When I asked Aiden what kind of party he wanted for his 5th birthday, he quickly replied, “a superhero party with a Green Lantern cake and green frosting and…” well, he went on and on about all things green (his favorite color) and all things superhero.

So the big 0-5 and I wanted to knock his socks off with the best superhero party theme, decorations, food and sweets he’d ever laid eyes on.

I decided to include all Superheroes instead of just Green Lantern, so we had a Justice League thing going on: Superman, Batman, and the Green Lantern.  Greens, blues, reds and yellows.  Ok, I can work with those colors!

First of all ~ Invitations:  There were tons that I liked out there and lots of options available, but I thought making my own would make me feel better.

So I crafted again, for maybe the 5th time in my life.

And came up with these using bright green store bought blank cards, scrap booking stickers with phrases and sayings and a few sheets of Batman and Superman stickers.

Then, I had to come up with a menu.  Not just any menu, but superhero named foods.

With comic book cut-out ‘action’ shapes and word bubbles with clever names tied to superheros.  I made these using the shapes feature in a Word doc, printed on a color printer and cut out by my lovely party assistant, Joel.

We (he) taped them to name cards and propped them up in front of the dishes.

I also like to layout my service dishes the night before a party to get an idea of placement, spacing and guest “flow” through the food line, and usually use sticky notes on each dish to identify it’s use (got that nifty idea from my mom!).

Superhero food ideas:

~ Green Lantern Punch (Trisha Yearwood’s Green Punch: 2 packets lemon-lime kool-aid, 1-2 cups sugar, 1.5 liters ginger ale, 1 large can pineapple juice, 1 frozen lemonade, 4 cups water)

~ Re-Charge Iced Tea (unsweetened ice team + raspberry lemonade

~ CRUNCH! Mix (variety of chips)

~Super-Vision Veggies (veggie tray: grape tomatoes, sugar snap peas, celery, baby carrots)

~Super-Energy Bursts (fruit bowl: anything on sale! Pre-cut melons, berries, grapes and apple slices)

~Power-Up Energy Cubes (Jell-o jigglers cut into squares, blue & red flavors)

~Wonder-Kids Dogs (good old fashioned hot dogs)

~Super-Daddy Dogs (Jalapeno cheese hot link)

~Wonder-Woman Fuel (deconstructed chicken cobb salad – all fixings on the side so people can take as much, or as little of the ingredients they like in a salad)

~Pasta Power (basic pasta salad, using store bought dressing, cut up tomatoes, shredded mozzarella, olives and pepperoni slices)

~Bat Burgers (use a cookie cutter to cut bat shapes into American cheese and top hamburger patties to look like Batman’s call sign)

(Thanks, Tracey!  Your cookie cutter saved the day ~ since you can’t find a bat cookie cutter 5 months after Halloween anywhere!)

~Bat Wings (freezer hot wings)

~Super-Sticky Superhero Pops (big marshmallows on a cake-pop stick dipped in colored vanilla candy coating covered with sprinkles)

Make sure you have party favors with tons of superhero stuff scattered around.  I used cupcake rings instead of confetti.  Easier to clean up and the kids could pick them up, wear them and then leave them around and it looked like intentional decoration!

I chose superhero t-shirts for each kiddo in attendance. Of course, it was a small family party so my cost wasn’t too outrageous.  I wanted to make sure the cousins felt as much a part of the party as Aiden was because it was really a family celebration!

Luckily, it was a gorgeous day out (in February?!) that we were able to sit outside and soak up some sun.

The big kids lunched on the boys’ playground picnic table.  Aiden, the ever doting older brother was more concerned about cutting Drew’s grape tomatoes for him (“so he doesn’t choke, Mom”) than he was in smiling for this pic.  What a sweet big brother!

Outfitted in their superhero shirts, they played and played and flew all around the house and backyard.  Until it was time for cupcakes!

Now, these were pretty much the ugliest cupcakes I’ve ever made.

No joke, I almost threw them all away and ran out to buy some, but my fear of throwing away good money and perfectly edible food was bigger than my pride and I threw sprinkles on them and topped them with cupcake rings and called it good (enough).

They were tasty!  Just ugly…

SO, I felt I owed it to him to get him a Dairy Queen ice cream cake on his actual BIRTH day to make up for the abysmal looking cupcake tower.

Plus, you only turn 5 once.  A rolling sugar buzz and a weekend of fun is good stuff for any growing boy.  And a superhero can always blame his sugar-fueled antics on his alter-ego.

So that, in a nutshell, is how I threw my sweet boy a SUPER superhero party.  A little Green Lantern here, a little Batman there and a Superman everywhere.

Don’t blink ~ your babies will grow up faster than a speeding bullet, my friends, and there is no stopping time on this one…

…Super-Mom, or not.

~pw