The boy's birthday party happened. It was loads of fun. And we all survived.
I think this may have been one of the cheapest birthday parties we have ever held. We played Mario Kart. That was it.
We had two tvs set up in our family room, with two wiis, a total of six controllers, and two copies of Mario Kart. We borrowed both the Mario Karts and one wii with two remotes. I bought two extra knock-off wii remotes on Amazon for very little money. Those two remotes were my biggest expense and we will use them for the foreseeable future. Nearly everything from the invitations to the party favors came out of supplies we had on hand.
The cake. It was lemon, per the boy's request. One cake mix. Two thin 8 inch layers and then a layer baked in a pyrex bowl. We still had the mushroom from Eliot's last Mario party. I wonder where that star and red mushroom went.... The chocolate coins, while tasty, were really added to camouflage my lackluster attempt at icing.
Behind the cake you can see the goodie bags. Red lunch sacks with a big M and a Mario mustache drawn on. What would I do without Sharpies? In front of each sack is a fake fur mustache with double-sticky tape, just waiting to attack some small child's upper lip. Also in the bags were more chocolate coins (thank you, Aldi), a Mario music CD mix and a stuffed Mario star.
No pattern here - I just drew it free-hand and sewed it from yellow fleece. I traced the shape onto the fleece, sewed the layers together, and then cut them out. Much less fiddly sewing. The eyes should have been satin stitched, but I ran out of time, and I know 8 year old boys don't care.
And to complete the whole Mario look - hats. I used this tutorial and they went together very fast. And were stinkin' cute.
We were happy, the guests were happy, our budget was happy, and most of all... the boy was happy. That's birthday party success in my book.
Tomorrow.... peeks at Christmas gifts. But only peeks.
