Saturday, August 28, 2010

Pokemon Party (Adam's 9th Birthday)

So Adam's 9Th Birthday was about 3 weeks ago (yes I know, it took me long enough to post this) and here is what I did for his party. I hope this gives you some good ideas for a Pokemon party because when I was first searching for ideas for a Pokemon party I couldn't find much.

The Party Games:

Pin the tail on Pikachu
For this game I did some searching online for pictures of Pikachu. I found this one of him standing with his backside facing you and him looking over his shoulder and I thought it was perfect for "Pin the tail on Pikachu". So I drew the image on to a poster board and then painted it. Then I painted the tail white so the kids would know where to put the tails but make it look like his tail was missing.

Here's a couple pictures of the kids playing.




Spoink Race ( sorry about the wrinkled state of my posters but I forgot to take pictures of them until the day after the party)
For the Spoink Race game the kids were divided into two groups. They were supposed to take a pink balloon and rub it on their heads (to work up a static cling) and then race over to a big bucket with the balloon on their head (using no hands to hold the balloon). Once they got to the bucket they would take the balloon off of their heads and put it in the bucket and then run back to their team and then the next person would go. This didn't work out so well for the boys. Because of their short hair they couldn't get any static cling, sooo.... we just ended up having the kids putting the balloons in between their knees and walking over to the buckets (sorry I didn't get any pictures of the kids playing this game).



Pokeball Hunt
For this game I bought a bunch of ping pong balls on ebay and then used a red and black sharpie to color them to look like pokeballs. Then I hid them all over the house (think Easter egg hunt) and had the kids find them. Whoever found the most pokeballs won a prize.




Here are my ping pong pokeball masterpieces. :)







Pikachu Stomp
I found these Pokemon tattoos at Oriental Trading Co. It was like less than $5 for 72 tattoos. So I filled a bunch of balloons with air and put one tattoo in each balloon. I made sure that I only used one pikachu tattoo. Then I had the kids stomp on the balloons to pop them. Whoever popped the balloon with the pikachu tattoo inside of it won a prize. This game was cool because even if you didn't win you still got to keep the pokemon tattoos that were in the balloons.






Here are the kids trying to pop the balloons.




Pokemon Bingo
Another game that I did was Pokemon Bingo. Sorry I didn't get any pictures. I was too busy being Bingo caller. But anyways I found these printable Pokemon Bingo cards online at http://www.dltk-cards.com/bingo/bingo1.asp



The Party Decor:
My awesome hubby helped me with the decorations.

He painted these... (piplup & charazard)


and this... (turtwig)


and this... (squirtle)



and this! (chimchar)



I drew and painted these. The pokemon characters were painted on cardboard and the birthday sign, pokeballs and lightning bolts were painted on big sheets of paper.










Goody Bags
I bought white lunch bags and then printed out coloring pages of my son's favorite pokemon characters. I cut out the coloring pages and glued them to the bags before the party. Then the kids got to pick a bag and color it at the party. This served as another party activity for the kids and then when they were done coloring they got to use them for their goody bags.

This is the Pikachu table centerpiece that I made. I painted Pikachu onto a piece of foambaord and then cut him out. Then I painted a wooden dowel black and stuck it into the bottom of Pikachu. For the base I paper mache'd a ball shape, cut the top off and then decorated it to look like a pokeball. Then I put styrofoam inside the pokeball and pushed the wooden dowel into the styrofoam. Then to cover up the styrofoam I stuck colored tissue paper in the pokeball. I had bought these swirly lolipops at Oriental Trading Co. for Adam's party and decided they would look cute sticking out of the centerpiece. So I just stuck the lolipops in the styrofoam too. And voila! there he is!


And here's the back.


Guess how many Caterpie?
There is this pokemon called a Caterpie that looks kinda like a worm. So I bought this little glass jar, filled it with gummy worms and printed out a little "guess how many caterpie" sign for it. Then I placed a little bowl next to it and little sheets next to it. I had everyone write their names and how many caterpie they thought were in the jar on the paper fold it up and put it in the bowl. Whoever had the closest guess to the actual amount got to keep the jar with the caterpie in it.


Pikachu Pinata:
I paper mache'd 2 balloons, cut the bottoms off and then paper mache'd them together. Then I added some ears, arms, feet & a tail. Then I decorated it with tissue paper and printed out a face and glued it on a Taa Daa! You have yourself a Pikachu pinata.









The Cake:
Chocolate fudge cake covered in chocolate ganache and then covered in fondant. Pokemon characters are had sculpted out of fondant.

