Super Mario Birthday Party

A few treats from my son's Super Mario themed birthday party.

I made cake pops, cupcakes, cookies and a fondant Super Mario on his Kart.

To make the Mario Cookies, I used royal icing transfers.  Very easy to do, with a very fancy result.

Take photos of Mario and print a dozen of them on a sheet of paper.  

Cover the paper with parchment paper and use royal icing to color in the image.  It's like painting with numbers.  

Cupcake Wars Birthday Party

I planned a Cupcake Wars Birthday Party for my daughter's 9th birthday.

 Everyone had a blast decorating their own cupcakes.

I first gave all the girls a quick tutorial on how to pipe and decorate with frosting.

Then I gave them a few examples of how to decorate with the sprinkles.

Part of the "challenge" was to decorate cupcakes around a theme and also create a display with their decorated cupcakes.   So each team was allowed to select certain props for their display.  All the girls really enjoyed the opportunity to decorate their own cupcakes and work together as a team to create a display.

I made cupcake cookies as party favors and we found super cute ceramic cupcakes from the dollar store to give out as well.

Spilled Nail Polish

This is what happens when your daughter spills nail polish on your brand new table...

It eats up the varnish...

And nothing can neutralize it, except paying the wood maker $500 to refinish it.

Here is the perpetrator.  Perhaps her earmuff-wearing prevented hearing me say,  "Don't use that nail polish on the brown table!"

Here's are some tips.
#1 Don't use nail polish indoors
 #2 Definitely don't wear those earmuff indoors, 'cuz you can't hear me say tip #1.

Konad Nail Design Stamper

I took my girls to the Premium Outlet mall in Orlando.

I got suckered into buying a Konad Nail Stamper.

It's cute and pretty simple to do.
But a bit of a rip off.  I found extra stamper image plates on Ebay and they were much cheaper.  Ditto for the complete sets.

I've only used it a handful of times since then.  But they girls are not allowed nail polish at school.  So we only save it or summer time use.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

What a fun day in Orlando.  The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is amazing.  

The only major drawback was the early morning crowd.  We could barely walk through Hogsmeade... Like crazy shoulder to shoulder to get around.  The Harry Potter ride took a whopping 100 mins to ride.  And the Wand shop was definitely way pass maximum capacity for fire codes.  Everything I read said to "get there early."  

I beg to differ.  

We went back later in the afternoon and it took us less than 30 minutes to get on the Harry Potter ride.  Plus we could really enjoy Hogsmeade in all it's snowy glory.