Monday, July 6, 2015

Rocco's 5th Birthday - A Super Mario Party

Here's another very belated birthday post from last year. We're getting ready for our 6th birthday party coming up next month so I thought it was finally time to post last year's party! 

Our theme last year was Super Mario Brothers which is probably better suited for kids eight and up. Rocco couldn't really play the Mario games at the time but he really liked going through the game booklets and eventually started asking us to play the games so he could watch them like cartoons.

Since most five year olds aren't into Super Mario Brothers yet, I went with a cuter and more modern style Mario invitation which I ordered from T3DesignsCo on Etsy. Mario originally had an "M" on his hat but I changed it to an "R" for "Super Rocco." 


For our drink/dessert table, I did a small cake topped with a Mario and Yoshi cookie, vanilla "mushroom" cupcakes, chocolate goomba cupcakes, piranha plant (a.k.a. chomping flower) cake pops on Rice Krispie pots, flower power cookies, and power star cookies.



Power Star Cookies (below)


Flower Power Cookies (below)


For the food label stands, I used Lego 4 x 12 plates with K'nex Super Mario figures just like what I had done for the previous year's Ninjago party which you can see here. If you haven't already noticed, the labels got mixed up between the power star cookies and the flower power cookies. Whoopsie!

The water bottle labels and mustache straw designs below are from whirligigspartyco on Etsy.


One of our games was a fire ball toss which we built a castle backdrop for. The kids had to throw fireballs at the bad guys which were attached to the castle with a hinge so that they fell back when hit with a fireball.


Our fireballs were tennis balls wrapped with fire print fabric.


We also did the goomba stomp game. We printed goomba eyes on label paper, cut them out (which took forever), and stuck them to brown balloons.


Here's Rocco coming out of a warp pipe. We were lucky to get some free samples of paper tubes from a local paper tube manufacturer. To round off and soften up the tops of the tubes, we added some foam and covered them with green tape.


I made my first attempt at a homemade piñata and made a Bowser piñata. I started by making the head using five small balloons (I eventually ended up changing the back balloon to a larger balloon).



Then I attached another larger balloon to the bottom for the body.



 Here he is covered in newspaper.



I cut a hole out of the back of the head for the candy.



His nose wasn't big enough so I added more tissue to the front.








The spikes were card stock stuffed with tissue paper.



And here's Bowser in his ship. We repurposed our pirate ship wagon from our pirate party and turned it into Bowser's ship by adding a felt Bowser logo to the ship's sail.


Here's the Bowser piñata in action.



Finally, we sent all the kiddos home with question mark favor boxes which I got from here. The favor boxes included some Super Mario stickers, Super Mario Kart candy dispensers, a Super Mario K'nex mystery figure, and Super Mario fruit snacks.

To make the power star balloons, I printed eyes on label paper and attached them to mylar star balloons.


Happy Fifth Birthday Rocco!



Sunday, July 5, 2015

Teddy Bear Picnic Party - Chloe's First Birthday!

If you go out in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise... A Teddy Bear Picnic Party!

Last September, we celebrated my niece's first birthday with a teddy bear picnic themed party. And now that it's July, we already need to start planning for birthday number TWO!

Last year, Bobo the Bear welcomed the party guests with balloons and a sign to the "woods"...


Some of the treats were displayed on these cool tree slices/wood slabs which you can get here.


My contribution to the dessert table was, of course, these teddy bear, honey jar, and picnic basket cookies.


All the little bear guests got their own copy of Teddy Bears' Picnic, a honey bear bottle filled with gummy bears, and a teddy bear headband. The instructions for the headband can be found on www.tonyastaab.com.


Here's "Lulu Bear" below sporting her teddy bear headband.


Happy Birthday Chloe!


Thursday, December 25, 2014

Merry Christmas!!

It's been super busy the last few months so I haven't had much time to post a lot of cookie photos but here are some of the Christmas cookies I did this last month.

Elf on a Shelf Cookies - I wanted to give them blue eyes, blush and a little red bottom lip but unfortunately ran out of time!


And for Santa, a Santa Sweater Cookie with Christmas tree and candy cane:


Luckily we were good this year and the big guy stopped by last night. Don't these look official? I was looking for gift tags with an authentic feel - not just a santa photo - and finally found these from www.hellobee.com which you can download here.






Monday, September 22, 2014

Frozen Cookies - Take Two

I did some Frozen cookies of Elsa and Anna a while back and was not very happy with the result. I'm not that good at doing faces on cookies and can't paint so when my sister asked me to do Frozen cookies, I was happy to give them another shot. I tried adding some snowflakes in the background with luster dust but it didn't really work for me. I guess it's time to buy an airbrush! Anyway, I think they look a lot better this time around but I was bummed that I forgot to add the gold detail to Anna's shirt.


Here was my first attempt at Frozen's Elsa and Anna: 




Saturday, May 17, 2014

Wizard of Oz Cookies

We're off to see the Wizard...

Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow Cookies


Ruby Slipper Cookies



Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Where the Wild Things Are Max Cookies

One of my first attempts at sugar cookies was doing crown and sailboat cookies for my son's first birthday party, which was a Where the Wild Things Are theme. Check it out here. 

We've come a long way Max...



Babar Cookies