Carter's Birthday

"da, da, da,.. da di, da...da..."  

Yes, ladies and gentleman, that, my friends, is the Super Mario Brothers theme song.  Or should I say, the new Madura Family theme song.  It is heard CONSTANTLY throughout our home.  We don't have a Wii.  We don't have a DS.  We only have old-fashioned internet.  And with only 30-minute potential playtime per day, you wouldn't think we hear it as much as we do.  At any given moment, this fine ditty is being sung, hummed, or the tune to new lyrics of whatever we are doing -- calling your brothers and sisters to dinner, for example.  I learned to play it on the piano so now the kids role-play Mario as I play.  We burned it onto a CD (great pick up toys motivator), and if that's not enough, it's still ringing in our heads from the LAST time it was sung.

For Mom, this whole Mario craze is a bit much.  But for a boy who was turning 6, it was the perfect segue into his perfect party.

The Invitations:  Who knew you could download the Super Mario Brothers Font!  Loved it!...Guests pulled the star out for the party details written on the back.  We invited 11 kids.

The Goodie Bags: Dag nabit!  I will never live down that I didn't take the picture I wanted before the kids came...I made these cute Yoshi goodie bags for the kids to collect their prizes.  Since I didn't get a pic of mine (dag nabit!) here's the source where I got the idea:

The Mario Disguises:  I also made Mario hats for each kid out of craft foam visors from Michaels and white craft foam with a stenciled out M.  And much thanks to Grandma and sticky-back felt, we also had GREAT mustaches!  (...see their yoshi bags?)

As the kids arrived, they each posed for their own Mario portrait (to be used later as 'Thank You' cards..."Wii had such a fun time at Carter's 6th Birthday Party" ... clever...).

Then they went outside to play with what we'd surprised Carter with just before the party.

"Carter, come see what's outside for your party!"

 

Pure shock and excitement to see a monstrous Castle Bounce House in our back yard!!!  King Koopa's Castle:  Carter's expression to see the bounce house in our back yard was priceless!  We didn't tell him about it beforehand -- partly because we are fun like that, and mostly because the forecast was 43 degrees with 70% chance of rain.  We didn't want to have tears of disappointment -- you understand.  THANK YOU to our friends who just happened to ask if we wanted to borrow it!

And can you believe it?  14 kids all at once and NO INJURIES or TEARS!  Just lots of smiles!

 

We were SOOO lucky that it didn't rain!!!  THANK YOU THANK YOU!  And 43 degrees really wasn't so bad with a sweatshirt and all that jumping!

Mario Bingo: We rounded 'em up for a few rounds of Mario Bingo, complete with prizes for each as they got bingo.  I printed the cards from here.

Super Coin Jump:  The kids jumped on a mini trampoline to grab gold coins taped to the ceiling.  They were racing as a team to get them all down before the Mario theme song was all over (which, by the way, you can download the Mario theme song here.)

Which, of course, would have been somewhat more productive,  yet not nearly as funny, had we not put them up so high ... (for the record, Steve had them perfect, but I thought they were too low so we changed it right before the party...go figure!)

So Steve ended up hoisting the kids up mid jump to grap the coins.  What a sport!!!

Hot-potato Bomb-Omb:  Yep...the character in Super Mario Brothers that is a walking bomb that blows up every so often.  It was a party game waiting to happen.

Yoshi Egg-Toss:  Now this was awesome :)  Steve's Mom and I blew out raw eggs for each kid and restuffed the shell with confetti!  3 eggs had gold stars in them to be winner eggs.  

They threw them against the wall at Mario.  Of course, throwing them against Bowser or some other bad-guy character would have been better, but this was the only guy I could get to print up larger than an 8 1/2 x 11 (I printed it as a poster at Costco, and is now one of Carter's new favorite bedroom decorations.  Downloadable here)

Yes, of COURSE confetti and egg shell went everywhere.  Yes, the blue cloth helped a little, but it was WORTH the mess, and the vacuum got it all up easily.

Gold Coin Search:  We threw 3 bags of mini rolos all over the back yard.  They ran and hunted and loved it.

 The Yoshi Egg Pinata: This was Steve's thing.  Every night he'd come home from work and add another layer of paper mache to the egg.  What a mother bird :)
It was the PERFECT strength for these kids! 

The Mario Cake: Yes, made by yours truly, with my second-ever attempt using fondant (the first being 5 years ago when my friend JaNae of Cake Flair showed me how).  It was a rainbow cake on top and a double chocolate cake below. 

I have a thing for these AWESOME sparkler candles, but I think I forgot to ask how Carter would feel about it!

 

But the fear didn't last too long!!!

 

 If I may, my favorite part of the cake was the pirana plant.

See how cute!!!!

OK, I'm done.

But I do love this cake!

 Two things I would do again at every birthday party: 

1. After the kids sang happy birthday and blew out the candles (and recovered from the sparkler) we took the cake into the kitchen to dish up while Carter opened his presents!  It was SO smooth!  Why didn't we ever do that before!  Now the kid who gets cake first is still eating his piece when the last kid gets his piece!  and 
2. We dished up the ice cream into individual muffin cups before hand (the foil kind).  It sped up the whole ice cream thing immensely, then was easy for the kids to choose which flavor they wanted.

It was a perfect birthday party.  Exhausting -- yes -- but perfect and memorable -- absolutely!

On his actual birthday, Carter took these Mario Mushrooms to class.

They are jumbo sized marshmallows dipped in Wilton's Candy Melt, with edible sugar pearls on top, poked onto a lollipop stick.  I LOVED being in the class to see how much the kids loved them!

And for his actual birthday day, our dear friend let us borrow her Wii so Carter could play the REAL Mario Brothers.

NOTHING could have made his day better.

 Nothing.

Happy Birthday, Carter!  We sure do love you!