Corbyn's Birthday: Party

I had fun throwing a Mario party for Corbyn's birthday. Since we don't live by family anymore, I'm only throwing one party per kid per year. This one had a lot of little details that took a long time, so it was a really good thing I was only throwing one party! 

We decided to have his party the day before his birthday right after he got home from school.

(I bought a big pack of Mario clipart on Etsy for like $2 and I used it to make the invitations and so many other things for the party.)

I ordered Princess Peach hats for Peyton and Kinley and made Mario hats for the boys out of red foam visors and sticky white foam. I thought I'd be able to cut out the M on my Silhouette, but the sticky foam was too think, so I cut them by hand.

We started the party out with some refreshments. For drinks we had Mario and Luigi Juice. I made the straws using this Chomp Plant Heads file. I cut them out (again by hand) and taped them to green straws.

For a cake we had mini mushroom cupcakes.

Then we played Pin the Mustache on Mario. I printed out a big Mario at FedEx Office and I cut the Mario mustaches on my Silhouette using this official Mario mustache released by Nintendo. 

I had purchased some sticky Mario Mustaches for the boys and after they took their turn pinning the mustache on Mario, we had them put them on. Unfortunately they were really itchy, so they pulled them off right after taking this picture. I wanted to get a picture of all the boys, but only got one of these 4 - Kingston Yates, Corbyn, Emery Martyn, and Sebastian Locker (not pictured - Owen Sullivan and Chayse Yates).

 

At this point we attempted an obstacle course. It didn't go exactly as I had imagined/hoped, but it was still fun. I got most of my ideas for the obstacle course from here, here, and here. First they went through this "Warp Tube" (borrowed from a friend).

Then they had to weave through the "Piranha Plants" (I cut green noodles in half, threaded a red dot balloon through the hole in the noodle, and used skewers to stick the noodles into the grass).

After that they had to "Stomp on a Goomba". (I cut the faces out of vinyl scraps on my Silhouette using this template as a guide for the shapes and super glued black plates to the bottom for the feet. These were a labor of love and I was so happy with how they turned out.)

Next they went down the slide into the brick wall. (The brick wall was also quite the labor of love! I ordered a bunch of 8"x8"x8" boxes, printed off bricks from these printable block templates, cut them out, and glued them onto the boxes. I made 16 bricks and covered 5 sides of the boxes, so do the math - that's 80 bricks I had to cut out and glue on! I was also very pleased with how these turned out.)

Then it was time for the final battle with Bowser. I ordered Rog a Bowser costume on Amazon and (SPOILER ALERT!) it's going to make another appearance at Halloween.

The "Fireballs" were tennis balls covered in red, orange, and yellow plastic tablecloth squares.

At this point, some of the boys were dying to play Super Mario (the actual video game), so we let them go up and play for a few minutes while the rest of the kids gathered "Gold Coins" (gold dessert plates) on the tramp.

We ended the party with a Star Pinata.

For favors the boys got a Mario cup, a Mario Kart fruit snack, a Mario pencil, gold coins, a Mario skateboard keychain, and homemade Mario tattoos (made with leftover temporary tattoo paper from Peyton's party). 

And the girls got Princess Peach rings, homemade Princess Peach tattoos, gold coins, a Mario pencil, and a glow stick wand.

After the party we had some pizza with the Yates (Corbyn's request) and then they took the kids home with them for date night swap. We had ambitiously planned on going to the temple, but weren't feeling up to it, so we just used the time to clean up from the party and get stuff ready for Corbyn's birthday the next day. (Banner from here.)

It was a fun party for our Mario boy!