Mario Party

All StinkyMan wanted for his 5th birthday was a Super Mario party.

The downfall to this particular theme is that you can't buy the stuff in the stores, it's only online. And it's EXPENSIVE! And I'm, well, thrifty. I did try to convince him to change his mind, but he was determined that Super Mario was the theme.

So the first order of business was the invitations. I got the idea from here. The lady made it seem easy peasy. I guess in theory it was, but holy cow was it time consuming. After spending close to 3 hours making the invitations (I didn't have some of the Cricut options she had) this is how they turned out:

Then I ordered a Mario Bingo game from this seller on Ebay. It's awesome and cost effective and a great way to pass some party time.

No way was I going to pay through the nose for Mario plates and cups and such, so we went with red and blue, like Mario's clothes. I made this centerpiece for decoration:

I just cut down a gold gift bag, printed pictures off the internet, cut them out, stuck them on straws and then stuck the straws in flower foam and covered it all with gold gift wrap shreds. Thank you Dollar Tree, because that cost me a whole $3. Cute, right?

Next up were favors. I wanted to do small yellow takeout boxes filled with chocolate gold coins (like in the game.) Who knew that chocolate coins were so crazy expensive? Well not me, because I was SHOCKED. And then Michael's had every other color of takeout boxes EXCEPT yellow. On to plan B, which was much cheaper and just as well received by the guests:

Sugar cookies are always a nice option. One 59 cent cookie cutter and some black icing and yellow sprinkles and we were all set. I didn't wrap them fancily, I ran out of time. I don't think the kids cared that they were just in a plain old Ziploc baggie.

We really were going to need more than just Bingo to entertain the kiddos, so we decided to make hats like Mario.

Mario:


Our version:


StinkyMan didn't want his initial...he felt like his age was a better option. Makes sense, since that was what we were all celebrating after all. Foam hats were from Michael's for $1 each, but of course I had a coupon. The circles were cut from self adhesive foam and the letters were cut from construction paper using the Cricut. Each child got a circle and their initial and a turn with the glue stick. All told just under $20.

But what I am most proud of is the cake. I was nervous, but it came out well. Husband helped me tremendously by taking on the task of sculpting fondant mushrooms, while I handled the more simplistic shapes and the actual cake baking and general decorating.

And it tasted pretty good too, if I do say so myself!

All in all it was a lot of work, but it was well appreciated by StinkyMan who was very excited about his party. He had a great time and I think the guests did too....we had more than 20 kids here! It was crazy, it was loud and the preparations were time consuming, but in the end my StinkyMan was thrilled and that makes it all worthwhile.