Minecraft Bithday Party

     This post got lost in the hiatus shuffle.  We actually did this party before Christmas last year, and I didn't realize I hadn't posted this until just now! So just pretend I posted this last Thanksgiving, would ya?  Thanks.

     So the boys wanted a Minecraft birthday party this year.  I was not thrilled.  Minecraft is the most boring game that was ever invented in my opinion, and it has the added benefit of making me extremely nauseated when my son tries to show me something and goes zooming through the world like a crazed, half-dead, drunken Ender Dragon.  But the party was pretty fun to put together, I must say.  And the kids had a fabulous time.

Found these at Amazon thanks to Bliss Bloom Blog who I shamelessly copied about 75% of this party from.  Thus the ease, I suppose...

Made these with Perler Beads, hot glue and toothpicks.  I was inspired by Bliss Bloom Blog's fantastic Minecraft Party.   The square cupcake tin came from Amazon.  (Hiatus Update: My husband fell in love with Perler Beads after this and bought just about every color there is so he could recreate all his favorite video game characters.  In fact, while the boys and I were making Perler Bead ornaments for the grandparents this year, he was busy putting the TARDIS in Santa's sleigh to hang on our own tree!)

The best thing about Minecraft is the food.  So many people try to take red candy and call it "red stone" or "TNT" but Minecraft already has so many real food products, the menu practically writes itself!  Here you see potato salad, cheese cubes, and hard boiled eggs.

Here is honey roasted chicken.

Found these sweet juicebox printouts at Bliss Bloom Blog.

Moar Minecraft munchies.

All the cards I printed with the help of MinecraftBay on Etsy.

     Got the idea for this sad little guy from Catch My Party.  Theirs is much better done, I ran out of room and the tape kept falling off.  Maybe you'll have better luck than I did...  But anyway, I got the plates at my local party store and one pack of a different color green from Amazon.  I used the left-over plates as the party plates to eat on.

The grass and streamers came from Amazon.  Props to Bekah who hung those streamers for me.

Yep, that's a Creeper face pinata.  I just used one of the three masks I bought, covered the hole with construction paper, and let the kids beat the tar out of it.  I made a loop out of a zip tie to tie the rope to.  The kids all went through once blind folded, but it was so tough, we let them go through again a few times without one.  Work for that candy, kids!

     We had a slime ball toss.  You may remember these from our Monster party a year ago.  I had a few left over and let them over inflate to make these slime balls.  We played it just like an egg toss.

Inspired by Bliss Bloom Blog (again), I found this set of paper Minecraft figures on Amazon.  They were the perfect decorations! (Hiatus Update: These little paper toys have really hung in there!  The kids still play with them!)

     Using another free template, this time from FPSX Games, I made these little TNT poppers, for our final activity.  The kids had a great time and the boys are begging for more video game parties.  I think next year I'm going to do an easy party like hire a magician or something.

Another year, another cake...

     The ol' blog is celebrating its 4th year today!  I can't believe how quickly it's gone by. 

The boys had a Minecraft party this past weekend, and I will be posting pictures and recipes, but for now, I thought I'd post this little cupcake to celebrate another year of food, friends, and fun.

Chocolate Joe Joe's Vanilla Cupcakes:
Modified from America's Test Kitchen Classic Yellow Sheet Cake from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

2 3/4 C whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 C sugar
4 large eggs, room temp
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 C whole milk, room temp
1 /3 box Joe Joe's cookies with chocolate centers, crushed

Line 24 cupcake cups with liners.  Preheat oven to 350.  Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.  Cream butter and sugar together.  Add eggs and vanilla and mix to combine.  Alternate adding flour and milk, starting and ending with flour.  Stir in the cookies.  Portion the batter into the prepared cups.  Bake for 15-20 minutes.  Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then set onto a cooling rack to finish cooling.  Frost when completely cool.

