I always find the best way to unwind from hosting a Ben 10-themed party for 14 screaming kids is to take a trip to the local monster mall. Yes: on a Saturday.
To help you out a little here: imagine my mind is a little like a snowdome where my thoughts gently float around in the liquid. Now, the Ben 10 party was just a little like shaking that snowdome to fuck. And the monster mall? Like taking an AK-47 to said snowdome, blasting its contents into a million trillion pieces and embedding many of them in a nearby wall upon which some teenage punk seems to have tagged their name but upon closer inspection turns out to be a picture of their penis.
Just sayin’.
Look, of course I’m being a touch melodramatic. The party was just a normal kids party: you know, kids running around high on sugar and food colouring, screaming and whacking each other with sticks. And the mall was just the usual Saturday arvo consumer bitch-fight. But chuck in a visit from the silent red ninja, a headcold and the promise of a migraine and you’re starting to get the picture. And it’s of someone’s penis on the wall, apparently.
Still, I feel suitably removed from the whole experience now to share some highlights of the Ben 10 party with you all.
THE CAKE
This cake was a labour of love upon which I worked late into the night before the party. When I proudly showed my husband my masterpiece, his informed opinion was that it should be “more green” and “perhaps have a bit of white somewhere”.
At which point I grew exceedingly irate and shouted at him “What is WRONG with you? Don’t you know the difference between a Ben 10 Alien Force Omnitrix cake and a Ben 10 Original Series Omnitrix cake?? Have you never discussed the finer points of differentiation between the two with our firstborn child? I mean, have you even met our son??”
Sheesh.
Luckily I was able to jump onto Twitter and show off about my creation. And there, I felt the love that I was due. Of course, while I was busy showing off and feeling the love, I heard the tell-tale jingle-jangle of bells and stormed into the kitchen just in time to see the cat jump up on the table and get *this close* to licking the cake. What was that old saying again? Was it “pride comes before a cat with an rectum-coated tongue”?
THE PIÑATA
For those of you who have read “The NDM Guide to Making Piñatas” and are curious about where this Jetray lay on the NDM Piñata Spectrum (upon which all piñatas should measured, if only it actually existed), let’s just say Jetray ended up being the love-child of the Impenetrable Shark and The Bad, Bad Butterfly.
You see, I had somewhat overestimated the whacking power of the average seven-year-old boy and had built the piñata to withstand a direct nuclear blast. But somewhere in the painstaking paper-mâché process, something had gone terribly terribly wrong. When the pinata was finally cracked open (thanks to some king hits from my husband), there were cries all around of “Ewwwww! These lollies are all soggy!”. Oops, I did it again.
THE OMNITRIX BREAD
Nothing to say here except the the age-old question of how to serve fairy bread to a bunch of seven year old boys bearing makeshift weapons has finally been answered.
THE AFTERMATH
What you see here are Mr Justice’s brand new presents, all ripped out of their wrappings, tossed around the room and firmly ground underfoot with a few handfuls of party food thrown in for good measure. In the cleanup process, I found a grand total of three frankfurters hidden in very surprising places. Which literally put a twist on the adult party game “Hide The Sausage”.
But when I asked Mr Justice which was his favourite part of the party, it wasn’t the cake. It wasn’t the piñata. It wasn’t even the lame-arse game where I got them to squirt warm water at a plastic alien frozen in an icecube (true story).
It was “hanging out in the bedroom playing with the presents”.
This, more than anything, sent me a very clear message and that message was this: Next year, don’t be the über-mum party planner, NDM! Just cheerfully usher the guests straight into the bedroom… chuck in a packet of chips, a bottle of lemonade and a bucket to pee in… And then lock the door for two hours.
Now that’s a party plan that I feel that even I, utterly destroyed as I feel right at this moment, am willing and able to get behind.
Thank-you for yet more laughs, as the woman who forgot to wash the conditioner out of her hair this morning & thus has had to have two showers (doh), a laugh was in order.
