Riley’s Robot Party

For his 6th birthday (how is he THAT old??), Riley requested a robot party. And I was secretly pleased because I had been looking at cute robot party ideas on Pinterest and was happy I’d get to try some of them out. We decided to do a Friday night friend party at an indoor play place and then have a smaller family party on Saturday. Since I had to work all day Friday, I kept it simple with a few store-bought decorations (the horror!) and some cupcakes. Made from a box mix (NOOOOO!). That week was so crazy for me, I actually had to bake his birthday cupcakes over my lunch hour. This working mom thing is no joke.

But by Friday night, seeing the look on this little boy’s face made everything worth it.

It’s not a kid party if all the kids aren’t swarming around the gift opening.

He was so tired, he actually fell asleep in the car on the 10 minute drive home.

The family party arrived and I still had a lot to do. Like make the crown jewel of the party – the robot cake. I had found it on Pinterest, of course, and it actually didn’t take long at all. Like I probably frosted and decorated it within 30 minutes. Maybe less.

Riley played in his room while I worked in the kitchen and then I called him out to come take a look. I think he liked it.

 

Oh, that face….

The feet are leftover cupcakes from the party the night before. I found metallic sprinkles at Michaels and they came in gold, silver and black and I can’t wait to find more fun uses for them. The little colored robots are crayons that I ordered on Etsy and were the gift for Riley’s friends to take home from him party. Using mini-chocolate donuts, M&Ms, Oreos and a red sucker as a blinking light on top, this was one of the cutest and easiest cakes I’ve ever made.

One set of grandparents couldn’t make it to the party until later and after waiting what felt like forever, the birthday boy was a little restless. A quick Google search for robot party games led me to this. Using his grabber, we pretended it was a robot arm and had party-goers see who could pick up the robot crayons the fastest. Surprisingly entertaining, especially when we made everyone use their left hands.

 

His favorite gift from this party was a Disney Parks K’nex set of his beloved Dumbo ride. My mom found this on Amazon and I didn’t even know it existed. It has a working motor and little tourists that can go in the ride. This little boy was very happy.

All in all, a great 6th birthday party for my big man!

 

 

Riley’s 5th Birthday Party

So the last month or two has really gotten away from me and I realized I still haven’t written about Riley’s 5th birthday party. This is the first year we had a “kids” party AND a “family” party. Usually it’s only been the family party, but now that Riley’s in school, we knew he’d want to have his school friends celebrate with him. So that’s what we did.

Enter Skyzone.

The birthday boy was just a smidge excited.

Skyzone is an indoor trampoline park and man, this place is a dream for kid’s parties. The entire warehouse-sized building is filled with trampolines. Even the walls are trampolines. It was so fun watching the kids bounce and bounce and fall and bounce some more.

Seriously. Can I join?

So since our little man is obsessed with the old school Nintendo that I got when I was in 5th grade (no, I’m not even kidding – it still works!), he said he wanted a Mario party. I was happy to oblige.

I made these 1up mushroom cupcakes, after finding them online. The white dots are actually white candy melts. It was so hard to find Mario “stuff”. Cups, plates, chochkies, not even Party City had them. I finally found them at Bartz’s a small local party store. And I then spent an arm and a leg on them. Oh well. Worth it.

Look at that face. See? Worth it.

The number 5 mustached shirt was an Etsy find, btw.

When the party was over, all the kids got to take one of these game over bags home. Inside was a Mario moustache, Mario fruit snacks and stickers.

After the awesome time at Skyzone, we then welcomed a house full of family over that afternoon for another party. What? We figured we’d get it all over in one day and collapse into a pile of exhaustion for the rest of the weekend. We succeeded.

 

We bought him a remote-controlled rattle snake. He was thrilled as you can see above. Have you ever seen someone so excited to unwrap a rattle snake?

Store-bought cake for the win!

Again, when your husband is a graphic designer, he can do things like this. Put your child’s head on Mario for a banner and invitations.

 

So there you have it. Every year I go pretty darn big for my kid’s birthdays and this year was no exception. Check out other parties we’ve thrown here and here. However, I depended much more on store bought things this year. Honestly, this party kind of crept up on me and I just didn’t have the time to go all Pinterest-y on this party. But it turned out great. Take that Pinterest!

 

 

This is pretty cool…

Remember Riley’s 2nd birthday party?

Well I submitted it to this fun website that writes about real-life kids’ birthday parties. And they published it. Cool, right?

Hootenany Hijinks!

Spend some time looking around. I can’t help but feel my little DIY farm-themed party pales in comparison to some of these other amazing parties, but my little farmer had a blast and that’s all that matters.