Frosting:
Modified from America's Test Kitchen Chocolate Frosting from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

10 oz chocolate chips
1 C heavy cream
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/3 C confectioner's sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 sticks unsalted butter, cut into chunks and softened

Place chocolate into a food processor.  Bring the cream and salt to a boil in the microwave in a microwave-safe bowl.  Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and process until smooth.  Add the sugar and vanilla and continue to process until combined.  With the machine running, add the butter one piece at a time.  Continue to process until smooth.  Transfer the frosting to a small bowl, cover and refrigerate until thick and spreadable (about 1 to 1 1/2 hours).

Enjoy, everybody! 

A Very Happy Halloween to You...

     Our Halloween party was this weekend.  It was a whirlwind of ladybugs, robots, spiders, and werewolves all wrapped up in a tidy 1950's-era package.  It was also pouring down rain and pitch dark so I don't have a lot of pictures of our scavenger hunt in progress, I'm afraid.  I have lots of shots like this:

Yeah...

So I'll tell you what we did and show you pictures of what it looked like sans kids...  We held a 1950's style Halloween party including some reproduction decorations.

We carried the theme into the menu by trying to replicate a TV dinner in a more desirable way.  We served homemade meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and steamed peas and carrots mixed with mint.  There was also a jell-o salad style dish because 50's and a 7-Up Cake.  Our starter for the kids was Vienna Sausage size organic hot dog chunks.  We also had meatballs, gluten-free cookies, and the vegetarian main was beans and franks.  We washed it all down with punch and martinis!

This was an agar agar Jell-o salad stand in.  It was interesting.  I especially liked the salad dressing.

Minted Peas and Carrots
1 lb bag carrots, peeled and sliced
1 bag frozen peas
2 Tbs mint
salt and pepper to taste

Steam the carrots until almost done.  Add the peas and continue steaming until warmed through.  Toss with salt, pepper, and mint.  Serve immediately.

Punch
1 Bottle Sparkling Apple cider
1/2 Gallon orange juice
1/2 Gallon Earthwise Wild Berry Guava Lemonade
12 scoops Raspberry Sorbet

Add all drinks to a large punch bowl and top with sorbet.  It doesn't look like much, but it tastes great and there are no HFCS or artificial flavors!  It also happens to taste great with vodka, so if you happen to make your martini a little too strong, dollop a little punch in there and you'll be a happy haunter!

One of our lovely hostesses, Danika.

 Our cowboy, David, who handed out the scavenger hunt sheets, sock hopping it up with a robot and a ladybug.  You just don't see that kind of thing every day.  For music, I found several, mostly 50's era songs including: Wooly Bully, Lil' Red Riding Hood, The Twilight Zone theme song, Bo Meets the Monster, Halloween Spooks (featuring Lambert, Hendricks and Ross), I Put a Spell on You, Witch Doctor, Punky Punkin, Morgus the Magnificent, The Purple People Eater, and of course, Monster Mash all downloadable on Amazon from about $.90 to $1.50.  Some of these songs are crazy weird.  Just sayin'.

 Our homage to 1950's cowboy flicks, the kids had to break out of jail by sliding down the slide.  The sheriff gave them a handy map to the rest of the scavenger hunt.  Apparently he was in on the whole thing...

First stop, Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

 Next up, apples on strings.  At every station, the kids got stickers to prove they completed the mission.

 

 Because it was raining and I was busy appleing out in it, I don't have one picture of our witch, Lauren, who many kids said was their very favorite part of the hunt, and was also one of our hosts.  She had a bubbling cauldron full of dry ice and a bowl full of "eyeballs" for the kids to scrounge through to help her find her jewels (skull rings which the kids got to keep).  So here's a picture of her hut, which you may remember as the troll house from our fairy party a few years ago.

 Can't really have a 1950's party without a hula hoop, can you?  No.  No you can't.

 

A classic game with a 1950's twist.  Tossing mini Frisbees into the pumpkin's mouth turns a bean bag toss into game using an iconic vintage toy.

Note to self: Yellow Frisbees are hard to find in a leaf pile...

Spooky ghosts in the rain...

 Fortunately revealed in the daylight to be balloons with flashing lights inside zip-tied to dowels.

 Our fortune teller (and co-host), Tori, before she braved the weather to read our guest's fortunes.

  It was wet business...

