Happy 10th Hunger Games

I have SO many other things on my mind and on my plate but I am too excited to blog about this party to wait any longer.  If you haven't already read the last post that outlined Alyssa's ideas for her party you may want to peek at that first.  Or not.

First off is the invite.  I erased our personal info, hence the big blank chunk in the middle of the invite.  On Sunday morning I realized that if we expected to do a party on Friday we should have already sent invites so we decided to print them so we could hand deliver the neighbor ones and church friend ones and then only have to mail a few to school friends.  I thought I had nice paper but all we could find was printer paper which we thought looked terrible and it was Sunday so we couldn't go get anything new.  We decided to age it.  Of course coming from the Capitol it would be all shiny and nice so this makes no sense but we just liked it better.  Thankfully Seth never remembered to take the coffee samples that I got with my Keurig to work so I  brewed up a cup of coffee and we brush it on the paper and baked it and voila.  Kind of funny that we took scratch and sniff coffee invites and passed them around at church.  I typed it from memory after reading Alyssa's and now that I am looking at her actual draft I see that I was actually supposed to put "crush your enemies under a tracker jacker nest."  Oops!

Now on to the set up.  I did not finish everything on my agenda but I guess no one knows that but me, and now all of you.  Yes, I did make 12 cakes and 4 colors of fondant, and it took forever but it was WAY easier than decorating a cake so thank you for the best cake idea ever Alyssa.

Speaking of taking FOREVER....these things took forever.  Seth made the frames for our parachutes with wire and I tied on the strings and covered them in silver plastic.  What do you bet that in a month all the party stores will have all kinds of pre-made HG party stuff?  But right now they do not so we were on our own.  Alyssa was even specific about what went in goody bags. From the Capitol: colorful braided hair extensions, rings, necklaces and fuzzy slap bracelets, and for candy: Lifesavers because Katniss and Peeta save each other's lives,  Fire Jolly Ranchers because girl on fire, and Hershey's kisses because they kiss.  Isn't my daughter creative?

Our homemade tracker jacker nest pinata.  I looked high and low for a beehive nest on Wednesday.  I would have even settled for one from Winnie the Pooh. I had no luck at all but I saw a homemade one online.  No tutorial but it looked simple enough to figure out so Wednesday night me and the kids got messy and made this fun thing.  I ended up not putting anything in it.  I didn't want to pop the balloon because it made a nice handle to hang the nest by so it ended up just being a decorative pinata.

I printed this Mockingjay logo and modpodged it on to cups...

Alex asked me to print a Mockingjay outline for him so he could draw it so while I did cups he did this...

I thought he was just going to copy the outline exactly (even that seemed hard to me) so I was blown away when I saw that he even gave it feathers and brought it to life.  Even Alyssa was super impressed.

I was supposed to make the cornucopia for the table but ran out of time.

The menu...don't worry it was actually chicken noodle soup


I meant to get matching baskets to make the food table cute but I was out of time and way over budget.

These were supposed to be individually wrapped in wax paper envelopes and sealed with a Mellark Bakery sticker, but again, out of time.

My friend, Cheryl just did an awesome Harry Potter party and for Potions class they drank Sprite with Kool Aid ice cubes.  I have seen that before but not for years so I was so happy that she posted it because it made me think to do fire colored ice cubes so their drink would turn to fire.  Thanks Cheryl!


If you read Alyssa's party ideas then you know she wanted me to be Effie and I even let her pick my wig.  If you know me then you know my wardrobe is mostly gray, brown and navy blue so I wore the brightest clothes I own.  I meant to do crazy make-up but again, time.

Seth was Haymitch so he quickly posed with his assigned accessory before taking the little kids away from the party.  They really wanted to stay.  Alex had been wearing a white polo and his white TKD pants for 2 days, because he thought that is how a baker's son would dress and Chloe was supposed to be Prim but she was in her peacock costume so we decided she was on Alyssa's prep team instead.  They were sad to go but they came back all smiles because daddy took them to Texas Roadhouse.



