Okay friends, I'm here late Saturday night to share the projects that we made for Brady and Parker's joint birthday party tomorrow. Brady has been SUPER interested in Super Mario lately. I don't know how it came about though Dustin is a huge Mario fan so that could be it. (WARNING: VERY LONG POST!)
When we decided to have a Mario party, I figured that I would have to special order a bunch of stuff off of the internet. However, we decided to try to save some money and do things ourselves. So, I Googled Mario birthday parties and found the BEST BLOG EVER!! It's called
Cool Party Blog and this gal has the BEST ideas for do it yourself parties that are just AMAZING!! I would LOVE to go to one of her parties, but this lady knows how to party! She HAS to be the cool mom from class where the kids look forward to her parties all year!
First up, I made her
Yoshi Loot Bags. Though the directions aren't too hard, these bags were a horrible pain to make! I started WAY too late and had to go to a bunch of different stores to try to find this lime green party bag to be the base. Well, the party store was out both times I checked. No other stores had this color in the right size so I had to settle for these bags from Michael's that are too small for the template. So, Dustin had to reduce the template to 93% after tons to playing with it and it worked. Inside, we put a bunch of fun little party favors from the Dollar Tree.
Next up, I made Cool Party Blog's
Mario and Luigi party hats for all the kids. Now, she was able to find reversible red and green poster board and make her hats reversible. I was not. Funny story, I DID find reversible red and BLUE poster board and in a moment of insanity, I thought "PERFECT! Red for Mario, blue for Luigi!" Well, on the way home, I remembered that Luigi wears GREEN! Whoops!
Then I later decided that the red poster board wasn't quite RED enough, so I used card stock instead. MISTAKE! I used Gina K pure luxury card stock. That's how much I love my kids, I'm willing to sacrifice my super nice card stock for them. Well, the issue is that this amazing card stock is TOO thick and not pliable enough for hats. So, if you want to make these, FIND the poster board in the right shade of red. (NOTE: They do not have the right shade of red at Target, Walmart, or Joann!) ;) To the left, is the adorable Parker modeling the Mario hat.
Here's Brady modeling the Luigi hats. Doesn't he look happy and so grateful I spent all that time making these hats for him and his friends? ;) These were made out of the nice poster board I found at Michael's and they were SO much easier to score and fold. Especially since you need to score a curve into the hats so that they can mold around a person's head. These are made with elastic bands on the back. They kind of look like visors. They fit everyone, even my GIANT noggin!
Ok, the next project evolved over time. Originally, Dustin was thinking that we should have question mark boxes for party favors. However, I decided (for some crazy reason) that I didn't want to print, cut, score and assemble 12 cubes all by myself. Then, we thought about just making them and setting them around the room as decorations. THEN I got a lightbulb moment!
Have you ever played Super Mario? Well, Mario finds these question mark boxes and he gets all sorts of fun things out of them like one up mushrooms, coins, fire flowers, etc... So, my thought was TREATS should come out of the box! A pinata!! I can't take credit for any of the making of this pinata other than the idea. Dustin made it for the boys.
Dustin took the box our new rice cooker came in and turned it inside out. He painted it yellow and printed out question marks. He glued them to the box. Then he cut out a "trap door" into the bottom of the box. One of the ribbons is tied to the trap door. The other ribbons are just tucked into the box. One lucky child will pull the trap door ribbon and all the candy will come pouring out...we hope! Here's Dustin wearing his Official Nintendo Mario hat and modeling the box.
So, the party is tomorrow at lunch time. I hope it goes well. Have a great Sunday everyone!
Hello friends! I hope you are doing well! I'm tired today, I didn't get home until 3am. But the movie was worth it! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. :) 
Ok, and now here's my vintage-y, masculine kind of card. I know, right? Didn't think you had it in me, did you? Isn't this a completely different look? It's with the SAME kit! I did "dirty" it up a little bit though. I took the newspaper, distressed it and then inked the edges with some black ink from my stash. Then I took one of the gold doilies and painted it some Mocha Latte 
