Mario Party Tablescape

 Brewer's 6^th birthday party was a blast. In the planning stages, he had a difficult time picking what he wanted to do. We went from taking friends to see Cars 2 to a jumpy place to a pool party to Ollie Koala's to the perfect choice for him –> a video game party. I found the Game Truck via a search engine. It is based in Orlando, but would travel to Jacksonville for an additional gas fee. Brewer was excited!

Our kids only get birthday parties every other year (on their even year birthday). As most of you know, I like to do parties up big. Plus, with only having a birthday party every other year, all the more reason to do it up big for each boy. I did ask Brewer to pick a video game to make the main theme, so I had something to work off of. This momma needs a theme for all parties! LOL! Brewer picked Mario. I hit the ground running once the theme was decided upon.

Fearful there wouldn't be a lot out there that would be “cute” for Mario, I hit blogs for ideas. I got a lot of my ideas from one of my favorite blogs (irony...she has everything on her blog...ha, ha!).

It was great fun working on the tablescape. Here is a breakdown of the table. The balloons were done by A Twist Of Fun. He is located here in Jacksonville and makes amazing balloon animals, characters, etc. I contacted him about making a balloon column. I told him that I wanted to take a standard vertical column and turn it to hang horizontally with no sagging. 

The blue backdrop is a curtain panel that I found on Amazon.com. I made the birthday sign using the Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) software. It is safety pinned on the curtain panel. 

The tablecloth is 2-1/2 yards of red material. I glued on a grosgrain ribbon to finish the edges. Originally, I hadn't planned to put the lamps on the table. But the table needed more light. These are the lamps that are on the buffet table everyday in our home, so I knew the size would work great. The Mario mushroom napkins came from Birthday Express. The glass blocks and lights were purchased a Hobby Lobby. I cut a question mark out of vinyl from the Cricut.  Then I spray painted the blocks. Once dried, I removed the vinyl question marks; viola, we had the yellow question mark blocks from Mario's Super Brothers game. The boxes on top of each of the glass blocks were paper mache boxes purchased from Hobby Lobby. I covered them in a blue and white striped wrapping paper that I found at PartyCity. 

On the left side of the table, the blue and white striped box was filled with Mario mushrooms. 

On the right side of the table, the blue and white striped box was filled with chocolate Mario mustaches. 

Spray painting PVC pipes seemed like a great idea for the Mario warp pipes. These pipes were filled with 3” Whirly Pops with an added sticker that said, “Brewer 6” on each lollipop. 

On the left side of the table were two candy bowls. One was filled with gold foiled wrapped chocolate coins. These are Mario's coins. The other was filled with red hot candies. These are to represent Mario's fire balls. 

On the right side of the table was a plastic plate with Mario cookies. The original cookies that were ordered were stuck at a FedEx center the weekend of the party (boo-hiss). But when I went to pick up the cake at Cinotti's, I told them what happened to the cookies. Cinotti's was so great and decorated Mario cookies for me right there on the spot. We had red mushrooms, green mushrooms, and stars on the sugar cookies. In the center of the table was the Mario cake from Cinotti's. It was amazing both in appearance and in taste! The cake stand was a hat box made to look like a Mario mushroom. In front of the cake stand was a paper mache 6 from Hobby Lobby that was spray painted yellow.

It all came together great! The tablescape turned out just how I pictured it. It was loads of fun to do!   

Piranha Plants

Brewer's birthday party was today.  He had a game truck come and a Mario theme.  I saw these Piranha Plants from the classic Mario game on Cute As A Fox creations blog.  I just had to borrow the idea.  Red balls were very difficult to find (when I was looking...LOL!).  Right now, red bouncy balls are everywhere in stores.  But back when I was looking for them, so many of you were looking for me as well.  Thank you for that!  Here is what came out of that red ball search.

These plants were candy bowls at the party.  Smarties and Double Bubble are two of Brewer's favorites, so they were perfect choices for the party.

This project took a lot of helping hands -- Ashley from Cute As A Fox sent me full directions, Allison and Heather ended up finding me the red balls, my dad helped me figure out the plastic bowl support as well as consulting me in the shopping of supplies and attaching the bowl to the stem, Kelly helped with the leaves -- such a group effort and they turned out so cute!  Thanks to all those who helped get them together!