Anyway, Nate is hardcore into Pokemon. (In fact, on his birthday he said, "I evolved into 5! Next year I evolve into 6! And then I evolve into Denny (the neighbor kid who is older)!" Adorbs.) We decided to go with a Pokemon theme for his 5th birthday party. Months ago I turned to my trusty Pinterest account to start getting cheap DIY party ideas, and as usual, it didn't fail me. So many ideas, so little time!
Here's what I came up with:
That would be my sister hamming it up for me. Thanks, sis! Here's a better breakdown of what we ended up doing.
The Invitations
I happen to have Photoshop, so I usually make all my own invitations. I'm also very budget-conscious, so rather than designing and printing (or even just ordering) actual invitations, I took the cheap-n-easy route and got 4x6 prints of my design at CVS. I found a nice vector image of Pikachu, edited him to be holding a number 5, added a photo of Nate from vacation with his giant stuffed Pikachu he won at the boardwalk, and poof. Custom themed invite. (I have gone the "physically make by hand" route the last few years with cutting and pasting and googly eyes and whatnot, but I really needed a break this year!)
The Table
I followed a few of my Pokemon Pinterest pins and ended up making Pokeball cupcakes, "Peepachu" pops, and making a Pokeball platter out of a red dollar store serving tray and electrical tape. (Actually, I relied heavily on the dollar store for this party; we are on a shoestring budget, so anything that I can make, I make. Hence my love of Pinterest.) I filled the center with mints, the red slices with Swedish fish and red M&Ms, and the white slices with York Peppermint Bites and white chocolate pretzels. I wanted to make cute little Pokemon-themed signs for all the foods, but I have no printer and my parents' printer has nothing but black ink right now, so I figured no one would miss them!
I found the cute little polka-dot napkins and paper straws at Walmart, and already had the big chip and dip bowls left from other parties. I've also gotten way more than my money's worth out of that cupcake stand!
Here are some close-ups of the key dessert items:
Pokeball Cupcakes
I really really wanted to make Pokeball cupcakes as soon as the theme was decided. I usually go the dyed-frosting route (like with Nate's Minion cupcakes last year, and Noah's Pocoyo cupcakes in December), but having used dark colors on frosting before, I was afraid of turning everyone's mouths red. Also, I love the smooth look of fondant for something like Pokeballs, but balked at the price of store-bought, so I made my first ever attempt at home-made marshmallow fondant.
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| Can you spot the one Noah was sampling? Guess which one he got to eat at the party? :P |
I want to like making it. I really do. It's polished-looking, and the cupcakes don't stick together (as much), and it's honestly not terribly hard to work with once it's ready to use...but making it? Ugh. I hated making it. I had trouble getting it kneaded in my stand mixer, I had trouble with it constantly sticking to my well-Crisco-ed hands and kitchen island while hand-kneading, the red just didn't want to look "red" until I added an insane amount of the gel icing coloring (so people were still turning a little red despite my best efforts - but that fondant ended up RED and not neon orange, thank you!). It was a pain. But. It was also quite delicious, and barring the making-the-fondant stage, I've honestly never decorated cupcakes so quickly and with such little annoyance.
I let my fondant rest overnight in a sealed container (and wrapped in plastic wrap), then rolled it out the next day and cut out circles with a jar lid that just happened to be the perfect size. Chop the circles in half, whack them on lightly-buttercream-frosted cupcakes, and done. They were forgiving enough to be reshaped if my cupcakes were a little lopsided (heh), or if the circle stretched out a bit when I was taking it off the granite countertop.
I let those sit overnight in sealed containers and added the stripe and dollop of black icing in the center (from a pouch), squished on a York Peppermint Patty Bite (couldn't find any white M&Ms!), and done. Well, they were all done except for the cupcake sacrificed to the cat the night I baked them, and the one to my 3 year old the morning of the party (pre-black-icing) when he snuck downstairs and decided to open the Tupperware containers and start eating fondant... LOL But the rest were done!
"Peepachu" Pops
Another Pinterest pin I saw that I had to do, this involved yellow bunny-shaped marshmallow Peeps (ordered from Amazon), plastic coffee stirrers (an emergency purchase after my shipment of lollipop sticks got thrown away - or sucked into the void of my pantry - by accident) and food markers.
