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Thursday, January 21, 2016

Ali's 5th Superhero Birthday Party!


How adorable does my little guy look!



Print POP/BAM signs here and Super Hero banner letters here all for freeee!



Here's the kid's tablescape, a shot of our photo booth backdrop (bought from Target) and a view of the dessert/party favor table. I got mostly all my decor items from the Dollar store, Walmart, and Target. 

Table sign and Super hero cupcake toppers found here and here for free!


Just an AWESOME day at the park, light breeze no humidity. Tampa winter weather FTW!

 


 What more can a kid want than a party in the park with his buddies, some facepainting and balloons?


 




Photo Booth Fun: All the masks were printed from here and here, just need a colored printer! To make them fancier/sturdy I glued them onto poster paper and taped them to wooden dowels found at Michael's/Walmart. 








And then...THE BEST THING EVER happened!! SPIDER-MAN HIMSELF SHOWED UP!!!
Spiderman (and a few imposters) with his posse!




The boys loveddd this. Spiderman did 30 minutes of stunts/backflips and posing with everyone. The kids got to ask him all sorts of crazy questions like how do you eat if you have no mouth lol it was great.


Now a closer look at the food/dessert table:

 














Menu
Snacks: Thors Hammers with cheese, Spidey Dip with chips, Avengers Cheez Its, PopBAMcorn,  Entrees: Chicken/Egg Salad Sandwiches, Pizza, Baked Ziti
Dessert: Cupcakes, Brownies and Cake. 
Simple yet perfect for a fun birthday party. 
I really loved how the cake turned out. The girl who did the cake was amazing, it tasted so good the fondant wasn't super hard and the cookies and cream filling was delicious. Success. 

Food labels from here and water bottle labels from here again all for free!!




check out that glowing smile, my little guy soaking in all the singing just for him!


Because I didn't have the heart to throw out the banner/signage I worked so hard to print/cut/paste, I decided to reuse it as... Door Decor!




Behind the scenes: 




Favor bag designs printed from here

Also, inside each favor bag I had Ali draw a picture (of course he draws Sully and Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc instead of superheros!) and write thank you to all his friends using this template  then we filled it with the usual superhero party favor items you can find at Walmart/Target.



Another Win: Post Halloween, these Avengers/Spiderman kits were on sale at Target for 75% off, I knew they'd come in handy. Kids thoroughly loved the glow sticks! 


Since Ali is blessed with an accountant mama I had a budget for everything before I started working on it. I knew we didn't want to spend a ton, but I did want to make it super fun. Here's how the finances all panned out:
Facepaint/Balloon/Spiderman  $275
Superhero Cake 50
Park Shelter Fees 50
Party Favors 50
Food 150
Paper Products/Table covers 50
Total Cost $625

The main things were the entertainment, cake, and venue. To me it was worth seeing Ali's excitement to pay for Spider-man and the cake was something he was really looking forward to so I got very lucky to find a girl who made the fondant cake for so cheap! The park location (Ballast Point Park in South Tampa) was also important to us, this park had a kids splash area (ended up being a little to chilly for water play but on a sunny day this is ideal in Florida), a really big non messy playground (no mulch!), big covered shelters (it randomly rains in Tampa a lot) and this beautiful pier/dock area where lots of families went post party to take pictures. It can get very crowded on a nice day, so I'm glad we booked the shelter ahead of time. 

I purposely kept the menu very simple/affordable, because being so pregnant I didn't have a ton of energy to cook up a storm plus I knew with being outdoors it had to be easy finger foods that didn't require a lot of effort to prep or eat. I think overall everyone enjoyed the food. I did bake the cupcakes and brownies myself along with the sandwiches and pasta. Ali's talented dad made the Spidey dip. We had plenty of food to feed 40 adults and 35 kids. I also used a lot of paper products leftover from previous parties. I'm probably over estimating in my cost of that. I only did the themed matching items for the kids table.

Printing out the decorations really saved us a TON of money and made everything look way fancier; it was a relief not to pay the prices some people were charging on Etsy for these same items! The boys superhero costumes were old Halloween costumes, I got the Superman bow tie from H&M on sale a long time ago and held onto it for this event. The reversible Batman/Superman cape I wore was a gift my mom gave Ali years ago. I also decorated the cake table with Super hero figures Ali had been gifted in the past (you can find them all at Target/Walmart though). I got mine and hubby's shirts from Walmart, $7.99 each I think? So yeah it was very easy to stay within budget for me and thankfully everything turned out great. Kids had a blast, what more can you ask?