After we ate they shot a marshmallow bow and arrow.

When I called out to tell Alyssa it was her last shot she turned right towards me and shot.  Thank goodness I never put my camera down because I captured Effie Trinket's assassination attempt on camera.

The actual Hunger Games was supposed to be last but Alyssa decided she wanted to do it next so we did.  For the games we pulled two names from the reaping jar and those two tributes would choose a challenge and go head to head. Whoever survived went on to the next round until we had a Victor.  I wanted quick challenges. I have never seen Minute to Win It, but 3 friends have posted about parties with this theme and the games seemed quick and silly.  Perfect, so I googled some Minute to Win It games and chose a few that I already had supplies for.  The first two names pulled were Katelin and Alyssa.  Their challenge was Face the Cookie.  You have to put a cookie on your forehead and move it in to your mouth with no hands.


It wasn't going so well so we finally let them lay down.


Eventually Miss Alyysa somehow flipped her head and caught it in her mouth.  Not sure that is exactly how you are supposed to play, but we called it a win and Katelin was our first tribute to fall.  Sound the cannon.

Next set of tributes had to stack three dice in a popsicle stick in their mouth and get across the room with it.

These two had an easy one.  First one to chew their gum and blow a bubble moved on.

Next up was the elephant trunk where you wear pantyhose on your head with hacky sacks in the toe and swing your trunk until you knock over all your cans.

And then on to the breakfast scramble where two cereal boxes are cut in to 20 pieces and the first one to put them back together won.

And the last challenge of round one was to keep 3 balloons in the air the longest.

The six surviving victors names went back in to the reaping and round two began with Chocolate Unicorn.  You had to unwrap 6 Ding Dongs and stack them on your forehead first.

And then the Yo-Yo Donkey Tail where you had to tie a yo yo on your waist and swing it until you knocked your cans over.  This one was funny because they looked like they were doing some kind of choreographed dance together.


Next up I was going to have them stack whiffle balls because I have seen them do that on the kids game show at Six Flags but I didn't have whiffle balls. I looked online and it said golf balls would work so we tried it.  Fail.  And then we tried it on a table.  Fail.  So I let the tributes choose a game they had already seen to complete their round.

They chose elephants.

And now we were down to 3 tributes, Alyssa, Quinn and Janae.  First one to stack three empty and 3 full soda cans would be the Victor, and as you can see my little girl on fire was beat.  Quinn won.

Next up was Capitol makeovers.  I was going to do them for them but I needed to clear up dinner to get ready for cakes so I had them pair up and do each others makeovers.


Some of the girls played it pretty and conservative

And some painted their whole faces.  Sorry parents!


I took my wig off after the games and it made the rounds the rest of the night.

Next up we did presents and I have a picture of just Alyssa with each guest like I always do at gift time but I won't post them all, just the group shot.  I did hear a few girls comment on how many pictures I took.

After presents we headed to the bakery to decorate cakes.  I thought that since they were older they could roll fondant and attempt an actual design but most of the cakes looked the same as they do when you decorate with toddlers.  Lots of frosting, lots of candy, lots of sprinkles, lots of mess, lots of fun!

At this point Alyssa also brought out her CD player and Taylor Swift and it got really loud and way to pre-teen for me.  I realized that this may be the last friend party Alyssa has where I get to do the whole plan and officiate thing.  I am thinking we are dangerously close to get out of the way and let us hang out mom.



Seth got home during presents and built a fire in the backyard so we sang Happy Birthday outside and hung out by the fire.


Taylor Swift got dragged outside and the volume and insanity continued.

And then they decided that 12 screaming girls on a trampoline was a good idea and see how one of the girls is zipping the net shut right in my face?  That is when I finally got out of the way and let them play.


Alyssa had the best time and keeps hugging me and thanking me.  Good thing because I keep asking myself why do I do this, and every time she comes to chat about her party again, I remember.