Wednesday 26 March 2014

The blog is moving

Hi there!

I am currently in the process of moving the blog over to wordpress.

You can find me over there at  myrecipeboxandotherseasonings.wordpress.com

Tuesday 25 March 2014

A Simple Minecraft Party

 O had his sleepover birthday party this past weekend.  The theme he wanted.....Minecraft.  No surprise there, the boy is obsessed (remember the Minecraft mask post?).

Well, let me tell you, there are NO Minecraft decorations to be purchased in store.  There are some invitations and other small things that can be purchased from Etsy, but I was not willing to go that route and I also found them rather expensive for what you were getting.

So, I took to trusty Pinterest to see what I could find to do myself.  I managed to put together a nicely decorated and inexpensive party room, make a nice cake, and a huge success with goodie bags.

First I will show you decorations.  I kept it simple, the boys would be in the dining room (party room) for pizza, cake and gifts, so this was the only room I decorated.  The rest of the time they were up in O's bedroom playing Minecraft on their devices, or watching a movie in the living room.

I know nothing about this game (still) as I mentioned in my Halloween mask post, but I managed to get some good ideas both from Pinterest and by questioning O about certain aspects of the game.

These are my TNT decorations.  They were as simple as wrapping a couple of boxes in red wrapping paper.  I used a hot glue gun to attach white ribbon, but you could also use construction paper if you didn't have any ribbon.  I used a sharpie for the writing, and black ribbon on the top for the "charge".  Again, you could use any black materials you have laying around for the charge part.
I hit up the Dollar Store for tableware.  I got a green and a blue table plastic table cloth, green square plates, green napkins, and green cups. 

For the cups I grabbed my trusty sharpie and drew Creeper faces (some sort of bad guy) on them. 



My best find was square pieces of grass, perfect for the middle of the table.


I served homemade pizza, cut in to squares of course.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of that part.

The cake was a hit!  It was a chocolate dirt clump cake, iced with a chocolate buttercream frosting.  I used Oreo baking crumbs over top of the icing on the sides to get the dirt look.  The grass part on the top is vanilla buttercream icing with green food colouring.  I used a Wilton grass tip to get the grass effect.  For the cake I used this recipe from housewife2hostess.  It really is a good chocolate cake, and easy to make.  The recipe will make two layers, I ended up wanting a third layer as it wasn't quite tall enough.




And the goodie bags!  I was quite pleased with myself on this one.  O is 10, and I didn't want to do a goodie bag with the typical little toys that always get thrown out, and seriously, what ten year old really wants those?

The bags required a morning of trip in to town.  I got green paper bags and hit up the bulk food store for supplies.  On the bags I drew another Creeper face, and filled the bags with candies that represent items on Minecraft!  Here is a link that tells you different items used in the game and what they represent.




I put more candy in than what you see in the picture!  But there are gummy fish, and sour melons which satisy hunger in the game.  There is chocolate rocks/gravel which is used for mining or building in the game.  And last but not least, gold wrapped mini chocolate bars.  Gold is used for crafting, and currency.




There you go, I hope that this post gave you some easy, inexpensive ideas that you can do on your own!