Super Mario -6yr- Home Made Board Game

My son has really been into Super Mario Brothers, so he decided that is what he wanted for his 6th birthday party. As I looked around on the internet for ideas, there was not a lot out there, so I had to get a bit creative.

INVITATION: I used Photoshop for the invitations. They had a a picture of a bunch of the Mario characters and above that I wrote ________'s Mario Party 6, below that I wrote all the party info (time, place, etc.), and then I ended it with, You won't want to miss this SUPER good time."

DECORATIONS: I painted a bunch of poster of Mario characters. There was one of Mario Goomba Yohsi and Peach. I made Pirrahna Plants (out of styrofoam balls and flower pots) for center pieces.

PARTY SNACKS: We had the party around dinner time so we served pizza. Since there are no themed plates for this I just bought black and red plastic plates and cups.

CAKE: For the cake I did a buttercream freezer transfer (you find a picture you want cover it with waxed paper and then outline it black buttercream frosting and then fill in the rest of the colors then put it in the freezer for a day. When you are ready to put it on the cake flip it over onto the cake and carefully peel off the waxed paper). It was pretty easy to do just make sure to use buttercream other types will not work.

COSTUMES: As the kids arrived they got to choose whether they wanted to be Mario or Luigi. I had red and green hat with felt M's and L's on them and well as fake mastaches(from OTC)for the kids to dress up in. After they were dressed up I took a picture of them which I used in the Thank You notes.

ACTIVITIES and GAMES:I wanted this party to be as much like the Mario Party video games as possible so we made a board using red and blue construction paper for each space. The kids had to roll a dice to see how many spaces they would move. The goal was to get to the end of the board where you could buy a gold star(purchased from OTC I used curling ribbon to make them into necklaces) for 20 coins.

The kids had to earn the coins by playing minigames. The first mini game was Get the Goomba for this I just blew up a bunch of brown balloons with gold coins(bought from OTC)inside. The kids had to sit on the balloons to pop them and then get their coins.

The second mini game was Yoshi's Egg Hunt. This was essentially an Easter egg hunt but inside the eggs were coins instead of candy.

The third game was Mario Madness we have a small moon bounce and I put 144 bouncy balls in it. The kids got to bounce around and try to collect as many balls as they could. The winner got 5 coins the others got 2.

The fourth game was Save Princess Peach which was essentially a tresure hunt. I made clues and put them all over the yard. The kids ran around together trying to figure out the clues the last clue lead them to the playground where they found Peach (a painted a picture of her on a big posterboard)and a tresure chest filled with coins they each got 4 of those.

The last game was Smash the Chain Chomp. This was a pinata(I bought a soccer ball pinata and painted it to look like a Chain Chomp)filled with gold coins and candy. The kids needed somewhere to put all the coins they were earning so I made classic Mario coin boxes out of card stock and a homeade question mark stencil.

FAVORS: For goody bags I bought bright colored gift bags and printed off Mario and Luigi pictures from the computer and glued them on the bags. I filled them with stickers (from Ebay) star note pad (OTC) crayons(OTC) homeade coloring books(found all the pictures online) eggs (from the hunt) bouncy balls (from the game). The kids also got to take home their hats and moustaches as well as candy from the pinata.

I had a few friends there to help with crowd control. We had 12 kids there and everything went smoothly and all of the kids left happy. "