots, if you want to take the time to do it. 

Note:  My son's birthday is in the spring and Easter Egg cookie cutters were being sold in most stores.  You will likely be able to find an egg shaped cookie cutter at craft stores year round, or you can always order one online.  

 

Our Super Mario Nursery

A collage of photos from our Super fun (if I do say so myself) nursery. You can go back through the blog posts to see in progress pictures.

Easy Mario Bookcase

So we didn't have a bookcase in Super G's room yet, because the hubs didn't have time to make what he wanted to make yet. That happens when you have a baby.  But with our son's first birthday coming up, we felt this was something we should get on. Unfortunately, not thinking this would turn out as cute as it did, I didn't take a before picture of the shelf.  But it was ugly. Apparently it was some sort of bookshelf that used to come with encyclopedia sets.  It was wood colored and sort of falling apart. 

We did a little love to it with some wood glue. And once it was doctored up, we painted it a nice brown color that we felt was representative of the bricks in Mario.  For the black lines, we just used some masking tape and then "painted" the lines in with one of those giant, smell so strong you'll get high, Sharpie markers.  It worked like a charm.   

We think it looks fantastic! You can see it above with our one of a kind Bob-omb lamp We think they make great companions.

Mario Mobile

We have had these little figures done forever, but I finally got around to making them into the mobile they were intended to be. I think it turned out very cute.

For the ring, I used a clear plastic ring that came on a scarf I bought from Target.  I wrapped it in yellow yarn and then hung the bead figures from it. We did the moon, a mushroom, a cloud, and the one that is turned is a feather. 

Cheerio Dust

Baby Boy LOVES bananas. This is, in itself, a bit amazing given his early hate for the yellow fruit. But, despite his love, it didn't prevent me from finding dozens of pieces in his lap, under the pad of the high chair, and on the floor. They were squirming right out of his little fingers and landing anywhere but his mouth. On several baby food sites, I saw a trick given to put crushed O cereals, wheat germ, or powdered infant cereal (like Rice or Oatmeal) on slippery foods. So I decided to try it. I must say, it worked so well, that I've been doing it ever since.

I use Cheerios, and generally I just crush them with my finers. Sometimes, if I think about it, I will run a bunch through the Magic Bullet and save them in a plastic bag. But powdering them with my fingers is not much more effort and very simple to do.

Other foods that I use this method with:

Blueberries - The powder absorbs some of the juice, which means less of it gets on clothing, etc.
Mango
Peaches
Avacado


It is important to note that this method does mean there there is more of a mess on Baby Boy's fingers and high chair tray. However, the clean up is much simpler and less food gets wasted, which is the important part.