1/21 - Super 6th Mario Birthday Party

First of all, let me say that I cannot believe my teeny little twins are now six (6) years old.  I remember getting a bag of hand-me-down clothes and looking at the size 6 pants and thinking, "They will never be big enough to wear these." And now that time has come.  (sniff!)

OK, moving right along...  Lil' Guy is very into everything Mario Brothers.  A little bit on the Wii, but mostly loves playing with Mario action figures, pretending he's Mario, etc.  Lil' Gal plays along.  It's easier that way.  So, when I asked them what theme we should have for their birthday party, it was merely a courtesy.  I knew how it was going to go.

Thanks to many great ideas from the internet, here's what I did....

Cupcakes for school:

Decorations:

• Mario table topper, borrowed from a neighbor (thank you!)
• Balloons and streamers in red, green, yellow and blue
• Plates and napkins in red, green, yellow and blue
• Pin the Mustache on Mario poster (see Games below)

Food:

• Broken Glass Jello, in Mario colors

• Goomba Meatballs (sadly, I ran out of time to add the faces)
• Spinach Dip with Moo Moo Meadows veggies
• Star Power Cookies

• Toad on a Stick (inspired by these)

• Mario and Luigi (red and green) juice boxes 
• Mario cake and vanilla ice cream (not bad for my first attempt at fondant, no?)

Games:

• Race to collect gold the most coins
  Bag of 400 coins found at Party City.  I gave each kid a paper lunch bag with his/her name on it, and opened the doors to the twins' rooms where the coins were hidden.  The kid with the most coins won a prize.  Everyone got to keep the coins they found.

• Yoshi Egg Race
  I used some Easter eggs on a stick that I found at Michael's, and painted spots on them with green nail polish. The kids lined up in two teams.  Each kid had to run to the end of the room and back and then hand off the egg and spoon to the next kid in line.  The winning team got prizes.

• Pin the Mustache on Mario
  I had this poster printed at 18 x 24" at my local Copymat.  We used black construction paper to cut out mustaches and used blue painter's tape on the back to make them stick.

• Pass the Bob-omb
  I found a styrofoam ball at Michael's and painted him to look like Bob-omb.  The kids sat in a circle and played Hot Potato, passing Bob-omb until the music (Herb Alpert worked nicely) stopped.  Whoever was left holding Bob-omb was out.  The last kid sitting got a prize.  This was the most fun game we played.  The kids pointed and laughed hysterically whenever someone got out.  It was so cute, I almost had them play a second round!

Prizes

• Gold coins
• Mario Kart erasers
• Small gold plastic trophies

Goodie Bags/Favors

• Mario/Luigi posterboard hats

• Mario Kart pens
• Mario Kart stickers
• small notebooks in red, green, yellow, blue
• chocolate gold coins

We had a total of 10 kids, and they had a great time.  It was a delight to host them -- they were polite and literally begging me for more and more games!

Here are the twins, still wearing their hats days later -- now with the addition of mustaches!
(They are still wearing the hats, now two weeks later!)

A super shout-out to my wonderful friends, who came early and hung streamers and a million balloons, made the poster board visors, assembled goodie bags and hid cold coins, and did anything and everything else I asked of them.  Thank you so much for your help and for listening to my story over and over again of how the power went out at 2am while I was up to my ears in fondant and none of the batteries in the flashlights worked.  David, Joanne, and Linda, you guys ROCK.