We’re actually doing this party for my husband’s birthday, just a tiny celebration for the four of us this time. Its amazing how easily the ideas flowed today, and how quickly things went together. Maybe its that I’m not secretly stressed about other kids moms thinking I’m an insufficient parent ;-p

Anyway, as long as the creative juices are on tap, I figured I’d share a round with you:

Bubble Blowing Contest

Need I say more? For younger kids, just set out a bubble blower and let them go to town.

Musical Jellyfish

Use throw pillows instead of chairs. There’s a sponge bob episode where he jams with the jellyfish for a while. This would be ideal music.

A meal fit for Neptune

Dollar menu hamburgers

Sundaes with a variety of toppings

Sponge Bob Square Pants Crispie Treats

You’ll need:
• Items needed for your favorite rice crispie recipe (Save a few marshmallows to make glue)
• Yellow food coloring paste
• Red shoestring licorice
• White Airheads taffy (Mystery flavor)
• Blue Airheads taffy (Blue raspberry I think)
• Chocolate Chips
• 13×9 cake pan

Roll the taffy into thin, flat pieces. Cut out circles for eyes and white squares for buck teeth. You’ll want to use a little melted marshmallow to fix the blue irises to the white eyes.

Dye a batch of rice crispie treats bright yellow (add the dye as the marshmallows are melting). Press most of the mixture into a buttered cake pan, and cut score lines where you’ll be cutting the treats. Roll some of the mixture into a ‘rope’ ,cut off pieces for sponge bob noses, and push one into each treat.

Using a little frosting or a few melted marshmallows, attach the eyes, cut pieces of red licorice for the mouth and freckles; attach teeth. And then add chocolate chip pupils. If you wanted to, you could use black shoestring licorice for eyelashes too. Put each spongebob in a treat bag so it doesn’t dry out and get nasty.

You could probably convert this idea into a cake quite easily, too. I’d use a yellow mix and slice the top crust and edges off, and brush with a thin clear glaze. You’d probably have to draw the nose with decorator gel though, and outline the eyes as well.

Spongebob Square Pants Piñata

You’ll need:
• White paper
• Sharpie markers in red and black. If you have olive green for his spots, perfect.
• Light blue crayon, marker colored pencil, or sharpie
• A glue stick
• Scissors
• Two solid yellow gift bags with handles (Same size, medium or large depending on your party)
• Clear tape (Packing tape works)
• Filler candy & toys
  • Ideas: Bubble gum (reminiscent of the Bubble Buddy episode), gummy crabby patties, sponge bob fruit snacks, jelly bracelets, Swedish fish, chocolate coins

  Decorate one bag as spongebob’s face. For mine, I traced circles for eyes, drew an oval over it for a nose, and circles for cheeks. I added detail, cut the eyes like so, pasted them to the bag, and markered in the facial features. Bear in mind, this doesn’t have to look perfect. The kids are going to be breaking it to pieces anyway.

  

  Cutting out Spongebob shaped eyes

  

  Now you have two bags, with one of them decorated like sponge bob

  Cut the handles off the undecorated bag for the bottom of the piñata. Fill it with candy, etc. Carefully slide the bag with Sponge Bob on it over the filled bag.

  

  Slide Spongebobs face over the bottom half of the pinata

  

  Finished Sponge Bob Square Pants Pinata!

  Turn the whole thing right side up and tape it into place. If your kids are older and tougher, or if the bags are large enough that they’d be a little weak, add extra tape for reinforcement so the piñata will be harder to break. Hang it up by the handles, and that’s it!

  And finally…

  Stand up tall, put on a big cheesy SpongeBob Squarepants grin, and shout “I’m READY!”

A variety of Mario Brothers Mushroom cupcakes

Update: Our party was a smashing success, and dozens of other parents have posted their stories too! Also, there are finally some cute mario party supplies to help supplement these ideas. If you need the supplies you can support this page at the same time by ordering them here.

My son turns six this month and would like to have a Mario Party Party. It’s a fun idea really, but I’ve noticed that mario birthday party supplies and favors are a bit hard to find. (Not anymore!)

So this time around in addition to posting my ideas as to what worked and what didn’t, I realized I could check with you! Here’s what I’ve got so far:

(I’m updating as I come up with ideas, and there are tons of other mario party ideas readers posted in the comments below!)

• Mushroom cupcakes made with red icing and white candy spots or orange frosting and red candy — or green frosting with white, for that matter — maybe all of them? Let the kids decorate?
• Ice Cream shaped like a star using a star shaped cake pan
• Star shaped mylar balloons for party favors – just add eyes! I gold star shaped mylar balloons, 20″ across for 99 cents here, or you can get a 3′ star shaped mylar balloon for $2.99 . These also make excellent additions to any mario-themed costume
• Chocolate (Or bubblegum) coin hunt
• Pizza – oh and set the table with a red/white checked tablecloth
• Mini Games (haven’t figured out which ones yet but stuff like a beanbag toss, frisbee throw, etc. would probably work – I should go play mario party with the kids for more ideas)
• Yoshi Egg Piñata
• Mushroom Invitations (pattern posted below)

I did find some red newsboy/cabbie caps that’d be adorable on the kids. A bit over (my) budget for mario birthday party favors but it’d be fun for someone I’m sure. Maybe I could make some out of .. I dunno, foam visors and fabric? who knows

So anyway.. If you’re looking for mario party ideas for your kid, there are a few, and if you’ve got some I’ve not thought of, please feel free to contribute.

