Minecraft Party!

Wow, Davis' party was a great success! Not too bad for throwing it together in a few days. Today I will focus on the party decor. Stay tuned for tomorrow's story of the 3:30 am wake-up call of "the microwave is on fire"...words you don't want to hear at any time, let alone at 3:30 in the morning with a house full of teenage girls! 

I sat the food up on our center island.

Over the table we had balloons decorated as "slimes" from the game. These were simple. Just punched cardstock tacked on with Thermoweb Zots! They stick great!

I had Brian print Creeper heads onto stickers from Staples to decorate the party favor boxes.

Creeper punch made from green Kool-Aid.

 Rock candy as "diamonds", gold Hershey bars as "gold" and licorice for "T-n-T"

 I added black food coloring to the marshmallows for rice krispie treats and formed them into balls for "coal." The cookies and bread were easy. Since there is pork in the game, we had pulled pork sandwiches as the main course.

Pretzel sticks were the "sticks." Carrots were "carrots." Easy.

One of the staples of any party we throw are white chocolate covered grapes. I learned to make these in college and they are so simple but so good. Simply dip grapes in white chocolate and place in the refrigerator on wax paper until they harden. They taste like candy!

Beverage bar.

 

 I created the Creeper bottles with the green Sprite bottles and electrical tape for the faces.

Brian designed and printed the Creeper water bottle labels.

 The centerpiece was an enderman from the game. I added a black balloon over a large glass vase filled with green water and used black streamers for it's arms and legs.

 I know everyone is wondering if I pulled off the cake...and I think it came put pretty great. It did look like it was "built" from blocks. I'll list the how-to details below.

 Here are all the girls getting ready for Davis to blow out the candles.

 I love this picture. There were a lot of laughs and I think all the girls had a great time! What a great bunch of young women. I love that they embrace Davis' quirkiness- and don't give her a hard time about it.

I think this photo says it all. 

Any friend that buys you this for your 13th birthday is a friend for life. And your other friends who find it hilarious instead of dumb are keepers too.

Cake Instructions:

The easiest way I found to make the cake was by creating all the pieces separately then assembling them right beforehand. Because it has Jell-O "water" it had to stay in the fridge. I didn't want to dry out the cake so I waited as long as possible before putting it together.

Make the blue Jell-O in a 9 X 13 baking dish.
Make the rice krispie treats in a 9 X 13 baking dish.
Make the cake in a 9 X 13 pan. I used dark chocolate cake and dyed the icing with gel food coloring.

I used the Jell-O pan as my base pan since it would be easier to move the rice krispies and cake rather than moving the Jell-O.

I carved out the border for the water and then removed the remaining Jell-O from the pan.

I didn't used a ruler or anything, I just eyeballed the rice krispie squares and then added them along the border of the Jell-O. Because the Jell-O is so mobile, it hides any rough edges.

Then I cut the cake into squares and filled in the rest of the pan. Then simply stack additional squares of cake on top to form more "blocks."

I liked this cake because some kids ate cake, some ate the rice krispie treats, and they all ate the Jell-O, who knew?

I'm glad that Davis had her friends here to celebrate her special day and now I am the mom of a teenager...gulp. So how long will she still like Lego's, video games, and My Little Pony...who knows, but I cherish every day she is still my "little girl" I know it's not going to last much longer and that makes me sad.

-Tricia