 EEK!  A GHOST!  Matt was the scariest ghost in a sheet the world has ever seen.  Three-year-olds the world over were terrified.  The kids were rewarded with Trader Joe's candies when they returned with their scavenger hunt sheets filled out.

 Twin housewives, Bekah and myself.  At the end of the party.  With fallen hair and rubbed-off make-up.  Drinking.  I also discovered something about my costume.  All it takes is a hair change to turn perky, perfect wife-lady into:

The Lunch Lady.

Hoagies and grinders, baby.

Simple Summer Party...

      So early this Summer I asked one of my favorite vendors at the Lake Forest Park Farmer's Market to do me a favor.  My gal, Tracy, at Social Ice Cream makes the best ice cream in the entire world.  Problem is, a solid portion of my friends can't eat sugar, dairy, soy, gluten, food colorings, flavorings, like basically anything.  But I knew Tracy could handle it. What did I need two gallons of sugar-dairy-soy-gluten-everything-free ice cream for?  You already know, don't you, you smart thing you!

My oldest's Cub Scout manual lists plan a party and make an obstacle course for your friends as two things you can get badges for and we're all about the badges around here.  We need all the stinkin' badges.  Fittingly, he chose blue and yellow as the colors.

He helped with all the set up, too!

 

 These little marigolds were just the right color and had a light citronella scent that, I think, helped keep the bugs a way.  So did the little fans you see in the background.

I found a thing on Pinterest about making little flags to mark drinks.  Good ol' party store came through with these puppies.

My oldest also had a say in the menu so we planned hamburgers and hot dogs and left the rest up to the generosity of our guests! 

My neighbor supplied us with this gorgeous caprese salad appetizer. 

My garden has been generously pumping out cherry tomatoes like nobody's business this year.

My honey making friend also dabbles in flavored vodka.  Holy man.

And she brings homemade bread.  Yeah she does!

These homemade hot mix pickles were my offering this year.

Hot Pickle Mix

From the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

4 C sliced trimmed pickling cucumbers (1/4 inch slices)

2 C cauliflower florets

1 green bell pepper, seeded and cut into strips

1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into strips

1 C sliced, peeled carrots

1 C peeled pearl or pickling onions

2/3 C pickling or canning salt

8 1/2 C water, divided

3 C sliced seeded hot yellow banana peppers (1 1/2- inch slices)

1 clove garlic

8 1/2 C white vinegar

3/4 C granulated sugar

2 Tbs horseradish

3-9 jalapeno peppers, halved and seeded

In a large glass or stainless steel bowl, combine cucumbers, cauliflower, green and red peppers, carrots, and onions.  In another large glass or stainless steel bowl, dissolve pickling salt in 7 C of the water.  Pour over vegetables.  Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.  Meanwhile, prepare canner, jars, and lids.  In a colander placed over a sink, drain vegetables.  Rinse with cool running water and drain thoroughly.  Add hot yellow peppers and mix well.  In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine garlic, remaining 1 1/2 C water, vinegar, sugar, and horseradish.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar.  Reduce heat and boil gently for 15 minutes, until liquid is infused with garlic flavor.  Discard garlic clove.  Pack vegetables and 1 to 3 jalapeno pepper halves into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar.  Ladle hot pickling liquid into jar to cover vegetables, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbles and and adjust headspace if necessary, by adding hot pickling liquid.  Wipe rim.  Center lid on jar.  Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.  Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes.  Remove canner lid.  Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

 

 We bought our burgers from Martiny Livestock at our farmer's market.  People said they were some of the best burgers they ever had!

Little bit of local cheese to top it off...

A little bit of socializing and then it was finally, finally time for...

Ice cream and sorbet!  We had Coconut Vanilla Bean, Peach Raspberry sorbet, and Raspberry Lemon Verbena. All made without soy, without dairy, without white sugar, but made with coconut milk, honey, and fresh local produce.  Because Tracy is a flippin' wizard.

Then it was obstacle course time!  First down the slide, then a search through bubbles for a statuette, and a quick hula hoop for 5 seconds before a dash across the finish line!  Fastest time wins!  It was a quick, fun game and they loved it!

 

Even this dude and he doesn't like anything...