23 It was a Monster BASH!

Phew!  My son's birthday this past Saturday was a blast!  I am super excited to share the fun with you.  We had 38 wonderful family and friends over to celebrate the birthday boy.  There was swimming, riding 4-wheelers and bikes, basketball, monster photos, swinging, sandbox playing, eating and overall lots of fun! Let's jump right in, shall we? The Invitation:

Food (served on Monster plates from Target):

While cruising Pinterest I ran across an awesome fruit monster.  I invited my cousin Melissa over, my official birthday assistant, and set her to work creating a fruit monster.  I LOVE how it turned out and we had so many comments on it!  I especially love that she put her own spin on it with the oranges for eyes... and I really love the chocolate chip stuffed raspberry pupils!  YUM.

The cake was a super easy 10" round, frosted, with gum for teeth, oreos/m&m's for eyes - it was inspired by this cake. (SOMEBODY got into the fridge and played with the gum teeth... hence the one funky tooth, but no one is coming forward.  Oh well!).

{Notice the missing pupil on the fruit monster in the background?!?  Someone couldn't resist that little tasty treat!}

I saw these adorable cupcakes on Oopsey Daisy and recreated them.  I used marshmallows for eyes instead of chocolate wafers, along with m&m's/chocolate chips for pupils.  These were the EASIEST to make - just a really small circle tip and let the frosting go willy-nilly!   I also made monster eyeball sugar cookies:

On top of all the fun treats we had cheese and crackers and served hot dogs, hamburgers, egg salad, macaroni salad, and chips, along with pink lemonade and Arnold Palmer (mix of iced tea/lemonade).   Moving on to decorations: I made the Monster banner and neglected to take a good picture of it , but it is available for your downloading pleasure here.

The goodie-bags (toppers also available for download here) were filled with monster pencils, monster finger puppets and some yummy treats:

I made water bottle labels as well:

Monster Friends:

Find out more about Mo the Human Eating Monster here.

{Click image for a larger view}
I made the Monster Hands using plain old dishwashing gloves, foam and puff paint.  Make them as gnarly as you want for some monster fun!  I also made was a set of googly monster eyeballs. I wrapped a headband with pipe cleaners.  Making sure to wrap one around the middle and have them stick straight up.  I glued three googly eyes to a pom-pom and glued those to the top of the pipe cleaner.  These were my daughters favorite!  The hat was actually a dino hat that I thought could work as a monster.  Check out my tutorial to make your own HERE.  

Another Pinterest find were these fun Monster Mouths. I knew they would be perfect for the Photobooth portion of the party.  Of course I made my own, but for $5, anyone can go buy these fun little photo props!  The kids had a blast with their monster mouths!   And lastly, the awesome polaroid frame prop was another item inspired by a find on Pinterest.  I made mine with a large piece of poster board and hung it on twine between two trees.  It was a hit with kids and adults alike!

I made monster favors for all of the kids and we played Hot Monster (using one of the monster friends shaped like a potato) to determine who got to pick their monster first.  For a tutorial on the Monsters click HERE.  And click HERE to download a blank Monster Adoption Certificate! Above: Playing a rousing game of Hot Monster!  Our music was too far away so Olivia and I sang with our backs to the kids.  These were the last two standing, and my niece Mel won the game and chose her monster friend first.

I am stunned that my little boy is already four.  We are so blessed to have a wonderful, healthy child.  He is learning and growing so quickly.  I love watching him play and he is so sweet and helpful with all the little girls at his daycare, lending a hand and giving hugs.  He loves playing with both of his sisters, although a little teasing usually accompanies it (from all parties!).  I am excited to continue to watch him grow and develop and look forward to seeing more of his personality bloom.