The Mediocre Mom's Guide to Greatness

Batman Party

Invitation:

My talented husband put together the invitations on Photoshop and I wrote the poem.

We included a Joker card that said I’ll See you there.  This was a little hint that the Joker was going to crash the party.

Activity #1: Super Hero Training Course (AKA obstacle course)

First they climbed over our BIG bean bag.  Then they crawled under the piano bench.  We had a different child pretend to be the Joker and trow my exercise ball at the hero.  Then the hero had to tie up the “joker” and knock down the “brick” (cardboard bricks) wall to save batgirl.

Activity #2: Joker Hunt

When the last hero finished the training course a joker card fell out of the the bricks.  It lead the kids on a treasure hunt around the house.  At the end they found the book “Batman Saves the Day” (enough copies for each child to have one, this was our favor).

Activity #3: Story time

My husband read them the book.  In the book it is Bruce Waynes birthday party and just before the cake is served the Joker crashes the party.  It was PERFECT for what we wanted to do.

Activity #4:  Fight the Joker

Just as the cake was about to be served the Joker (AKA my hubby who happened to dress up as the Joker for the previous Halloween) started laughing his scary laugh and then he came out.  All of the kids (without any cue) instantly attacked him.  Once the Joker had had enough of that it was time for cake and  ice cream.

Cake: Homemade

Growing up I thought that my friends were SO lucky because their moms bought their cakes.  My mom always made mine and now I would never buy a cake.  Homemade just tastes better.

I know how to make my own cake pans (learn more here).  So, I made a bat sign Ice Cream cake with cool whip frosting.  Here’s my TIP take it out of the freezer at least a half hour before you are ready to serve it.  It was rock hard and the kids could hardly eat it.

Gifts: Heavy heavy hang over

We decided to see how strong BatMax really was by playing heavy heavy hang over.  Now this game was a hard for a bunch of 5 year olds to grasp.  The kept yelling out, “Max this is Reed and this give is from me.”

If you don’t remember how to play here it is:  You blind fold the birthday child and then everyone says, “Heavy heavy hangover thy poor head what would you wish with a bump on the head?” just as they say bump one of the children bump the birthday child on the head with their gift.  Then the birthday child has to guess who bumped them and they can’t open the gift until they guess right.

Play time:

At this point Max had lots of new exciting toys so we opened them up and let the kids play with them while they waited for their parents.  (PS…this took a long time…I thought with 3 activities & cake & gifts that 2 hours would be perfect but 1 1/2 hours would have been better.

Decorations: Less is More

I don’t generally do a lot for decorations.  We bought some superhero plates etc and put up some streamers but other than that we didn’t do much.

Ideas: Transform your home into a bat cave…cover the windows with black paper, hang paper bats from the ceiling…cut out a bat sign that would fit perfectly over your largest flashlight and shine it on the wall in a dark room (the bat signal)….If you have action figures you can set them up and use them as a centerpiece.

Tags: batman party, cake, games, gifts, heavy heavy hangover, invitation
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Princess Party

Invitation:

My hubby created the invitation on photoshop and I wrote the poem.  You can always do the Date: Time: Location:…invitation but I think that poems are fun.

Favors: Crowns and Tiaras

We gave all the boys crowns and all the girls Tiaras as their favors and they wore them during the party.

Food: “Tea and Crumpets”

We just had finger foods but a few years later I found a really cute book at a Kitchen Supply store that had a lot of princess type finger foods…sorry but I don’t know the name of it but I’ll look for it next time I’m in that store.

So here is what we ate:

mini pigs in blanket

Relish plate

Small sandwiches

Fruit

Russian Tea

Activity #1: Kiss the Frog

I found this idea online while planning this party.  Basically you make a frog out of poster board paper, blind fold the girls and give them a pair of lip stickers to stick on the frog.  Now what I did differently was put bright lipstick on the girls and had them actually try and kiss the frog and if I do say so myself this was WAY more fun.  What little girl doesn’t love putting on a little lipstick?

Activity #2: Rescue the Princess

This game involved the boys because Princes do not kiss frogs.  We assigned every prince a princess.  Then all the princesses hid somewhere in the house and their prince had to rescue them.

Other Princess Activities Ideas: This party was for a 1 year old so those two games were enough.

• Do makeovers
• paint nails & toes
• Play Dress Up
• Ball – have a ball in your living room and let the girls dance with “prince daddy” or they can dance with mommy or together but there MUST be lots of twirling.

Cake:

This was my daughters 1st birthday so I made her a small castle cake (see How to Make Your Own Cake Pan in the Tips section).  I made cupcakes for the other kids and stacked them to make a tower/castle.  Then I made double chocolate bunt cake for the grown ups.  I was ambitious and made WAY too much cake.  PS Some cake shops sell princess cakes with a barbie in the middle they are very cute and perfect for a princess party.

Gifts:

Like I said before this was her first birthday so she wasn’t really sure what was going on so we just sat and opened gifts but here is a fun idea.  Decorate a chair to make it look like a throne, it doesn’t need to be anything too extravagant but just make it look like an extra special chair for a princess.

Decorations:

We decorated with our favors, our frog prince, and I attempted to build a princess tower out of cardboard bricks.  We also added streamers around the house because her birthday is jut before Christmas so we wanted to make it look more like a birthday party rather than a Christmas party.  Here are some pictures of what we did.

Tags: birthday, cake. decorations, favors, food, games, invitation, princess party
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