A Superhero birthday on a budget

I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams. - Spider-Man 2

Today was my little mans 5th birthday party. It has been a long tiring busy and oh so much fun lead up!
There was a cake to make, food to buy, goodies and lollies and decorations to put together and loot bags to make, because of course the cheap plastic ones form the $2 shop weren't good enough for my little boy, lol.
My mother rolled her eyes at me when she came over and saw me making origami paper loot bags (the honest reason is because there were none at the shops that fit my theme and I was on a budget, lol).
The kids had a blast and I am ready for a wine and bed! oh wait it's only 2pm in the afternoon, is that too early??
Decidely so. Instead I am going to pop up some photos for inspiration, links to tutorials I used and details for the gathering, incase you are planning a superhero party in the near future.

First up the costumes!! I made Cadence's (which of course can be purchased right here at Cadenza Bella).
I planned on making one for Kyan but his grandad and Nana (on my husbands side) bought him a cool Superman costume :)

Next comes the cake!

I can totally see why people hire cake makers! Boy do these things take alot of time and work to make!! (Speaking of which - if you are in the Auckland NZ area I know a fantastic cake maker - Bubblekin cakes)

So for the cake.

I made the three tiers (the bottom two were just packet mix and the top was made from scratch - simple banana cake).

Bake and cool your cake, then slather in buttercream icing (for the chocolate one I used caramel buttercream, mmmmm) I follow wiltons recipe for my buttercream icing.
Smooth the icing with a big spatula thing ( I don't know the technical term) then the secret is to use a paper towel, place it over the top and smooth the icing out, you want the icing to be as smooth as possible to get a smooth finish from the fondant. I decided to marble some blue and black for the bottom layer. To do this I made the blue fondant and then lightly kneaded a blob of black through.
Now, I am not a cake maker, so I don't know what the professionals do, but I rolled my fondant out on a clean silicon cookie mat (MUST be clean as fondant picks up all the little bits), then I picked it up on the mat, placed the fondant over the cake and slowly peeled away the mat.
I didn't have any templates, so I just cut out the shapes I needed using a pizza cutter, lol. Shoved some skewers through the middle of the cake to place the next tier on and used basic icing (the water and icing sugar type) for the webs on spiderman layer.
Eventually I ended up with this'....

I used the following tutorials for the cake:
Hands - http://desiredcreations.com/howTo_PJHands.htm
Hair - http://www.lovelytutorials.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2774
Overall Figurine - http://bakehappy.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/fondant-figures-tutorial-little-boy.html#.Ub0jSpxT1U0
Clouds - http://media-cache-ec3.pinimg.com/originals/f5/1e/f4/f51ef4cbeada923b6c634c219e42592b.jpg

I got some plain paper cups and decorated them with coloured paper and superhero emblem cutouts, with matching bendy straws of course.
I cut a bunch of foam masks out for the kids to decorate themselves and take home.
I made the loot bags by following a video tutorial - click the loot bags photo to see the video if you want to make your own :) Again out of the same colours and then with superhero cutouts I made.
There were explosion signs everywhere with instructions like headquaters, bat cave, replenish station (food and drink)....... again made out of the coloured paper.

We had to continue the theme onto the food of course! Being winter we had to have lots of nice hearty food!
So we started with the cold stuff - super fruit, hero sandwiches, I saw this Awesome idea of printing of comic book strips/pages (or use old comic book pages if you have them) to wrap sandwiches in. I was going to popcorn cones aswell but I ran out of time, ended up being more than enough food anyway & Joker jello.
For the hot food we had power pies, super dogs and rescue rolls (mini spring rolls, but by the time I had taken away the fruit and put out the spring rolls the table had been ravished, lol).

The only 'organised' activity we had was to diffuse the bomb (pinata) the kids LOVED it! Finally smashed it open and there was a stampede to get the goodies which consisted of glow sticks (power bands), balloons, lollies (of course) and glow in the dark stars.
The rest of the time the ran wild all over the house, and had a blast! Unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs here so they were stuck inside but they didn't seem to mind :) Oh and the Foosball table was a hit (my mum & sister got it for my son for his birthday - I am not sure who had more fun on it - mum or the kids! lol).
Oh and I can't forget the cityscape! I bought a flannel backed tablecloth in blue for $3 and then painted it. Had to paint it a few times as plastic is not an easy painting surface.

So that's basically it for our Superhero party! Kids had a blast and I am exhausted and to top things off, I have Miss Cadence's 2nd birthday party next weekend! But you know what? It was so much fun to organise and great to see the kids having a blast! Totally worth it!

Until next weekend! Ciao :D

Shopping list:
coloured paper, A4 packet and roll of larger sheets - $5
paper cups - $3
bendy straws - $2
Flannel backed tablecloth - $3
poster paint - $2 each
foam sheets for masks - $1 a sheet
thin elastic for masks - $2 for 2m
balloons - $2 a packet
cake
costume
food