Minecraft Party

My son, Jack,  turned 10 years old today and since he is a huge fan of online gaming, he decided he wanted a Minecraft party. As a parent, I can say that I do not understand the lure of this game but children are obsessed.  The game involves ultra-pixely, boxy characters to include Creepers, Steve, animals, and more.  Kids can upgrade their characters and create different "skins" and are on diamond-mining missions. For those of you who understand this game, I apologize for my  somewhat inaccurate and simplified description. 

Since there are no Minecraft party sets available yet for purchase, I had to get pretty creative. I had some help from PropPrintables.com and Gartner Studios (I will review later in the week) and relied on some of Jack's Minecraft props and some items around the house to help build the theme.  My children get a big party every other year and the smaller parties (which is what Jack had this year) was just immediate family and was much lower key.

Decorations:  
The tables were decorated simply with some Minecraft toys, stickers, and the favors.

I purchased some decorative boxes after Christmas last year. A little black paper and some glue and you have a Creeper utensil holder.

Minecraft cake: 

Some cakes I make go very smoothly, and some do not (hey, I never claimed to be anything but an amateur). This one was a total pain in the you-know-what. My vision was to have the blocks on top made out of cake but the cake just crumbled when I tried to stack it. Frustrated and ready to call it quits, I took a quick trip to the nearby Dollar Store and picked up some Rice Krispy treats and used those as the blocks on the top of the cake. It was a time-saver and a sanity-saver!

In a perfect world, I would have covered the cake in fondant and made little squares of various like shades to make it look like pixels. I did not have the time nor the patience and most of my family dislikes the taste of fondant. So, I used buttercream which was less visually appealing, but tastier. 

The characters were made out of gumpaste an included Steve, a pig, and one of my son's "skins" - a panda. Making characters out of gumpaste is fairly easy as you can shape it like you would Playdough, but making characters that you are not very familiar with is certainly a challenge!