I found a pretty cool secret agent invitation on Evite but it looks like they changed it and no longer have that one available :-(
For the table decor, I wrapped crime scene tape around the edge of the table and made a suspect board using a few random black and white face illustrations, a map of San Francisco, and a newspaper article print with a jewel thief story that I made using this template.
I thought it would be fun to make a cookie of those Groucho glasses with the nose attached to them so I made these cookie pop "disguises" and placed them in a metal planter which I stuck some bullet hole stickers to and filled with styrofoam and yellow crinkle paper shred. I got these stickers from Amazon.com and the crinkle paper from The Container Store.
The letter candy dishes are from HooplaEvents on Etsy and were filled with a mix of jelly beans, Reese's Pieces, and Organic Sunshine Bears. I didn't need much candy to fill the dishes and had a tough time finding small quantities of yellow candy so I thought, "Hey - why not pick through a bag of Reese's Pieces?!" I also had to pick through a bin of Organic Sunshine Bears at Whole Foods (using the scoop of course!) so if you were at our Whole Foods and wondered why the Organic Sunshine Bears were mostly red and orange, now you know why.
The banana creme pie macarons were filled with banana pudding, marshmallow creme and a slice of banana (the recipe is from Gourmet French Macarons - an awesome book which comes with templates for a variety of different shaped macarons). The cherry cake "bombs," which are essentially cherry cake balls covered with chocolate, didn't do too well in the heat - it was 102 °F that day!
It was my first time covering a cake with fondant but I think my cake turned out fairly well. I modeled it after a cake I found on Pinterest by mycakeology.com and I used the finger print stamp from this set of stamps from Amazon.com. To get the coloring to stick to the fondant, I had to airbrush spray the stamp. Painting food coloring onto the stamp just didn't work and didn't show up on the fondant.
For activities, we built some structures for "target practice" and made a yarn laser maze using some plastic netting. The TNT piñata is from here. I was perfectly fine buying a $20 piñata after having made a Super Mario Bowser piñata last year! We had several other games planned but we (i.e. the hubby) lost motivation because of the heat.
For the suitcase favor boxes, I used the same boxes from Rocco's second birthday (an airplane themed party) and painted them with silver paint. You can purchase the boxes from here or from Staples. For a little more added detail, I printed out suitcase latches onto label paper and attached them on each side of the handles. Inside, I filled them with invisible ink pens, rearview glasses (check Ebay for a better deal), binoculars, stick on mustaches, and "evidence" test tube bubbles. The mini file folders were printed on cream colored card stock which I found the template for here and were filled with some secret agent puzzles which I got from this Melissa and Doug Secret Decoder kit.
Happy 6th Birthday Rocco!!!
