Most of my friends think I am absolutely crazy when it comes to parties.  However, I have a handful of friends who also enjoy throwing a bash.  One of my dear friends, Dana, throws an awesome bash!!  I am excited to share this fabulous party with you!  I don’t have any pictures, but their backyard is like a giant park.  They converted their yard into a giant waterpark that included the biggest, coolest slip and slide I’d ever seen!! The kids loved it.  Even our 2 year old couldn’t get enough.  My 8 year old said as we were leaving “that was the best party of the month, maybe the year.”

 Seriously…how cute is this cake idea?  Love it! 

Such fun food! 

They served ice cream treats at this fabulous snack shack!

Welcome all!

Awesome favors!

The birthday boy!!

What a cutie!

 

My cuties!!
Thanks for sharing miss Dana! what a fabulous party!

Monster Food

Monster food is fun! It just is.  So we definitely had fun with it and found some great kid favorites! 

Mummy Dogs

As soon as we picked the theme, I knew it would feature the Mummy Dogs because who doesn’t love a Mummy Dog. These are really simple and ALWAYS a crowd pleaser.   All you need to do is take a refrigerated breadstick and stretch it out.  Wrap around a hot dog and bake in the over.

 Mummy Pizza Faces

These are also great for parties and who doesn’t love pizza? We used English muffins, sliced mozzarella, pizza sauce and sliced olives.  First, cut the cheese into strips about ½” wide.  Spread pizza sauce on an English muffin and top with mozzarella cheese slices arranged like mummy wrap.  Add 2 sliced olives for eyes and bake.

 Monster Watermelon & Fruit Salad

I loved this one.  Simple, healthy and cute! This was the same idea as carving a pumpkin and frankly it’s a bit easier to cut.  I cut off the bottom of the watermelon,  scooped out insides and set aside in a bowl.  Next, is take a marker and draw on a large monster mouth because you will need to get a large serving spoon in it.  Carve the mouth.  We used a watermelon ball and a blueberry for eye balls and a few strawberry slices for ears.  Next, cut up some additional fruit of your choice like blueberries, strawberries and grapes and mix with watermelon.  Serve the watermelon monster on a large tray.  Place the monster watermelon on the tray.  Surround and fill the watermelon with the fruit salad.

 String Cheese Monster Fingers

This was easy.  Cut string chese into 2 pieces crosswise.  Add a green pepper finger nail and cut some lines to look like knuckles.  There you go!  Monster finger cheese!.

Monster Fun

Slime Factory

I am going to start with my favorite.  I was so excited include slime making into the plan and there were a lot great recipes online.  Because I wanted the kids to be really hands on, I did some tweaking to let the kids be more hands on.  I’ll share this soon.

Monster Face Bags

 I love using sticker sets combined with bags as an activity. It’s simple for all ages and provides the kids a place to put their goodies.  Oriental trading has a large selection of sticker sheets including the silly monster faces I used and are very inexpensive – generally about $3/dozen.

Monster Masks

These were a must for the party.  I found great masks at Oriental trading, loaded up on glue sticks and they were off to create their own silly monster masks! These were so cute.

 Mummy (Toilet Paper) Wrap Race

Yes, this was a mess…a huge mess! But it was a HUGE Hit with the kids.  We also paid a few kids a dollar to clean it up and it was like it was never there.  J  What is mummy wrap race?  Give 2 kids a roll of toilet paper (just trust me it’s worth it)!  Have them pick one mummy and one mummy wrapper. On your mark, gets set, go! And the fun begins!!  The mummy wrapper must use the entire roll of toilet paper to wrap up the mummy.   Whichever team does it first, wins!

Monster Head Toss

I have to say that this one was so inexpensive and so easy.  We found some of those crazy monster balls that are rubbery and look like they have a lot of hair.  I told the birthday boy that I’d incorporate them into the party, so had to figure out a way.  What did we do?  I took 6 large plastic cups that I had on hand and stacked them – 3 green, 2 orange and 1 green.  Perfect.  The kids used the monster balls (Target $1) and tried to knock over the cups.

Piñata

This always feels like the worst kid party activity EVER…and it probably is.  Needless to say it’s a kid favorite and my kids begged for years to have a piñata at their party.  The last 2 times we did it, we did not think it through ahead of time.  This time, we thought it through a little better.  As a funny side story, my mom saw this idea to not put cheap candy in the piñata but larger items.  So she purchased a variety of kid treats including things like snack cakes.  It didn’t occur to us that when you take a bat to a piñata with snack cakes inside the cakes get smashed like a piñata…live and learn.

Hope you enjoyed this Monster Bash.  Please check out the other details

Monster Bash Part 1:  Treat Table

Monster Bash Part 2:  Kid & Beverage Tables

http://www.shindigdiva.com/home/2011/07/diva-shindig-monster-bash-birthday-party-part-2/

Beverages & Kid Table

(DIY) Kid Table

The kid table was very, very DIY!  I selected lime green and orange as the key colors, so I started with a lime green table cloth.

Then I used one of the tricks I use for most of my parties:  12×12 scrapbook paper as placemats paired with square plates and you have a great place setting.  In this case, I mixed it up and used 2 different patterned paper in the same color for interest:  orange stripe and orange polka dots. I also used a different color plates.

To add some easy DIY monster interest, I used rectangular napkins and with some scissors cut slits in one end of the napkin to give it some monster hair.

Adding googly eyes and now we have monster napkins!  I placed them between the plates like the monster was peeking out from behind the plate.

