Little Hiccups: Mathilde's Super Mario Party

This past weekend we celebrated Mathilde's 5th birthday with a Super Mario themed party.

Mathilde has been a big fan of playing Super Mario games lately and watching the cheesy cartoon from the late 80s, so it was only fitting that she chose it as the theme for her birthday party. She came up with all sorts of over the top ideas that she wanted for her party: life sized Mario Kart cars for everyone to race around on a track, a life sized castle made out of cardboard boxes and filled with piranha plants coming out of pipes and Goombas to avoid, a large screen on the wall and multiple Nintendo devices so all the kids could play Super Mario games together... Just a little bit of a stretch! Given that we only had three days between arriving home from our trip to Austin and the big party, there was only so much I could plan - not that any of these outlandish ideas were on the cards in the first place!

Super Mario really was such a fun theme to work with. While I didn't go with any of Mathilde's plans I did find a lot of fun ways to incorporate the theme into her party. I made a Mystery Block piñata (filled with chocolate coins, of course), prepared a Piranha Plant puppet DIY for the kids to make, made mini Mystery Blocks filled with chocolate coins as party bags, baked a Super Mushroom shaped birthday cake and mushroom cupcakes, and wrapped Super Mario goodies up for Pass the Parcel. We also had Mario mustaches for the guests to wear, Mathilde had a Mario hat, and I bought Mario themed t-shirts from Uniqlo for the girls and I.

First up the kids created their Piranha Plant puppets. They colored the templates (you can find the template PDF here) with marker, cut them out and attached them to large popsicle sticks. I then cut a slit in the bottom of green paper cups large enough for the popsicle sticks to slide through. The kids poked the stick through and were then able to make the Piranha Plant go up and down in the "pipe" just like the in Mario games. You can find a DIY here. These were really simple to make and the kids enjoyed playing with them.

We always play Pass the Parcel at our parties, even though it's not a well known game here in the US. If you're not familiar with Pass the Parcel, it's basically Musical Chairs, but with a multi layered parcel instead of chairs. Kids pass it around in a circle while music plays, and when it stops the kid holding the parcel gets to open a layer. We keep going until we reach the prize in the middle. This time around I added two prizes into the mix. A Super Mushroom squishy half way through, and a Mario Pez dispenser in the middle. There were also gummy treats between each layer so that everyone got a prize.

The piñata is always a highlight at our parties so the kids couldn't wait give it a smash. Given that the piñata was shaped like a Mystery Block Mathilde thought it would be a great idea if everyone took turns jumping underneath to headbutt it open, just like Mario! As fun as that sounds, hitting it with a stick was much easier - and less headache inducing! As usual, the string broke several times before my over engineered piñata showed the slightest crack. I really must buy some stronger string! When the piñata did crack open it happened to split across the top, so rather than having the kids hit it further, one of my friends swung it up into the air and let the chocolate coins fly out of the top - just like they do in the Mario games!

The kids loved having the chocolate coins fly out above them and they scrambled to collect as many as possible. As we had a few less guests than expected the kids all got quite a lot of coins. I think Mathilde counted 38 in her pile at one point!

As usual, the piñata made for a fun hat! Actually, because it only split across the top Mathilde has been using it store her toys in her bedroom since the party.

Next up it was time for cake. The kids all grabbed their piranha plant puppets and crowded around Mathilde to sing Happy Birthday and show off their creations. As always, it was a little too windy up on the roof deck to have candles lit during the singing, but we did manage to light a candle very briefly; just long enough for her to blow it out.