Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Birthday Party

The youngest son turned 6 a few weeks ago. And gone are the days of Mommy’s-pic, cute, cuddly party themes. We’ve finally graduated into picking our own, from last year’s Minecraft Party to this year’s choice of The TMNT.

Cowabunga Dudes (and Dude-ettes) !

Let’s take a look at our totally radical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Birthday Party theme.

First, the cornerstone of any good party: The Cake.

We opted for an actual turtle to grace our cake, and the sons favorite it had to be. I thought our little Mikey (Michelangelo) turned out pretty well.

I frosted it completely with green, left it in the freezer for a couple of hours, then used a toothpick to lightly draw the outlines of the face into the frosting. I recommend starting with the nose line. If you get that right, everything else is *ahem* a piece of cake. Then we piped in frosting of various colors to fill in the lines, and used a spatula to gently smooth them out. We finished it off by piping a line of orange rosettes around the bottom edge.

The Turtles, Mikey especially, have a thing for pizza– so naturally we had to have some at the party. We picked up a few pizzas from Little Caesar’s for ‘eats’ and had pizza, and more pizza for dessert with these cute cookies. They’re sugar cookies I frosted red. The ‘cheese’ is finely grated white chocolate, with red M & M ‘pepperonis’. SOn # 2 works at a local pizzeria and snagged me a few pizza boxes for presentation, but I’m sure most local Mom & Pop joints wouldn’t mind giving you one or two upon request.

We had Oreo cookie ‘Sewer Lids’ to munch on too. And in a nod to our anthropomorphic friends radio-active origins, we had some Toxic ‘Ooze’ to wash it all down with.

We tend to keep the deocrations simple, using things we already have on hand. In this case? Nunchucks on the table (another nod to our beloved Mike) and talking turtle figurines. We used plastic bowls that happened to coordinate and red solo cups for untensil holders. I did splurge on coordinating plates and napkins ( each about $1 at Walmart) and a table cloth to keep clean up easy.

Another thing we don’t do? Goody bags. You get cake and ice cream. Copious amounts of sugar are my gift/ thank you to you. On the other hand, we all know how much I love a good diy, or any kind of imaginitive play the keeps them away from outlets and batteries. When I saw an idea to make your own wearable turtle shells? Every kid was gonna get one! And they were adorable 🙂 I’ll have a how-to up next week so you can out fit your own Ninja Turtles in proper DIY-couture.

And here’s my gorgeous sister so kindly modeling a shell for the birthday boy, and also using some of the photo props from a kit we found on clearance (again at Walmart) in the party planning section.

Simple. Straightforward. And the birthday boy and his friends thought it was all totally gnarly. Even the one boy who looked at my like I’d grown two heads when I asked him to eat over a plate as he was on his third bite of pizz-ookie, sprinkling my carpet with ‘cheese’.

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Our Minecraft Birthday Party

Anybody who has a young boy (or even girl) right now probably has heard of Minecraft. It is the thing. Literally, THE. THING. But if you’re like my husband, or our parents, you probably have no clue what it actually is other than a game the kids play that they’re crazy about. And even worse, if you’re trying to throw a Minecraft-themed party, you might not be able to find many decorations or idea at the main stores, or even Party City. Ahh! This could be time to panic. But rest assured it’s not. So what do you do? You make due and do the best you can.

With a little patience, and a little ingenuity, you can easily throw your own DIY Minecraft birthday party. Here’s how we did it.

But first, here’s son # 4 enjoying some of the frosting leftovers the night before his big day. He’s just a stud muffin looking for a cupcake. 😉

Ok, getting down to business now, Minecraft makes an excellent theme for a birthday party. The simple graphics make decorating easy, and there’s a ton of ideas around the internet for games and party food. For the cake, we use different color dots of several hues of green icing to give our ‘dirt block’ the pixel-ated Minecraft look. It dawned on me after the cake that I should have used a square baking dish instead of my regular circular cake pans to give it a truly authentic look. I found the toy set I used as toppers in Walmart. They had 3 different options. We crushed oreos in the food processor and pressed the crumbs into the side of the cake for our ‘dirt’.

Creeper. cupcakes. The sons were stoked! They couldn’t have been any easier and coordinated perfectly with our cake. Kudos to the hubs for decorating them while I was trying to get all the last minute details perfected and in place.

For drinks we had Minecraft water (not pictured) by adding a few drops of blue food coloring to 2 2-liters of diet Sprite. We also had ‘Creeper-ade’. Tape a cardstock kreeper face onto a clear drink dispenser and fill it with green Hawaiian Punch. Again, super easy. I found chocolate candy rocks online to represent the coal/iron ore. We had sourpatch candy watermelons for the ‘melon’ and used potato chips to represent the game’s ‘gold’. There were square jello cubes for water blocks. We served square sandwiches. Square crackers, several kinds. You get where we’re going? Everything in Minecraft is square. Serve square food. So simple, and oh-so impressive to the Minecraft fandom.

Son # 3 came up with the idea of using some balloons & crepe paper (again found at Walmart, for $1/ea) to make some Enderman decorations. In the end he decided they looked more like squids but, since there are in fact squids in Minecraft, it was all good. In the end the boys and their friends took turns playing Minecraft on our Play Station, ate, played some more Minecraft, opened presents, ate cake/cupcakes with scoops of ice cream and left. It was one of the best parties I’ve done for them yet. Fun, exciting and easy to do.

Best of all, both birthday boys felt super special on their special day. And that my friends, covers it. No muss, no fuss, simply a great Minecraft party that had just the right amount of themed items that impress the kids/guests without stressing the host/ess out!

Happy, happy birthday to two of our sweet, sweet boys. We love you and are so blessed to be your parents. We’ve loved every minute of being your parents and watching you grow into the compassionate, inquisitive, happy, and comedic souls that you are. We love you, honeynugget & little man!

Sous Chef Sunday: Chicken & Waffle Sliders

Mmm. Chicken, and waffles. Two seemingly unrelated things, but when put together make a food-gasmic combination. The sons, yet again, were skeptical. Four identical sets of little arched eye-brows as I got out just 3 ingredients. When, oh when, will they learn to trust me in the kitchen?! The sons followed the super simple recipe all by themselves, although with supervision since they were using the oven. The older sons can handle it, but Son # 4 gets so excited to be involved in the process, I worry he might forget hot things lead to burned fingers. Each son, in turn, took one tentative bite, and then proceeded to scarf them down. They looked like squirrels packing away food for winter. There was even a brief skirmish over the last two and who deserved them MOST. A chicken and waffle combo may have sounded weird to the more traditional tastes of the Sons, but they all agreed UNANIMOUSLY (might I point out this almost never happens!), that these little suckers are finger-lickin’ good.

Chicken & Waffle Sliders

frozen mini waffles, fully toasted
chicken tenders, cooked
{real} maple syrup
toothpicks

Directions

1. Slice your cooked chicken tenders in half. Break your toasted waffles apart.
2. Sandwich one piece of chicken between two cooked waffles. Secure with a toothpick.
3. When all the tenders have been ‘sandwiched’, drizzle them with maple syrup and serve warm.