Let’s discuss Charlie’s Scooby Doo party, shall we?
Here’s the cake I showed you unfrosted yesterday. I really love how it turned out! I don’t think I’ve ever made a cake with so many different colors, and I can tell you what made the difference with this one: I discovered this tip on how to fill the pastry bags without making a mess. What’s the worst part of frosting a cake? Anyone? For me, it’s cleaning out the bags. It’s even worse when you need to change colors (as I often do because I only have two bags and I’ve lost all but one of my couplers). You have to wash out the bag and clean the coupler before you can start decorating again. In between each color. It’s madness! Following the directions at the link, however, I could just change out the colors without anything but a clean tip. Fun!
The brown frosting is chocolate (of course), and the dark brown is frosting that was made as dark as I could get it and then dyed with equal parts of red, blue, and green food coloring to make it darker. The buns of the burger are just unfrosted patches of the yellow cake. I didn’t plan that ahead of time, but it really worked out well!
At Max’s party we found that a lot of the snacks didn’t get eaten, so this time we scaled back. We had our Scooby Snacks, cheese, pretzel Goldfish, mini pigs-in-a-blanket, and mummy juice boxes.
I really liked the juice boxes, and the kids did too.
I used leftover white crepe paper, some googly eyes and a glue gun to make mine. What was the crepe paper leftover from, you may ask?
Why, our spooky piñata of course! We made another $2 Piñata, except it was more like a $1 piñata since I only used one color of crepe paper and some construction paper I had in the cupboard. We filled it with candy and snacks of course, and I threw in some Halloween favors that they had at the Dollar Tree. (Their stocking Halloween things in early September really worked out for this party.)
Then there were the balloons. We used the same balloon setup as we had for Max’s party but in Mystery Machine colors. (Light blue, lime green, and orange.) With a minor addition.
A little sharpie turned our balloons into “Spooky Balloons.” I hadn’t done more than two before Charlie declared that it was going to be the best birthday party ever. Awww.
Let’s see: I distracted the kids at one end of the living room with a bean bag toss I made out of a cardboard box –
you can tell this picture was taken after the party. Those white things on the ground are the remains of some of the sucker ghosts that were in the piñata. Anyway, while they were tossing beanbags and mostly not getting them in (apparently I should have made the mouth even bigger) I hid all the presents and set up a very short scavenger hunt.
The presents had been on top of the haunted house (which I made out of cardboard boxes, tape, spray paint and more Halloween decorations from the dollar store), and in there place I left a ‘ghost’ balloon with a note taped to it. They had to read the note, figure out where to go, and get to the next balloon ghost clue. While they were down the hall reading a clue, Greg took the presents and put them inside the haunted house. This game was quite a hit.
After cake and presents we cracked open the piñata. (Those paper bags are REALLY sturdy! I’m considering trying tissue paper next time and seeing if that makes it any easier for the kids to whack it open.) Immediately after the piñata we handed out gift bags so the kids would have a place to store their loot.
For Max’s party we bought the prepackaged goody bags (he begged) and I had forgotten how cheap and flimsy they are. This time, I decided to pack my own.
I just used brown paper lunch bags I had in a drawer, printed off a picture of Scooby I found online, and glued it to the front. Each bag got a box of crayons, 3 cans of fun size play-doh, 2 Halloween pencils, 2 Halloween erasers, a bottle of eyeball bubbles, a magnifying glass, a whistle, and another noisemaker I don’t know the name of. I ended up spending the same amount of money per bag as I did on the pre-packaged ones, but obviously the contents of THIS goody bag were much higher quality. Even though I got most of the contents at the dollar store. Honestly.
Well! This party was a ton of work, but I think my goal of giving Charlie a memorable party was achieved!