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| A herd of wild Peepachus! |
Pinch the ears to a point and draw. Easy, right? Except my food markers apparently don't draw on sugar-coated surfaces, they just suck up sugar bits and barely leave any color behind. After a moment of panic, I realized I still had red gel icing coloring left. And I had black. I was literally drawing on Peeps with toothpicks dipped in gel coloring this morning. But they turned out so cute! (And drawing the circles for the eyes, cheeks, and mouth was so easy - I just dipped the toothpick in the color and poked a little hole in the marshmallow; the color stayed in a nice little circle with no effort on my part.)
The down side to using gel coloring on these? That's quite a bit of gel color since it's super-concentrated, and these unsurprisingly left mouths a little messy. So the moral of the story is, if you're planning on drawing on Peeps, try out your food markers before the morning of the party to see if they'll work or if you need different ones so you aren't scrambling!
Anyway, I shoved them onto coffee stirrers, popped a piece of florist's foam in the bottom of a little bucket (both from the dollar store, woo), and stuck them in like a nice little Peepachu choir. The biggest compliment I got on them was when I was asked where I bought them, followed by the boggled look when I said I made them out of Peeps and food coloring. LOL
The Pizza
I had the brilliant idea to make Pokeball pizzas for the party. Then I realized I already had too much going on, so I walked into our local pizza place a couple days before the party with this photo on my phone:
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| Not my pizza. |
I was told they could easily make some that looked like that, and that in fact, a guy who was a huge Pokemon fan was going to be working that day and he'd love to make me some. So we ordered 3 Pokeballs and 2 plain cheese pizzas.
I'd like to say our pizzas arrived and looked just like that. But they didn't. Let's just pretend they looked like the photo, OK? At least they tasted good?
The Games and Favors
I picked up a couple sheets of posterboard, some paint markers, and set out to work making a Pin the Tail on Pikachu game for the party. It was a lot of fun, actually. I was quite impressed when Nate got the tail right on Pikachu's rear end on the first try! Of course, then he kept trying to correct all the other kids' misses while I was trying to un-blindfold them. LOL He's a bit of a perfectionist. Also, my sister may never agree to help me again since I had her cutting out Pikachu tails all morning with my horrible scissors.
Since I crochet, and since the kids loved the Pokeballs I made for them awhile ago, I figured what better favor than making a bunch of Pokeballs for the kids to take home? Then I had the idea to also use them for a game, so Pokeball Toss was born. We had the kids line up and try to toss a Pokeball into a bucket. Then we turned the bucket on its side and they tried to roll them in. Then they took them outside and starting playing dodge ball with them. Honestly, I think they were kind of the hit of the party, even more so when I told the kids they were allowed to take them home!
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| Crochet Pokeballs (I forgot to take a photo of the whole pile, but there was another orange, yellow, and red one at the party!) |
The Banner
Another dollar store decoration, I traced a bunch of circles onto red and white posterboard, stuck the red and white halves together with electrical tape (I was feeling lazy), and glued on pre-cut letters (again, lazy). Then I strung them up on yarn. Honestly, cutting them out with my God-awful scissors was the worst part. I also cut out some bigger ones for decoration since I had a metric ton of posterboard left over. And I still have a full sheet of white and red left! My mom and mother-in-law put this part up while waiting for me to arrive with The Balloon:
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| Let's just pretend that I totally noticed that the I in Birthday was flipped the wrong way and fixed it before taking a bunch of pictures of it, shall we? |
The Balloon
My one big splurge in this whole party was for a giant Mylar Pikachu balloon. It was $10 on Amazon, and I took it to my local grocery store to have it filled this afternoon. (I was also late to the party because no one could figure out how to ring up "just helium". When I got a balloon filled last year, it cost me around $3; this time since no one knew what to ring it in as, they only charged me $.50! Sweet.) It kept trying to invade the front seat while I was driving it to the house, and sneaking up and bopping me on the side of the head when I least expected it. I finally drove the last couple miles literally holding it in one hand behind my passenger seat just to get some peace - but it was totally worth it by the "GIANT PIKACHU!" I was greeted with upon arrival. Isn't he cute?
Anyway, that was Nate's Pokemon party. All in all, despite the Fondant Fight and Pathetic Pizzas, it was a ton of fun, and the kids had a blast!
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