Old School Mario Mushroom

There are some cute Mario Birthday Party invitations available now along with favors and other party supplies, but if you want to make your own, here’s the pattern I made for our party. These look like the 8-bit mushrooms you might remember from Super Mario Brothers. Print caps.pdf on orange, red, or green cardstock. Paint the spots.

Print stems.pdf on white cardstock, and then print envelope.pdf on goldenrod 4.25×6.25 envelopes.

Cut out the caps and stems. Fold forward along the dotted line on the cap to form a tab to glue the stem to the mushroom cap. Let the glue dry first, then put the cards in a heavy book to get their folds crisp.

You could do the same thing with a smoother mushroom look, but I think the 8 bit pixelated thing is a bit fun and unexpected. Enjoy!

Chain Chomp Pinata idea by Heather & Joe - this is awesome!

Vinyl Mario Peel & Stick Wall Stickers - out of my price range but SO COOL!

And I totally love these wall stickers. I can’t afford them, but if I could I would totally turn my apartment’s living room with it’s nearly black wall into World 3-1, and then it’d be like having a Mario Party every day!

Have fun at your Mario Party!

Castle in the Clouds Birthday Cake.

For this cake, you’ll need

- A cake mix (I used betty crocker lemon)
- A can of frosting (Again, I used lemon; you can use strawberry or food color your frosting according to your princess’s tastes!)
- Ice-cream cups
- Ice cream cones
- Pink icing that comes in a tube (or whatever color your princess likes)
- Cotton Candy for the clouds
- Pillow mints for the castle “stones” – you could also do grey frosting and chocolate rocks!
- Sugar glitter (optional)
- Toothpicks
- Paper or pink fondant for the windows, castle door, and flags

- You’ll need a tiny doll for this cake. There are some adorable polly-pocket style Disney princesses you can get here . Thesedolls come with flexible rubber clothes and tiny removable shoes and crowns, so for a younger princess, you can find some Disney princess figurines here.

I’ve never been talented in the birthday cake decorating arena, so maybe you can imagine my surprise when this cake turned out as cute as it did, especially since it was so easy.

If you’ve got a little princess in need of a castle cake, start by dividing your favorite cake recipe (mine’s Better Crocker Lemon) between a loaf pan and a square pan. To make it easy to get the cakes out whole, you might want to line the bottoms of the pan with cut-to-size parchment paper. We actually used regular paper and just greased it.

After giving both cakes a good crumb coating (How? Microwave about 1/3 cup frosting for 5 seconds & spread a thin layer over everything to keep crumbs at bay) put the square cake on the serving tray and the loaf cake on top, right across the center. If your loaf was a little too long for the square you can safely take a slice right out of the middle, push the ends together, and hold them in place with toothpicks.

I cut most of my decorations out of pink paper. The “trickiest” cut was the castle door, and really that was pretty easy. I took a 3 inch wide strip of paper, folded it in half twice to make guides, took the edges of the paper toward the center, then folded again at the center. Then I just cut the arch out. Check out the picture & this will make more sense. Of course, if you have a different idea for the door you can use it, this was just one easy way…

Then cut out out windows and flags. Be sure the flags are cut on the fold so they’ll wrap around a toothpick. You can “glue” them onto the top of a toothpick using a little icing. To mount the flags, you’ll need to slice the ends off 5 sugar cones, making a hole just wide enough to hold a toothpick.

A few photos of some of the steps - these probably make a lot more sense than the paragraphs explaining them!

Take four ice cream cups and flank them on each side of the loaf cake. Secure them by sticking a toothpick through the bottom of each one. Put one cup upside down, front and center on the loaf. Take your 5 sugar cones and put them upside down on each cup, using a little icing to glue them into place. Thank you LJC (http://ljcfyi.com) for this idea!

Now you just need to mount your flags and add your windows and doors. Add pillow-mint key stones and whatever other decorations you like.

Moments before serving, add clouds by fluffing up some cotton candy with two forks and tucking it around the cake; just note that if you do this step too early, the clouds will melt and look really nasty. I added a tiny doll — this one’s a polly pocket style Cinderella , and candles pointed away from the paper flags… voila! A cake fit for my little princess.

And for the rest of the party, you can find a huge selection of Princess birthday party supplies here… including 99 cent tiaras, pretty princess plates, princess stickers, cello-bags with crowns on them, balloons, costumes, Princess wall-stickers, and even life-size stand up Disney princesses. They even have a stand-up Princess Peach, and a Royal Strawberry Shortcake. Seriously. Every Princess birthday party supply imaginable. Enjoy!