The cake is fantastic, Le Artiste would be so jealous, well done.
Le Artiste turns eight in two weeks and I am starting to have palpitations at my complete lack of birthday preparations. So thanks for the tip, lock them in the bedroom with chips, lemonade and a bucket for two hours, sounds easy enough
What is it with husbands????
When will they learn that all they have to say is, “That’s one great cake! Where did you get the idea? He’s going to love it! You’re the best mum/wife in the world and we’re lucky to have you!”
Is that too hard to ask???
As a mother that rarely gets to bed at all before a party due to icing the cake from hell … it looks fantastic!!!
Did I tell you about the time my son asked me to make him a ‘Feathersword’ cake? Never again!!!
i’m sorry NDM, i can’t comment….i am too ashamed at my combination of low-effort and outsourcing that i had previously deemed as my ‘party prep effort’ – you truly take the cake!!!
Awesome cake. Awesome pinata. Awesome fairy bread. Awesome plan for next year.
Yes Awesome cakes ….. great, but don’t know why husband’s saying mean that much (looking at xanderley’s comment), that it can eventually become a burden if it’s goes not as expected.
Don’t put others saying too high
So sorry we missed it. But we will be there next year for the ‘locked-room’ theme party. Will there be a separate bucket for vomit?
Fantastic cake!! My own 4 1/2 year old would have absolutely died for this. As it was, the neighbors sent him home yesterday with a giant “5″ pinata that, apparently, they forgot to use 5 years ago, and that we may save for the next 5 months until our DS turns 5.
But it won’t hold a candle to your pinata!
So shamed am I this very same week, for simply driving my daughter and three friends to an indoor ice-rink, driving them home again with a packet of crisps and a carton of ribena and then dropping them all off back at their houses.
No little sausages to find in crevices days later (and that says more about my life than it should), no cake ground into the carpet, no smashed up paper-mache masterpiece, no water pistols, nothing.
I nearly even forgot to buy her a present.
She’s 13. I think this is what happens after all those years of being up all night cutting out little cartoon pictures from her magazines to decorate the rooms, making cakes, wrapping gifts, prizes and party bags, indeed turning the whole house and garden into a magical party heaven…
I’ve obviously got no stamina – I’m interested to see how long you keep going over the next few months (2 more parties before Christmas?) and years,.. oh … and years.
Gosh didn’t mean that to sound as moody as it does – please insert pauses for light humour throughout!
Pinatas always end in either carnage or they need to be belted by the “rough kid” or dad to get them going. I’m betting soggy lollies did still not stop the general hogging of lollies though?
What an awesome job you’ve done. You must have been shagged when it was over? Do the mum’s still stay? I still do, but think the parents would be just as happy sometimes if you dropped and ran.
Where you get the time I have no idea, and I love your idea of the lock down party. Murder in the dark as a party game would also go down a treat.
I made a Ben 10 watch cake for my 4 year olds birthday this year. Just before I put the candles on to serve the cake I thought I would be extra specially clever and take the omnitrix plastic figurine from the top of the BRAND NEW Ben 10 watch we gave him for his birthday and put it on the top of the cake….so it looked like a REAL Ben 10 watch. When I unveilled the cake, his mouth dropped open and his eyes bulged wide….in absolute horror because I had taken his swampfire figurine. In a scandalised voice he said “Thats my swampfire” and we couldn’t shift his focus from that damn figurine (even to blow out the candles). As soon as he could, he snatched the figurine from the cake and then followed me into the house saying repeatedly in a Very Serious tone “You really shouldn’t have done that Mummy. You really shouldn’t”. I’ve never seen a child so horrified and dismayed at the sight of a birthday cake. Sigh. And then, like you, I went to the effort of making a home made pinata and it took 5 strong men to break it open.
That cake is a perfect 10. And that pinata is totally the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m freaking 40 and I want to take a whack at that.
Yeah. I got “that bit should have more red” after hours of making a Pokeball cake.