The pokeball on top was made by baking a cake in a ball pan (made by Wilton). Then frosted in chocolate ganache and covered in fondant.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Mario Bros Party (Shane's 5th Birthday)

So Shane's 5Th Birthday was a big success. I was really happy with how everything all came together and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves.


The Invitations:
I found an image of the 1 Up mushroom online and also a Mario picture that I liked. Then I used a photo editing program that I have to add the party details to the Mario picture. Then I downloaded the images to Vista Print (they always have great deals) and made the 2 images into a folded style invitation. The original prints that I got in the mail from Vista print were rectangle shaped with white space around the images so I just cut around the 1 Up mushroom to make these look the way I wanted them to.
















The Decor:
For the decorations I got some big pieces of cardboard and hand drew, handpainted and then hand cut the Mario Bros characters. My husband was sweet enough to paint the blocks that Mario and Luigi are jumping on for me. I don't know if you can tell but the blocks were made out of thin boxes so they are actually popping off the wall while Mario and Luigi are both flat.



The first time I ordered the invites from Vista Print I put the wrong date on them so I had to re-order new ones. I had all these extra ones sitting around so instead of letting them go to waste I decided to cut out the 1 Up mushrooms and tape them onto to green party string to make a garland.





The Party Favors:
One of the party favors I had was Mario and Luigi Hats and mustaches. At first I tried buying plain white hats and dying them green. I read on another website that someone had done this for their child's Mario Party. Well this did not work for me I tried dying the hats 2 different times and they would not get darker than a pale green. So I found some plain red & green hats at Walmart for $2.50 a piece (more expensive than the white but at least they were the right color). Then I bought some white, red & green felt and cut out the 3/4 cirlces and M's and L's and sewed them onto to the hats. I bought the mustaches on ebay for about $2 (or less?) for 12 mustaches. Put them together and Voila! you've got little Mario's and Luigi's running around the house.




Me and my hubby as Mario and Luigi. :-)


These were little 2x2 wedding favor boxes that I found on sale at Oriental Trading Company. Originally they had little silver hearts on them. I went Michaels and bought white and yellow cardstock and then made the question marks on my computer and then printed them out on the white paper. Then I cut the yellow into 2x2 squares and cut the question marks out of the white and glued them both onto the the boxes. Then I filled the boxes with chocolate coins wrapped gold foil.
For the favor bags I just googled Mario character coloring pages and printed them out and glued them to white paper lunch bags.

Then I let the kids color them while we were waiting for everyone to arrive.




The Games:

I found all of the pictures for my game signs online then added the titles to them and printed them out.

Knock the Goomba off his pipe:

I hand sewed the goomba for this game (I know his head is kinda crooked). Then my dear sweet hubby made the pipe that he sits on out of cardboard and he also sewed the balls for me. The kids had to throw the balls at the Goomba and try to knock him off his pipe.
Mario Coin Stomp:
For the Mario Coin Stomp game I put a plastic gold coin in each balloon and then I told the kids they had to pop the balloons and collect as many coins out of them as the could. The kid that got the most coins won a prize.
Mario Obstacle Course:
I made a little obstacle course for the kids to do in the backyard (please ignore my patchy lawn). LOL For the obstacle course the kids had to jump over the Mario blocks (or run around them if they were to small to jump) them run back and forth around all of the goombas. Then crawl through the mario pipe...
Then grab a water balloon out of a bucket and throw it at Bowser. Eveyone who participated got a peice of candy.
Yoshi Egg Smash:

I saw this game on another party blog. It's called "Yoshi Egg Smash". I hollowed out a bunch of eggs before the party and filled most of them with paper confetti and only a few with gold star confetti. Then I covered the holes in the eggs with tissue paper. Then I gave each kid a few eggs and they got to throw them at Yoshi and smash open. If their egg was one of the ones with gold stars in it they won a prize.



Pin the Nose on Mario:

Just like Pin the Tail on the Donkey but with a Mario missing a nose instead of a Donkey missing a tail. I painted Mario's face and noses on posterboard and then cut them out for this game.


Boo Pinata:

I forgot to take a picture of Boo before the kids before kids started beating on him. Here is he is getting beat, doesn't he look scared? LOL I made the Pinata with paper mache. Then covered him in tissue paper and printed out his face and glued that on.








The Prizes:
I found these cute little Yoshi's on ebay and gave them out for prizes. They came in a rainbow of colors. Too cute and the kids loved them.




The Cake:
I also made his cake. The top of the Pirahna Plant is a stryofoam ball cut and then covered in fondant. The stem is a wooden dowel that is covered in fondant. The cake itself is chocolate fudge cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream. The cake is covered in fondant and all of the accents are hand sculpted out of fondant.<>