Planning a Super Mario Brothers themed birthday party in one day (the day before the party) was a lot harder than I expected! Yes...I should have made all the details a couple of weeks in advance. Cut me some slack. Oliver's birthday was December 28th. What was I doing 2 weeks prior? I was getting Christmas ready! When he said Mario party, I thought, 'no problem, I can get that theme at any of the party supply stores.' Wrong! You can only order online! So one day before the party (because before that we were doing Christmas out of town), I ran around to everywhere I could think of! This is what I came up with.
First, I ran to Toys R Us to get table decorations. I grabbed all the Super Mario Brothers figurines I could find. We got Toad Stool, Mario, Donkey Kong and Yoshi. Last year Oli had a Thomas the Train party (much easier to buy supplies and favors for) and we had an expensive cardboard table decoration. He kept it for almost a year. I figure these cute action figures would get more play and hold up much better.
I also got a 6 pack of small figurines and decorated Oli's cake with them. Yes...I made the cake!
The next stop was the party supply store. I grabbed a red and a green tablecloth. Originally I wanted a Mario table and a Luigi table, but the tables were bigger than I expected and I had to use both on the one table. I was worried that it would look to Christmasy, considering red and green 3 days after Christmas.
I also needed to get party favors for 17 kids. I almost flipped out when I finally did find something Mario related! But $3 for one thing of Mario candy X (times) 17 kids flipped me out even more! I grabbed red cellaphane bags for the favors and was on a mission to find gold chocolate coins to decorate cupcakes and to put in the treat bags. What I found was too big, so I had to figure something else out for affordable favors. I then remembered that we had recently gotten Mario fruit snacks. I ran to Walmart and grabbed 4 boxes of fruit snacks, some packages of Mario trading cards and some hershey kisses for the treat bags. I also got a pack of cardstock. Since I was making cupcakes and couldn't find the gold coins, I thought I could find some characters to print out online and tape to a toothpick to decorate the cupcakes.
When I got home and started putting the treat bags together, I noticed that the fruit snack boxes had several small characters pictured and framed in boxes. PERFECT! "Honey! Cut these out!" Eli was on the job! He cut those faces out and taped them to the toothpicks. We were ready to decorate those cupcakes!
The party went well! Oli and his friends had a blast! Next year...mental note...4 table cloths and get decorations 2 weeks prior! I had so much fun putting it together though and thinking outside of the mainstream party favor box! Why do we need party plates that have a character's face on them? Oli didn't even care that his plates were plain red! He loved his figurines and his cake! He loved his party and his friends and he loved all of his presents!
Happy Birthday my big boy!!!
I love it! So awesome that mommy and daddy rallied to make sure the Oli got his Mario wish. Looks like everything was completely adorable!
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