Super Simon's Party

My baby is turning five. I know - sniff, sniff. He's started rolling his eyes at me and after he's spent a lot of time playing with his friends, he starts talking in this weird deep know-it-all voice, like he is way too cool for me. He also recently told me "yuck" when I kissed him.

He is a great kid and this is probably the last year that I had any manipulative power in helping him choose his birthday party. You know my rule - no licensed characters. So, I'm sorry, sweet sweet Simon, I know how much you love Buzz Lightyear, but you don't get a Buzz Lightyear party. Obviously, I couldn't say that, so I just had to set out to find a better idea and then make him think it was the best idea ever.

I had recently seen this cape project for a super-hero party, and fell in love with the cute-yet-ratty-hand-me-down mix. Perfect. Then, Simon really inspired me with his own Super-ness. He told me he was saving the money in his piggy bank to send to Rwanda to help them get clean water. (Ok, obviously that idea didn't self-generate in his sweet little brain. As a family, we've all been learning about disease around the world and what we can do to help.)

So, I thought, maybe a super-hero party would be perfect. Instead of saving the city from villains (Simon has no idea what a villain is), we could have our little heroes help other people. So, we invited our friends to bring some spare change to send to a great organization that brings clean water to the country that's been knitted into our family tapestry - Rwanda.

And then I set out to make 18 capes. Secretly, I love stuff like this. I know that to some it seems way too over-the-top and sort of self-obsessed to do stuff like this for kids' parties, but really, when else am I going to get to make super-hero capes? And who better to craft for then a group of kiddos who don't really give a crap if you got the letter straight? So, judge if you want to, but I got to have fun with my felt and tacky glue. (Oh, and I won't judge you for judging - I judge people who buy this stuff for their kids' parties. speck in your eye/log in mine, and all that.)

Next, I had to think of something for the cake. Hmmmm.... I have all these rules about cake decorating. Seriously, they always turn out terrible, but I just love home-decorated cakes in all of their adorable imperfection.  But, trying to decorate a cake with actual super-heroes would probably stretch even my very flexible limits on imperfection. I don't draw or frost things with faces - that is way too hard, and turns out way too ugly. I saw adorable rainbow cakes and cupcakes popping up all over the web, and I really wanted to get out the food coloring and go crazy. So, I decided to do rainbow cupcakes (but obviously we're calling them Crazy Cupcakes, not rainbow cupcakes because it's a boy's party) with white icing and Super-Hero-esque toppers.

I'm proud of the toppers because they are actually my own idea - as in, I did not steal it from the internet. I designed and printed super-hero-ish designs on paper, covered it with wax paper, and piped melted candy coating over it. Then, I just popped them off the wax paper and onto the frosted cupcakes. I thought they were pretty adorable, even with my sloppy piping skills.

At the party, we had a super-hero station where the kids could get their photos of themselves flying through the "sky." I ran out of time and this was executed terribly, but thank goodness five--year-olds don't care. I also piled up all the excess sleeves from our capes and let the kids "decorate" their "masks." It was a mess of paint and foam shapes, and just precious.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures. The reason this party was fun is that I got to do lots of ridiculous projects, and Simon is old enough to enjoy it and young enough to not be too cool for it all. Perfect. Next year, who knows?