Day 5: Monsters vs. Aliens!!!

Yesterday was a day filled with selfless, kind, deeds. The biggest being the hosting of a ‘drop-off’ birthday party, with TEN 5 and 4-year old boys… for THREE hours. The 5-yo turned five on Thanksgiving Day… so we weren’t able to host his birthday party until now. He was very clear on three things that he wanted:

1. NO GIRLS
2. A “Drop-off” party at our house
3. A Monsters vs. Aliens Theme (I had to talk him out of a Twilight Theme… because yes, he has seen the movie and is just as much in love with Edward as I am!)

“Great” was my first response. Then, “I can handle this”. And finally, “F**K, this is going to suck!”.

Just kidding. I was excited (at first) to try this out. I sent out the invites, tried to get the house ‘ready’ for destruction and then went to work on the theme. That’s when things became challenging. Unfortunately, aside from some plates, napkins and a table cloth (that I found at our local iParty), there are virtually no fun accessories, toys, clothing, you name it with Monsters vs. Aliens. At least not yet.

I went to the movie website to see if I could order anything but all they had were down-loadable printouts. ::sigh:: So I did my best, buying “manly toys and treats” for the goodie bag. Then all of a sudden it was the Thursday before the party and I realized I never ordered the cake! I’m sure I could have ordered one from a grocery store bakery and have it ready for Saturday. The conundrum was that NOBODY had a “Monsters vs. Aliens” theme… and I was so unsuccessful with finding party accessories that I was hell bent on having the proper themed cake.

SO, I decided to be daring and decorate the cake myself. Make it? No. Just decorate it. I bought a regular, pre-made birthday cake from a local grocer… with white icing and blue trim:

The first thing that had to go were the roses. Roses are NOT manly. I used a icing spatula/spreader to remove the roses. This left a few divots in the icing. I did my best to scrape off any bits of white from the roses and spread them carefully back on. I had to do a little “begging and borrowing” of white icing from the rest of the cake, but in the end, the icing came out pretty smooth.

The bigger issue was the remnants of the green icing (from the leaves) left on the white, piped edges. Thankfully, I had gone to A.C. Moore and stocked up on all kinds of icing writers, gels, sprinkles and SPRAY ON icing color beforehand. I took the blue spray I bought… which is essentially an aerosol spray and coated the entire cake in blue.

Next, I went around the edges of the piped icing with some green gel and put a blue gel dot on top of each othe piping peaks. I did a quick image search on Google and found a great picture of B.O.B (from the movie). I printed it out in color, carefully gut it out and then laid it carefully on top of the cake.

Using a toothpick, I very gently traced just he outline of B.O.B. and then I used blue, black, white and red gel to fill-in the tracing. I used the black for shadows (carefully swirling it with a toothpick to help it blend with the blue) and the white for the highlights (using the same technique).

I was really happy with the finished product. Not perfect… but pretty darn good and the kids LOVED it.

The goodie bags were a big hit as well and were one of the things I was able to actually find with the Monsters vs. Aliens theme.

I filled them with mini dragons, NECCO wafers, Matchbox cars, gummy “bug parts”, food-themed erasers, monster finger puppets, glow sticks, “Smencils” (VERY cool, smelly pencils, that are made out of 100% recycled material) and planet-themed party blowers.