I also kept the centerpieces simple.  We were going have a piñata because my kids LOVE piñatas…but I am constantly wondering about the wisdom of giving little kids bats to swing as hard as they can at an object and then have it rain candy….but I digress.  In this case, it made a great centerpiece.

Finally in the spirit of keeping it simple, I purchased 2 pots on sale at Michael’s for $2.50 to flank the monster piñata.  I added green foam (I ALWAYS have this on hand because I use it at every party), 4” party printables on a stick to the pots and finished with googly eyes.  In less than 15 minutes I had the table set and ready to party!

Beverage Table

On to the drink station, because I found some ideas I loved for this.

Of course, we had a slimy drink!  We filled a large glass dispenser with lime colored juice, Sprite and some sherbert.  Looked gross, tasted good.  Perfect!

I also found this idea to make little mummy drinks.  This was a super simple idea that turned out cute.  It just took some bottles of juice, white crepe paper and a marker.  Wrap em up and add some eyes!

I also almost always add water bottles to the beverage table with water bottle wraps.  I have used many different ways to wrap water bottles: ribbon, custom paper printables and scrapbook paper.  For this one, I used the new water bottle wraps from my Monster Bash Collection.

To add more monster fun, I printed the 2” circles from the collection onto full sheet labels and used them to add a punch to simple orange paper cups.

The treat table is probably my favorite element of a creating a party.  Not sure why…most likely because I love sweet treats.  This treat table was super fun.  As I frequently do, the inspiration for décor came from the printables and I am super excited this is from my new Monster Bash Collection. 

 We also scored some really cute monster stuffed animals right after Easter for $.30 each.  Who would have thought Easter and Monsters?  But I am glad someone did. :-)  I LOVE the pile of monsters with big eyes trying to claw their way out of the pail 

NOW…let’s talk treats!  I enjoy finding fun ways to incorporate the treats into the theme.  At one point the night before the party, I was up to my eyeballs in eyeballs.  One of those eyeball projects was the eyeball brownie pops!  I learned before this party that brownie pops do not require frosting to bind them, so I was testing that and it worked and were really simple. 

Do I have more eyeballs?  Why yes, yes I do!  One of favorite treats (if not my favorite) were the cute little monster brownie balls.  This is actually a great time saver.  I made up a big batch of brownie balls and made ½ brownie ball eyeballs on a stick and ½ brownie ball monsters.  These were especially easy with the little candy eyes I got at Michaels.  The monsters were all different, so there was no need for perfection. 

What is the quintessential treat at a monster party?  Monster cookies, of course.  DUH!  There are a couple of recipes that make me think of my grandma, so these monster cookies were in honor of my Grandma Pilquist!  If she couldn’t be there to celebrate this fun occasion with us, at least we were thinking of her…not to get sappy, but I can’t believe she was never able to meet my little ones or even my husband.  Well, the good news is that we all loved and adored here and miss her dearly.  How sad if no one missed you when you were gone…okay back to monsters.

Eyeballs – check.  Crazy monster balls – check.  Monster Mouth Candy Pops?  Check!  I have to admit that my attempt at these wasn’t great.  I clearly am not a pro at molds yet…yet!  While I was standing in the checkout queue at Jo-ann Fabrics I saw the most adorable Monster Mouth Molds!  Of course, I had to have them for the party.  I think I need a bit more practice to make them really good, but they were cute! 

A few store bought items, I found really cute Monster Suckers on Oriental trading, they were a perfect fit with the theme and colors.  We also found these big green apple marshmallows at Wal-mart.  I thought they made great monster boogers however my 8 year old wanted nothing to do with gross monster items.  Also saw really funny gross monster stuff, but he wouldn’t have it!  Party pooper!  Also did a super simple candy coated puffed popcorn (details to come).

The back drop is always something that gives me stress.  However, this one I happened upon and knew I had to have it.  It was just big furry blanket and in this case it was framed by our drapes in the kitchen.  I really like how it turned out.  The only issue I ran into was the blanket was heavier than the fabric or paper I normally use, so my normal tricks to hang it didn’t work as well as normal. 

Okay, now we must talk about the cake.  I can take NO credit for the cake, but maybe googling an inspiration cake!  My talented friend and chef Carrie made the cake and I couldn’t believe how amazing it was.  A-MAZING!  The cake was layers and layers high.  There several different cake flavors in the middle:  red velvet (it was a monster’s insides, so I couldn’t think of a better cake) and 2 types of chocolate.  It was a fabulous bright orange hairy masterpiece with giant eyeballs (cake pops).  Something I have recently started using as an inspiration board is Pinterest.  Have you found this yet?  I use it a ton to capture all of the crazy ideas I find.  If you’re interested in what my inspiration was for this party, check it out: http://pinterest.com/shindigdiva/monster-birthday-party/

Credits/Where to Find It:

Monster Bash Party Printables:  Shindig Diva on Etsy

Monster Mouth Candy Pop Molds:  Jo-Ann Fabric’s

Monster Stuffed Animals:  Wal-Mart (Super Easter Clearance)

Monster Suckers:  Oriental Trading

 



Well, it’s been a long time and I have missed you all! Balance is returning and I am very much looking forward to reconnecting. So, I’d guess it’s about time to share with you some of what has been keeping me away…one of those really fun and exciting for me things I am working on is a line of party printables.

The premier party package is a Monster Bash theme.

I am hoping to add a full party plan to go with it at some point…but that is on the long term plans, sorry!

My 8 year old requested a monster theme party, so here we are!! I am really happy with how this turned out.

Here are a few fun photos to share how I used the printables at his party…but I don’t want to give away all the fun details!

Check them out in my Etsy shop!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/shindigdiva

More details to come!

-Tara