Pulling Together an Affordable Mario Birthday Party in less than 2 Weeks
I am usually the queen of birthdays. I plan months ahead and have a theme ready and am so prepared. But this year with Christmas creeping up on me and then sickness after sickness, I dropped the ball hard for Lincolns Birthday.
So about 8 days into January, I knew I had to get something planned and on the books. I decided on the weekend after Lincolns' birthday to just give me a bit of extra time. He has been loving Mario since the movie and receiving a Mario race set for Christmas so Mario was the decided theme.
I scoured Amazon and picked out a Mario Party Package for around $27.00 that had almost everything I needed. I have added the link below. I also ordered Mario cardboard glasses at Lincolns request. They weren't the greatest quality but the kids enjoyed them.
We settled on a guest list of around 11 kids including my own and planned out the two hour party.
For Food, I always tend to go with cupcakes as they are easy and you can have a mix of Chocolate an d Vanilla. I usually snag those from Safeway as they always taste great!
The rest of the snacks were themed for Mario including Super Mushrooms, Super Star Chips, Princess Peach Rings, Donkey Kongs Bananas, and Gold Coins.
Super Star Chips were just Doritos which are one of Lincoln's favorite chips!
Donkey Kong's bananas were a bit painful. I bought the fruit variety pack from Bulk Barn and sorted out all of the bananas to put into the bowl. I then took the other fruit and split them and added them to the treat bags for the kids!
Princess Peach Rings were also just peach flavored rings that I found at Bulk Barn.
Super Mushrooms were a bit of a miss. I found a recipe online on how to make them but I was having issues melting the candy melts and having them be fluid enough to dip the marshmallows in so I added coconut oil to thin it out. The issue is that the coconut oil I used is strong coconut flavor so the marshmallows definitely tasted like coconuts. I then added candy eyes upside down to look like the top of mushrooms. Looked cute but only about half the kids liked the taste.
The last was gold coins which again was me buying sour candies from bulk barn and pulling out all of the yellow ones that looked like coins. The other colors ended up being added to the treat bags.
The drink was piranha plant punch and was an easy mix of pineapple juice, fruit punch and sprite. We had some cute Mario cups that came with the Amazon package and same with small plates and napkins to use.
I knew with having the kids for a couple hours, I would need a couple of activities for the kids to do to keep them busy. The first was decorating "Yoshi's" eggs. I made an example egg for the kids and had them each design a couple eggs for them to bring home in their treat bags. I found the eggs at my local Dollarama in the Easter section.
The food name tags were a miss. I usually am good about making sure the size is correct but somehow when I received my printing, they were whole page and I ended up cutting off most of picture to capture the name. If I would have had more time. I think I would have reprinted as I am a perfectionist.
The next one was probably the most fun thing for the kids and that was a bean bag toss using buckets that are painted like the Warp Pipes from Mario. We split the kids into groups and had them toss beans bags from a start line and played quite a few rounds and switched up the teams. The buckets I found on Marketplace for $3.00 each and bought a can of spray paint and had my husband paint them. The did chip a bit from playing as shown. I also printed off a couple of Pictures to tape on each bucket so they could be Team Luigi and Team Mario.
Some other goodies. I bought for the treat bags were temporary tattoos from Party City.
I also snagged a couple decor items from Party City to complete the party including Party Hangers, a foil balloon set, and table top decor.
Overall it wasn't the most extravagant party that I have planned but it definitely enjoyed by the kids! They told me it was an awesome party and that they loved all of the Mario items so that's a win for me!
.jpg)