Please pass the Chocolate...

Ya'll thought I forgot about posting about Pixie's Chocolate Birthday party, didn't you?

Well I may be a slacker, but I am not a LIAR!

We had a hard time coming up with a theme for her party, because it was boys and girls being invited, and of course the boys probably wouldn't appreciate a princess party, or a purse party (Pixie's original request), or any of the other popular themes girls like to have at their party.

We ended up going with a chocolate theme. The first order of business was to make invitations. Even at the time I was making the invites, I still wasn't sure what exactly we would do at the party, but I figured inspiration would hit at some point between delivery of the invitations, and the actual time of the party!

I wanted to do chocolate bar invitations, and just replace the labels with some I made myself with the party info included.

I gathered some cute scrapbook paper:

And printed up some labels that had all the party info:

Of course, then I ran into the small issue of the new Hershey bar wrappers:

LAME!! They have gone to stupid plastic wrappers, instead of the fun foil wrapped bars, with paper labels...you know that I could easily use as a template to make my own labels?

Soooo....since I can't do anything EASY...I wrapped each candy bar in foil myself:

Then I cut some cardstock down to what I thought looked like the right size for the label, and wrapped it around the candy bar, securing with tape.

Next I attached the label with the party info with a glue stick...and VOILA!

I was quite pleased with how they turned out. My next genius idea however...did not fare so well.

On the day of the party, I was making cupcakes. Just from a mix. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I had a couple Hershey bars left over from making the invites, so I thought I would be so clever, and stick a small square of chocolate into each cupcake. In my mind it got all melty and gooey and was a creamy, yummy surprise inside each cupcake.

That's totally not what happened. The cake cooked up around it, but the chocolate just stayed, held it's form, and was just a candy bar stuck in the middle of a cupcake. Oh well. They're just kids, right?

I'll do my best to describe the party, since I don't feel comfortable displaying other people's children on the internet without the permission of their parents.

We started out with the Hershey Kiss Game. Here's how the HKG works: Everyone sits on the floor in a circle. In the center of the circle is a plate, a Hershey Kiss, and a plastic fork and knife. You pass a dish with 2 dice in it around the circle. Each person rolls the dice. Then passes the dish on. If someone rolls a "1", they get to go to the middle of the circle and work on unwrapping and eating the kiss using only the utensils provided. No hands allowed. They only have until someone else rolls a "1" to try to get to the kiss. Then they have to relinquish the kiss and utensils to that person, and he/she gets a turn to try to eat the kiss. It is pretty hilarious. Of course we changed the plastic utensils each time someone successfully opened and ate a kiss. Then you just replace the kiss with a new one and continue on. The kids loved it.

We then headed to the kitchen, where we had set up one of THESE:

The kids LOVED the chocolate fountain. We had an assortment of fun stuff for them to chocolatize. Yes, that's totally a real word. We had all sorts of fruit, pretzels, gummy bears, marshmallows, vanilla wafers - an abundance of yumminess!

The kids ate while Pixie opened gifts. And then we played our final game: Pin the tag on the Kiss. I used aluminum foil and poster board to make a giant Hershey Kiss, then some pink and white ribbon that I cut into streamers, and they were supposed to be like the little tags that come out of the top of the Hershey Kiss. The kids had fun trying to attach it to the right spot on the poster. This is a crappy picture, but after the first person had their turn.

The kids had a great time and made a ginormous chocolatey mess. But I don't think Pixie will soon forget it. And since we don't do "friend birthday parties" every year, when we do, we like to make them memorable!

Now I think I'll go eat some chocolate. Hope everyone is having a fantastic week!