Super Mario Brothers Birthday Party

Last week, we had another birthday. The theme for this party was a no brainer, my son is OBSESSED with Super Mario Brothers. Here he is in his birthday outfit that I made him:



I just bought a 5-pack of Hanes' t-shirts to use for various projects, so I grabbed one out of the pack (hard to believe my 7 yr old barely fits into the kids' L size). I had scraps of Mario Brothers fabric laying around from shorts I made for the kids last year. I cut out the characters, coins, and a number 7, and embroidered them on the shirt, along with the words "Happy Birthday"- no, I don't have an embroidery machine, it was all done with my wicked old Singer machine.

For the hat, I bought 6 plain red hats from Amazon.com, then I used white craft tape and drew red M's on them with a sharpie, and cut out circles and stuck them on. I'm amazed at how well the tape is adhering, it's been over a week and they're all still intact, and they have been worn a LOT.

Here's the table.



I bought plain yellow gift bags at a party shop and drew question marks on them with a black sharpie so they'd look like the hint blocks.



Inside the bags, I found stuffed Mario characters (at a store here in Japan- but you can also find them on ebay)- then I bought stickers, tattoos, and mushroom tins from birthday express, and the last thing each bag contained was a pack of Super Mario Brothers gummy treats that my brother found at a grocery store in Massachusetts. The plates, cups, placemats, and napkins were also from birthday express.

This was an easy party because for games, all we did was play Super Mario Brothers Wii and then went swimming, it's just too hot here to be outside if you're not in the pool.

I made some homemade ice cream, double cookie dough ice cream, found here at Annie's Eats, which everyone loved, but I have to admit, I prefer just cookie dough with a plain vanilla base. For the cake, I made vanilla swiss meringue butter cream (since I was using a lot of icing for a triple layer cake, this is less sweet than standard vanilla icing), and a white chocolate cake.

For the cake (from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum)

4 1/2 egg whites
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cup cake flour
1 cup sugar
1 TBSP + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
9 TBSP unsalted butter
6 oz. white chocolate

Preheat oven to 350'

1) Melt the chocolate, set aside
2) Mix together egg whites, 1/4 cup milk, and vanilla, set aside.
3) In bowl of mixer, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add in remaining 3/4 cup milk- beat for 90 seconds.
4) Slowly add egg mixture to flour mixture.
5) Scrape down sides of bowl, add in melted chocolate.
6) Bake 25-35 minutes in 2 round cake pans.

And here is the cake:



The back:



I got the characters off ebay, I just typed in Mario brothers, and searched for a set of NEW characters. There were a total hit, the kids love playing with them!