The invites.. made with simple kid construction paper that i already had laying around. In fact i have had this in my kid box of crafts supplies since my nanny days 10 years ago!! So yay, they were free to make just took a little time!
Porter loves bingo, and we don't even own the game, so I decided to make our own version! I was on bedrest after my surgery when i made these. I hand drew and colored every single one since they had to be different. After my first one, it took me about 20-25 minutes for each one after that. I got them laminated because after making 12 of them that was way too much effort to get thrown away! ( all you computer literate people out there that also have color printers I'm sure could have made this much easier than i did!) I bought some of those colored decoration rocks to use as the markers, in red and blue of course!Now, for the decorations! Like i said, I'm cheap.. er poor... um i mean frugal? well we made everything we could, and then i bought streamers and balloons. I even skipped the helium balloons this time round and just hung up regular ones.. i dont think anyone missed em!
The most time consuming would be the mushroom bad guy thingies. I made all of this out of construction paper and markers. I laminated the things that took me forever to make, because porter wanted to use them as decorations for his bedroom after the party. And I wasn't going to risk having them ruined after i spent hours making them! There is a store here that you can self laminate at for 25 cents a foot.. and thats like two feet across. His room looks like a board from Mario now, he loves it! He is a bit Mario Obsessed. He has downloaded all the old school games on the wii so we have the orriginal ones from the nintendo, and the super nintendo. They cost five dollars a piece, i have never seen him so motivated to earn money!
For the past two months every time my kids wanted to color we colored Mario pictures. We found them online and printed dozens out, and then a few dozen more for the guests to color! I love the Internet. Full of fun free things!
Porter Picked out these napkins cause he said they looked like toad.
Some of these pictures are out of order sorry! Im not reloading them.
Arthur with his cake.
Some of our fun guests!
The younger kids chowing down on pizza. They all made their own pizza, cracked me up to see what some of them came up with!
had to throw this one of Parker in there. I love his grumpy face here! Not sure what he was mad about. His mom was taking the photos, which i am utterly grateful for since i was so busy i think i would have only one otherwise!
Theo and his pizza.
Porter talking with his friends.
Yummy cake!
The pinata, if you have ever played Mario games you will recognize the character chain chomp
Porter and i spent almost two weeks on this project. We started with a big balloon.. did four layers of paper mache with a day in between each one to dry. Then i did a layer of black tissue paper, followed by cut tissue paper, and then all the final details. It was a fun craft to do together! All 15 kids had two turns hitting it muliple times each... and it finally broke! Next time i think i will only do three layers of paper mache!
party bags to carry home their loot in!
Porter getting a good whack in!
I decorated the bat myself... made it more fun and it was easy and fast and i used crepe paper i had left over from decorating at the party!
Arthur hits harder than some of the three and four year olds! Future baseball star im sure!
Theo taking a swing
We had a Yoshi Egg race. I find kids doing this hilarious! some of the older boys smashed their eggs at the end on purpose. yuck!
Porter didn't want a lot of formal games so other than this we played duck duck Mario, and i taught them red rover. Red rover was my favorite outside game as a child. They all loved it and we played it for so long that we ended up not having time for the Mario bingo. Later Porter was really sad about this ( and well i was a bit sad we didn't use them after all that work!) but i assured him when ever people come to our house we can pull it out! So come visit, play with us!
Aren't those napkins the cutest thing you ever saw? A friend gave them to me when they had extra left over from their party. I had oogled them online so i was excited to have them! Oh and i made the cake. More on that in a second...
Our family Sporting our Mario brothers shirts. I love Theo's expression. He is so cute! I might be biased. Porter.. well we couldn't get him to smile except the pinata ones when he has a blind fold on and doesn't know we are trying to capture his fun on camera! That is Arthur in the right corner... umm he doesn't have a Mario shirt, he will have to wait till next year for the hand me down! Cory's shirt says " Get a Life". hahaha.. Mario humor.
