My little Monkey just turned 3!!! On his birthday, we did our usual birthday traditions. There were sprinkle pancakes with whipped cream for breakfast and dinner with ALL 8, yes 8, grandparents at the restaurant of his choice. This year we wound up at a hibachi steak house. He was totally enthralled with the chef and the fire!
For his party, we planned a super hero theme party. I started working on it months ago, knowing that I was going to have a new baby when September rolled around. There are tons of cute ideas floating around the interswebs for Super Hero/Avengers themed parties, just look at
my Pinterest board. The back drop is a shower curtain from
Target. I stole the idea from
The Thriftress. I found
this link and made them into a banner. We had some of the serving platters but the rest were bought at
The Dollar Tree, where I also bought all the candy for the goody bags. We happened upon Avengers and Justice League candy that we gave out in little cello bags tied with black ribbon. I forgot to snap a pic of them, though they were super cute. The plates and napkins were from the clearance section of
Walmart and the little buckets holding the forks were Avenger's from the Dollar Spot at
Target.
We all wore super hero themed t-shirts even little bitty baby brother. :)
 |
| Caleb chose a Spider-man shirt, I wore Wonder Woman, Lee naturally went for his favorite Green Lantern and Liam had on Captain America. |
I made the menu by starting with Caleb's favorite super heroes and then made matching menu cards.
The menu included:
Captain America's Patriotic Cake
There two flavors of cake, Lemon and Strawberry both at the birthday boys request.
Spider-man's Webbed Cupcakes
I actually followed a recipe from start to finish with this one and it they were AMAZING!
Batman's Jello Bombs
On this one, we followed the recipe and made it in Batman colors. Lee and Caleb made them and it was a great recipe to do with kids. They mixed 2 grape jellos with 1 orange and added some black gel food coloring to get the black and added a bit of the black coloring to the cream gelatin mixture to get gray. The jello tasted like a creamy fruit punch flavor and were very yummy!
Iron Man's Arc Reactor
These are sooooo addictive! We went through approximately 150 of these! Luckily for me, my Mother-in-Law is clairvoyant and knew I was nuts for thinking that we need like a third of those and made three batches!
Green Lantern's Veggie Constructs and Power Battery Dip
The veggies are self explanatory and the dips were
Hidden Valley Fiesta Ranch Dip and Baba Ganoush, which is an eggplant dip. My Mom made it and I don't have the recipe yet but I'll be making it again soon and there will most likely be a post about it.
Thor's Mighty Mjolnir (Hammer)
These were cheese cubes with pretzel stick for the handle. One thing we learned was that you want to make these fairly close to time to serve them the pretzel gets very stale from the cheese if they sit out too long.
Wolverine's Shredded Chex Mix
This one is going to become a regular at family get togethers from now on. It is SOOOOOO good!
Aquaman's Atlantis Cooler
Ok, you got me. It's just water, but the hubby thinks that Aquaman gets a bum wrap so I had to add him in there to show off his awesomeness! ;-)
Scarlet Witch's Brew
LOVE LOVE LOVE this stuff! There is not a real recipe because it depends on the sweetness of your watermelon. This time my Brother-in-Law made it with little to no instruction and it was super good. You need
Country Time Lemonade Mix, the juice of a water melon and a
1 liter Sprite just keep adding a little of each until you get the correct amount and right flavor.
Hulk Smash Punch
You'll need:
4 3oz Green Apple Jello (we couldn't find Jello brand and used Jolly Rancher brand gelatin)
1 cup of sugar (trust me it needs it)
12 cups of water
Bring water to a boil and mix in jello and sugar. Chill until time to serve, add in juice, sprite and serve.
Caleb owns most of the super hero masks and accessories that are on the market so I dumped them into a bucket for kids to play with but it turned out more adults did than the kids. I wish I had time to make a photo booth... Maybe next year.
Anyone who owned superhero shirts wore them.
Caleb got a bouncy house again this year. Thanks to grandparents who love him and spoil him rotten! He was in it from the time he got there until we left. He probably bounced a total of 5 hours! No exaggeration there! He bounced with anyone who would get in. I'm sure there were plenty of sore knees, legs and backs the next day! I'm not sure he would have eaten anything except Lee drug him out of it and made him a plate!
Needless to say, he had a great time and so did everyone else. I had so much help from Lee, my Mom, my Mother-in-law, Brother-in-law, Sister-in-law and my Bob (that's a long story) there's no way I could have pulled it off with out them. Although, other than the bouncy house it was pretty easy and very doable with a small budget!
