A Phineas and Ferb Birthday Party

Well, I should say a Phineas and Ferb half birthday party!  When Gabe’s 6th birthday rolled around we were in a little chaos – Mara’s due date was a week before his big day, and my dad had also had an accident and required surgery to repair some of the damage.  Those factors combined with the fact that his birthday is smacked firmly into holiday season?  Well, it just didn’t bode well for a November party last year.  So we tabled it until spring.

We had intended to have his birthday party a week before, but a freak virus kept him out of the party circuit that weekend, and we had to reschedule for this past Sunday.  He was awfully disappointed, but we gave him our half-birthday present on the original party date and that blunted the pain enough for him to wait one more week. 😉

Gabe has an all-encompassing obsession with Phineas and Ferb.  This has replaced an interest in some other less desirable shows <cough> spongebob and garfield <cough> so when he suggested that he wanted a Phineas and Ferb themed party I jumped at it.

The cake was an early concern, until I stumbled on this simple design – which required almost no decorating skills.

The lack of required decorating skills turned out to be a good thing, because the cake was a complete disaster!

I normally make a cake recipe from the Joy of Baking website, but I decided I wanted to keep things easy so I bought two cake mixes.  Which I somehow proceeded to butcher.  How I can make a cake from scratch but can’t successfully execute a box mix?  Well, that’s just pitiful!  The cakes – which initially seemed done – began to seem more sticky as they cooled.  When I tried to get them out of the pan, I realized something was drastically wrong.  Both cakes came out in two sections – the outer section plopped out first, and then I had to gingerly nurse the middle section out and piece the whole thing back together.

Big, fat fail.

Because the cakes were crumbling they were extremely hard to ice.  The icing, however, was in short supply. The cake really needed two coats – a thin crumb coat followed by a thicker finishing coat.  But I only had what I had and ran out of ingredients to make more.  So I made due with what I had.  Secret – I didn’t ice the back of the cake.  It was a giant crumbling mess and seemed impossible to frost.  So I just put that side to the back and called it a day.

I used orange foam to make the bill, tail and feet and used a marshmallow and two chocolate chips for eyes. That part? Easy peasy.

We played four games.  First up was Where’s Perry?  I found a picture of Perry online, printed out about 40 baseball-card sized pictures of him and hid them around our front yard.  The kids ran around looking for them, and the person who found the most got an extra serving of candy.

We played Pin the Tail on Perry.  Had I been more prepared I would have ordered a giant Perry cutout from a party supply store.  But I was trying to do this on the cheap and ended up deciding to print it out on my computer and piece it together.  We cut tails out of orange construction paper and called it a day.

The bulk of the party was spent creating Inators.  I had every craft product known to man – paper plates and cups, dowels, skewers, toothpicks, styrofoam balls, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, googly eyes, paper, foam stickers, etc.  The kids used the supplies to create an invention and then name it.  Note: boys make violent inventions.  I still have a “Spike-inator” on my living room floor.  It’s great protection against intruders.

Our final game was a round of You Are SO Busted!  Tahd blew up something like 200 balloons and we dropped them on the ground and let the kids go at them.

It was completely deafening!  But they loved it!

We capped off the party with cake, ice cream, and presents.

Overall it was a success, and it was really fairly simple.  Last year’s birthday was a carnival and I felt like I could have worked for years and still never been fully prepared.  This?  Was low-key and fun and the kids enjoyed themselves.  Gabe, especially!  So it’s a win in my book!

Happy 6.5, baby!