Turin's First Superhero Birthday Party

Hey Everyone,

I know it has been a while since I've posted.  Been a little crazy busy, but you bet I've been crafting my little heart out.  My biggest event lately has been for my son's first birthday.  Since he was born we (Josh and I) had talked about having a superhero birthday for his first birthday, cuz well that is so us.  So with a couple months to go I started into my journey of superhero birthday preparedness.  Thanks to the wonderful folks at Anders-Ruff, I found their site full of wonderful ideas for a vintage superhero birthday party.  See the link below to see where I came up with all my ideas from and then altered them for us and what we wanted to do. With my craftiness and Josh's computer skills we came up with some pretty cool stuff.  For example you'll notice in the pictures throughout there are words like "POW", "POP", "BAM" that Josh found the font for and then finished the design to get exactly what I wanted.  I'm sorry for the length of this post, there was just so much that we did to make it as spectacular as it was!  So, where to begin...

Lets start with the food...

 These are the jello shots Josh and I made, non-alcoholic of course!  They're layered blue on the bottom, yellow in the middle and red on top.  We were going to put the white layers in like the anders-ruff blog, but the cups were too small and as the layers would have to be really small.  We got the plastic shot glasses from Party City.  I made the signs from the logos that Josh made me and then printed them out on cardstock.  I cut them into really small squares and then taped them onto toothpicks and stuck them into the jello.

 We made "POP"corn, get it?  Haha!  Unfortunately I burnt the first batch, so my loving college brother-in-law popped me some, not burnt, haha!

We made turkey sandwiches and chicken sandwiches with lettuce.  We cut up our own veggies, which saved us a bundle.  The three black trays came from the dollar store!

 My coworker Sally lent me her cotton candy machine.  Who wouldn't want a cotton candy machine?  My wonderful brother in law took over making cotton candy, it was tricky to make, but once you got the hang of it it wasn't too bad.

 Turin and his Babci (polish for Grandma) getting something to eat.

 Nycole, aka Mini Wonder Woman, was chowing down on some yummy food!

 I made these cake pops using white cake mix.  First you bake the cake in a 9x13 pan and then once it has cooled you crumble up the cake and then add frosting to the mix.  It's easier if you mix with your hands and then make the "cake balls".  Put them into the freezer to harden.  After they've hardened take a small glass of chocolate chips, melt them in the microwave and dip the end of stick into them then stick that end into the "cake ball".  The chocolate acts like a glue between the stick and the "cake ball".   I have a chocolate pro that I had gotten from Joanns a few years ago that melts my chocolate.  I melted the chocolate that you can get from Michaels for around $2.50 a bag and dipped the cake pops into them, while the pops were still wet I sprinkled red sprinkles onto the outside.  Place in freezer again to harden.

This is the cake I made for his birthday cake.  The cake is Betty Crocker Milk Chocolate cake, with buttercream frosting that I learned to make in my cake classes that I took at Joanns during my maternity leave.  The black is fondant that I had and cut into the city silhouette you see.  The emblem is one of many that I cut out with an exacto knife and taped onto a skewer stick and stuck in the cake.  You'll notice one candle, cuz my little man just turned one... sigh!

 He sure did love his cake.

 It was delicious!

 Who couldn't love a cute messy baby like this...

His birthday highchair was decorated with his emblem and a piece of ribbon that I found at Michaels.

On the back we put three balloons that were the colors we selected for the birthday theme.

I made this banner by cutting out emblems with an exacto knife, man that took a long time!  Then with Sara's help we taped them to yarn and hung them on the wall.  I was a little dyslexic the night Sara and I were decorating for the party.  Thank you Sara!

I made these towers by finding tall boxes, thanks to my work and to Sara for the boxes.  Then I wrapped them in the backside of wrapping paper.  For the big box I drew lines using a ruler, for the next to biggest box I taped on squares of black cardstock.  For the next box I used electric tape to put lines on that tower, the last one I left blank.

 We have three bookcases in our dining room.  I found three black plastic table cloths from the dollar store and covered the bookcases so that they would look like towers.  I made a large emblem for the top of the large tower bookcase.

The tops of the smaller bookcases were perfect for various candies that we put into rubbermaid containers that were in the theme colors.  I cut out squares from cardstock and taped those onto the containers to look like mini towers.  The cups were purchased from Party City.

 If you're a nerd like us you'll understand what I made here.  It's a phone booth, but not just any phone booth, but a tardis.  Should have taken a better picture of it.  My friend from work brought me a big box and then when I got home I took a box cutter knife to it, spray painted it with blue paint and then glued the necessary accessories to it to make it into the tardis.

 You can see the sign on the door that I printed from the web, also what you can't see is the top that says "Police Public Call Box".  I also placed a used light bulb into the top and glued that in.

Turin had so much fun playing in the tardis!

 I also made this "Pin the Emblem on Turin" game.  I traced a picture of Turin onto the posterboard, dressed him up in a superhero costume, painted the drawing, and then traced the lines with a Sharpie.  It looks like him pretty well, don't you think?

Turin and Madison pinning their emblems onto the Super Turin!

Their emblems on Super Turin!

 For the girls I took a piece of cardstock, cut it to the size of the mini table and then drew a cityscape on it for the girls to color while everyone was socializing.

 They seemed to enjoy it!  Look at that tongue, silly munchkin!

 So focused!

My last and final project for this party was this backdrop.  I searched everywhere, even contemplated shelling out a chunk of change for this classic-styled back drop.  Fabric would have been pricey, they had rolls of paper table cloths with a white background and black dots, but it was $25, not including shipping.  So what I ended up doing was taking white wrapping paper I had found at the dollar store and then taking the back of a marker and making all those dots with paint!  All 72 inches tall, 40 inches wide of wrapping paper.  Lets just say it took me a while!  I took black posterboard and made the cityscape and put a Turin Superhero Emblem on it.  Then it was time for pictures...

 Dziadzi (polish for Grandpa), Turin, and Babci...

 Wonder Woman Mommy, Superhero Sara, Batgirl Heather...

 Posing time!

 Our silly family!

 Matt, Nycole, Me (Echo), Josh, Turin, and Becky!

Wonder Woman Mommy and Batman Daddy to the rescue!

This was a wonderful project, lots of work but lots of fun!  Thanks to Anders-Ruff for all the wonderful ideas! Thanks to Josh for creating everything I needed and helping me with my projects!  Thanks to Sara for helping me decorate and keeping me sane the night before!  Thanks to everyone who helped at the party and made it amazing!  Thank you everyone!

Here is the link to Anders-Ruff's blog where I got all of my ideas from!

http://www.andersruff.com/custom-printable-parties/birthday-parties/our-vintage-pop-art-inspired-super-hero-party-super-p-turns-3/