Accidentally Crafty: January 2014

It's been a while! And I got older!

2013 was the year of my 30th birthday and I wanted to go big. I was pretty excited to turn 30 and I figured it would be fun to have a Super Mario Bro. themed party. Not just any party, but a costume party! I love dressing up! We asked people to come as their favorite game character, Mario or any other game. And of course, I wanted to be Princess Peach. Instead of getting an actual costume, I was all for dressing similarly so I could wear a dress for than once. Add some Star earrings, a turquoise necklace, and a crown and I was all set! I have to admit, the crown didn't last long. Find the crown on etsy here: Princess Peach Crown We had board game characters, Link from Zelda, a gangster from Grand Theft Auto, Codex from The Guild, another Princess, Luigi and others!

Unfortunately I lost the photos of creating the decorations, but I do have a few of the finished projects. I will reference all the sights I used for the ideas that I found. Thank you Pinterest!

My Pinterest Super Mario birthday board

First things, first: The invitation:

If you've seen my Pinterest board or researched a Mario party, you have probably noticed how many different invitations you can do! I wanted something really specific, not too childish, and a little retro and finally found this etsy seller for my invitation. I love it!!

Secondly: The decorations!

The best thing I made was a Piranha Plant coming out of the tube. I looked at a few sights for inspiration and made this. The tube is just a cement tube you can get from Lowes or Home Depot. I cut it to the size I wanted and covered it with green duct tape. I think it turned out nicely! The stalk is a wrapping paper tube covered with the duct tape again and I also added duct tape leaves. For the Piranha Plant, instead of paper mâché or other ways I saw to make it, I actually found a plastic planter pot shaped closely enough and painted it! Fill with atomic fireballs and done!

This was the inspiration for craft idea, done much differently but great!

The other item was a pixellated mushroom to hang on the wall. Obviously, the size depends on how big you cut the square pieces. I just googled mushroom, found the one I wanted, and counted the number of squares for each color. I'm sure there could have been a better/easier way to do it, but I taped all the pieces together and then hung it with the tape on the back.

I also found a gold star piñata at Party City and filled with gold coins, rolos, and Reece's mini peanut butter cups. Sadly, we never got to breaking the piñata, so I just had to eat all that candy myself! :) It took me a while.

Not pictured - a few balloon ghosts and a chain chomp ball that I painted. Found the ball and chain at Dollar Tree! I made the fire flower shown here, but the page is no longer there. Just found a silk Gerber daisy at Michael's and glued a white circle with the colored eyes on top. Simple!

Lastly: (And most importantly!) The Food and Drink:

This is where I had a lot of fun with Pinterest and being creative. I really wanted a punch to serve, along with some soft drinks. Other than that, it was BYOB. So I made a Princess Peach punch. I looked up a lot of recipes, but I didn't like having to do too much to it, but I ended up with this: 2 liter Sierra Mist, 2 bottles Simply Orange with Mango, and a little can of peach nectar. I mixed it to taste, not using all of the two bottles of orange juice. It tasted good, but it was very sweet.

One of the things I found on Pinterest and really wanted to do was the Fire Flower veggie tray. The original veggie tray is here. I don't like tomatoes or radishes, but I LOVE bell peppers. Red, orange and yellow placed around the ranch. Also, I like the dip ability of strips instead of chunks. We had hummus on the side because bell peppers and hummus is delicious!

Also, these Piranha plant fruit skewers! Quite fun and tasty! I have the pin on my board, but there is no page reference. I may have pinned it from a google search... They were easy to make, albeit messy and sticky. But definitely a fan favorite.

I also made some easy Toad pops with marshmallows dipped in red melting chocolate. I saw more finished ideas on a few sites, but I went for simple and delicious. This is the site for those. They are super cute but I ran out of time. Definitely take a look at their toad pops for decoration style.

We had quite a bit of candy and I tried to match it all to something within the world of Mario. So we had Caramels stacked to look like blocks, "Princess" peach rings, Milk duds acting as Goombas, Whoppers standing in for B-Bombs, and hard fish candies for Cheep Cheeps.

While shopping for food for the party, we also came across some Super Mario gummy fruit snacks! I couldn't help myself.

Not shown: Goldfish (Cheep Cheeps, again), cheese blocks, and a tray of nuggets (because we needed some protein!).

Bear (my husband) did a wonderful job on getting the cake from a local bakery. It was delicious.

We had two Wii systems set up for games with Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Super Mario Bros. Wii. We love board games, too, so we had a few fun group games to play. All in all, it was a great 30th birthday with awesome friends!