This cake too me forever to make. I bought the mario, luigi, and turtle. Everything else is made from edible marshmallow fondant. Which really is like yummy playdoh! It was my first attempt at fondant so I spent many hours making it and trying to get the colors right and the characters to look right. The hardest thing to make was the little teeth for the piranha flower and the koomba ( goomba? how is that said I had a lot of fun making the little decorations for the cake, although i was a bit sad to cut into my creation when the time came! It was super yummy though and the boys all thought it was awesome!
The most time consuming would be the mushroom bad guy thingies. I made all of this out of construction paper and markers. I laminated the things that took me forever to make, because porter wanted to use them as decorations for his bedroom after the party. And I wasn't going to risk having them ruined after i spent hours making them! There is a store here that you can self laminate at for 25 cents a foot.. and thats like two feet across. His room looks like a board from Mario now, he loves it! He is a bit Mario Obsessed. He has downloaded all the old school games on the wii so we have the orriginal ones from the nintendo, and the super nintendo. They cost five dollars a piece, i have never seen him so motivated to earn money!
For the past two months every time my kids wanted to color we colored Mario pictures. We found them online and printed dozens out, and then a few dozen more for the guests to color! I love the Internet. Full of fun free things!
Porter Picked out these napkins cause he said they looked like toad.
Some of these pictures are out of order sorry! Im not reloading them.
Arthur with his cake.
Some of our fun guests!
The younger kids chowing down on pizza. They all made their own pizza, cracked me up to see what some of them came up with!
had to throw this one of Parker in there. I love his grumpy face here! Not sure what he was mad about. His mom was taking the photos, which i am utterly grateful for since i was so busy i think i would have only one otherwise!
Theo and his pizza.
Porter talking with his friends.
Yummy cake!
The pinata, if you have ever played Mario games you will recognize the character chain chomp
Porter and i spent almost two weeks on this project. We started with a big balloon.. did four layers of paper mache with a day in between each one to dry. Then i did a layer of black tissue paper, followed by cut tissue paper, and then all the final details. It was a fun craft to do together! All 15 kids had two turns hitting it muliple times each... and it finally broke! Next time i think i will only do three layers of paper mache! 
party bags to carry home their loot in!
Porter getting a good whack in!
I decorated the bat myself... made it more fun and it was easy and fast and i used crepe paper i had left over from decorating at the party!
Arthur hits harder than some of the three and four year olds! Future baseball star im sure!
Theo taking a swing
We had a Yoshi Egg race. I find kids doing this hilarious! some of the older boys smashed their eggs at the end on purpose. yuck! Porter didn't want a lot of formal games so other than this we played duck duck Mario, and i taught them red rover. Red rover was my favorite outside game as a child. They all loved it and we played it for so long that we ended up not having time for the Mario bingo. Later Porter was really sad about this ( and well i was a bit sad we didn't use them after all that work!) but i assured him when ever people come to our house we can pull it out! So come visit, play with us!
Aren't those napkins the cutest thing you ever saw? A friend gave them to me when they had extra left over from their party. I had oogled them online so i was excited to have them! Oh and i made the cake. More on that in a second...
Our family Sporting our Mario brothers shirts. I love Theo's expression. He is so cute! I might be biased. Porter.. well we couldn't get him to smile except the pinata ones when he has a blind fold on and doesn't know we are trying to capture his fun on camera! That is Arthur in the right corner... umm he doesn't have a Mario shirt, he will have to wait till next year for the hand me down! Cory's shirt says " Get a Life". hahaha.. Mario humor.
This cake too me forever to make. I bought the mario, luigi, and turtle. Everything else is made from edible marshmallow fondant. Which really is like yummy playdoh! It was my first attempt at fondant so I spent many hours making it and trying to get the colors right and the characters to look right. The hardest thing to make was the little teeth for the piranha flower and the koomba ( goomba? how is that said I had a lot of fun making the little decorations for the cake, although i was a bit sad to cut into my creation when the time came! It was super yummy though and the boys all thought it was awesome!
