Super Mario Toddler Party

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

My husband and I love a good theme party! To be honest, we love a good party period, but given the excuse to go all out with themed shirts, food and decor– sign us up! That leads me to our Super Mario party. My 2-year-old adores the Super Mario movie. Believe it or not, her favorite character is Bowser. She either roars when she sees him, the noise we make for lions and dinosaurs, or she laughs. Honestly, it’s quite adorable. We decided to take this theme and run with it and I, of course, had to make my decorated sugar cookies! You’ll find more details on the cookies and icing below; the name of this site is Feed Me Dessert after all! Keep reading for decor and food ideas for a Super Mario-themed birthday party.

The Decorations

I love to DIY so many of the decorations for the party were completed by yours truly. This was a great opportunity to put my new printer to good use (thanks for the Christmas gift David!) and go all out DIY-ing. Side note, I should have taken advantage of my Cricut but, I honestly forgot I had it. I’ll dust it off and learn how to use the print-then-cut feature for the next party.

My favorite decorations were the Piranha plant centerpieces. I bought terra cotta pots from Walmart for about $2 each and painted them green. To hold the stick ‘stem’ in place, I traced and cut out cardboard pieces then, painted them black. I cut a small hole in the middle so the stick would stand straight up. Finally, I printed the head of the plant and taped it to the top of the stick and, voila! Piranha plants!

Another fun decoration/game I made was pin the mustache on Mario. This was a blast! The kids lined up to try and stick Mario’s mustache in the right spot and some adults joined the end of the line to give it a try also. Any adults that wanted in on the action were spun around a few extra times. Two of the kids got the mustache in the exact right spot! Luckily, I had enough prizes to go around.

Canva was an essential tool to make all of the printed items also, including the character food labels. I formatted each label so it could be folded in half after they were printed. Some were in theme more than others such as Fire Power cheese puffs and stuffed Goombas.

I have to give credit to my husband for the next decoration. We ordered brick wallpaper and yellow wrapping paper from Amazon and wrapped up empty cardboard boxes to mimic the brick and yellow question mark boxes seen in the game. We made just enough to spruce up the present table and make for some cute family photos.

The Food

My husband David and I both enjoy cooking but decided with a guest list of about 60 people, we’d leave most of the cooking to someone else. We ordered pizza from a local spot and the cake from BJ’s wholesale. The stuffed Goombas were stuffed mushrooms my husband made from scratch. Vegetarian and delicious, I have to remember his recipe. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a picture of them before they were gobbled up!

Okay now I have a question. If you were to pick up a cake for a special event and you drove a truck, what part of the vehicle would you put it in? Did anyone say the truck bed? If so I bet you are a husband (no offense to any husbands who said the front seat!). My sweet, sweet husband… He was in a bit of a rush so the cake was placed in the bed of his truck. The lid flew off of the cake and so did half of the printed edible photo. This led to a phone call to me and the quote “So something happened to the cake”. I saw red for a minute but I didn’t let it ruin my day and honestly, it wasn’t that bad. It still tasted yummy and I can guarantee two things. One is that David won’t do that again and two is that the birthday girl won’t remember! We also blamed the destruction on Bowser since he was relatively unharmed.

This brings me to the cookies! I love baking and decorating royal icing sugar cookies. So much so, that I had my own cottage bakery business. I decided to keep the cookies for my daughter’s party fairly simple since I had other decorations to make, hosting to worry about and I also have a two-month-old. I was lucky enough to have some amazing help from my friend Jackie! She came over to help and learn how to decorate with royal icing. She has past baking experience but her self-proclaimed area of expertise is in cakes and cupcakes (she can’t fool me– I say self-proclaimed because she’s good at everything!).

My cookie recipe comes from Preppy Kitchen. Many people recommended his recipe because these sugar cookies do not spread at all. That’s extremely important when making decorated sugar cookies. I’ve made minor tweaks over time that suit my needs and oven, but you can find John’s recipe here.

My royal icing recipe comes from the back of the package of Judee’s Merengue Powder Mix. I buy this right through Amazon. It’s the only brand I’ve tried but, I’m happy with it. It tastes delicious and hardens up nicely. I can also write on it with an edible marker if need be. If you want to check out the full recipe for my royal icing sugar cookies keep your eyes peeled- it will be out soon!

I hope this has given you some ideas if you’re thinking about a Super Mario themed birthday party!

Thanks for reading!
Liz at Feed Me Dessert
Check out my Instagram @feedmedessert_official