Pokemon Birthday Party

A long time ago we got a McDonalds kids meal with a Pokemon toy inside.  My soon-to-be 7-year-old daughter had no idea what it was, and at home it was thrown into a box of small random toys and forgotten.  Forgotten until the day when she found Pokemon TV shows on Netflix that is.  Then she suddenly remembered her little Tepig toy, and fell in love.  She carries little Tepig everywhere!  When her birthday party was coming, and I asked her what kind of party she wanted, she of course said 

"I want a Pokemon party, Mom!"

And inwardly I sighed.  Because you can't just go to WalMart and buy pokemon party stuff anymore.  They have the cards, but that's about it.  So off to google I went, and found

 this awesome Pokemon Party at Craft, Interrupted. 

Awesome.  Really.  If you're looking for inspiration start there.  We used their hat and gift bag idea.

After lots of googling, this is what I came up with for my daughter's 7th birthday.

We had a Pin the Tail on Tepig

(printed off an online Tepig coloring page and stuck on 33 cent poster board)

Gotta Catch 'Em All Balloon Game

The game involves little pokemon pictures I found with a google image search.  I laminated them because I know my daughter will want to play with them later, and I stuffed them into balloons that they had to pop by sitting on.  They thought it was fun, but loud.  Maybe this would be better outside.

We had an Easter-egg-style Pokeball Hunt in the yard.  Inexpensive fishing bobbers look a lot like Pokeballs if you just take a thin strip of electrical tape and stick it around the middle.  I didn't pull them apart and put things inside, but I bet you could if you wanted to.  We just hunted for them as-is and put them into their gift bags (sling bags from Craft, Interrupted).

 

Once a few months ago my daughter woke up in the middle of the night crying and when I went in to check on her, she said all she wanted in the world was a pinata for her birthday.  That must have been an interesting dream.  So I made her a Pokeball Pinata.   Why pokeball?  Because it's the easiest pokemon shape to make.  There was no way I could pull off a tepig pinata. I used this youtube video to get the basic idea.  I dipped the strips instead of using a paintbrush.  I just used a 12 inch balloon and made it with flour and water and newspaper strips.  There are three coats of strips on the pinata, each took 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour.  Three layers seemed to be just sturdy enough for the kids to each have a couple of turns.

We couldn't find our bat anywhere, so a broom handle worked in a pinch.

And of course we had Pokeball Cake and ice cream. 

I'm not a cake decorator, obviously.  I kept debating about just buying one at the store and having them make it look like a pokeball, but I forgot the picture every time I went to the store, so I ended up making it myself with a Rainbow Duff Cake mix.  The inside was kinda cool.

And to fill up time at the end, the kids played the Pokemon Card Game.

Race Car Birthday

My daughter turned four today.  She's not a baby anymore, that's for sure.  She wanted to do a race car theme.  She's my little tomboy- in love with all things cars, and it's funny because my little boy loves all things tea party.  Grandma bought him his own play tea set this year and he was jumping up and down yelling YAY, he was so excited.  Go figure.

We had a big party last year and I didn't really want to do the whole thing again- activities, lunch, cake... too much work.  We put out the kiddie pool with a slip n' slide and had that be the activity.  Nobody cared that it wasn't race car related, especially since it was 105 degrees today.  HOT. 

For a while I thought about just buying a race car cake at the Walmart bakery, but I usually think their frosting is yucky.  I googled for ideas instead.

Since we were just doing cake and ice cream and not a lunch or anything fancy, I made the coolest cake I could find.  I've only made one other birthday cake ever.  I'm not a big fan of cake, but this one turned out great.  Youtube is my friend when it comes to trying new projects, and I watched a few videos about layer cakes before starting.

Here's the link to the One Ginormous Adventure racecar cake tutorial that I used as inspiration.  Instead of piping on all that green frosting... uh... no way... too much work... I colored some coconut green to make grass.  This is the frosting recipe I used from Our Best Bites.  It was perfect- not too sweet or overwhelming.  I didn't add any extra cocoa powder since the cake is already chocolate.  One batch was enough to cover this whole cake.

The cake is chocolate cake mix from a Betty Crocker box.  Between the layers of cake, I used a can of coconut pecan frosting like you normally use on a German Chocolate cake.  It was nice to have something different inside the cake, not just more frosting.

The adorable little fondant race cars came from Lady Cupcake's Corner on etsy.  They were a big hit and they tasted good too.  All the little kids were so excited to eat them, and they all wanted to pick which color they got on their slice of cake.

The little checkered flags on the cake are a 3x5 index card cut the long way and folded around a toothpick.  I colored the black boxes on with a sharpie.

For a table covering, I bought one black and one white cheap 97 cent plastic tablecloth.  I cut one into strips long wise, using the tiles on my kitchen floor as a cutting guide.  The other one was cut into strips the short way.  I wove them together to make a checkered flag.  Then I ran a few strips of clear mailing tape across to hold it all together.  I put the tape side down so you can't see it.  Not bad for two bucks.

My daughter had a really good time.  What kid wouldn't love a race car cake with a kiddie pool and slip n' slide?  We had so much fun.