There are countless plastic party decorations that can help you whip up a party scene in shear minutes.  But I love to gather a few of those items and work them into a more personalized look.

I sized a photo of Tanner’s face to fit behind a store-bought paper mask so he could welcome everyone at the gate without missing any of the fun behind it.

We were honored to have some real super heroes show up with their masks (seen below ).

Here are a few other easy signs I had fun making.

For the sign above, I found a picture from the internet and added a speech bubble in PowerPoint.

The signs below made use of other paper masks.

For the past few years, instead of party games, we have our kids and their friends play in the backyard fort.  With swings, a slide, and things to climb on and hang around in, it’s like school recess time, but without the whistle blowing after only 15 minutes!

My talented friend Devin offered to let me borrow this wonderful banner she had made for her son’s birthday party.  She found old Spiderman comic books at a garage sale, cut the pages into triangles, and sewed them together along a strip of red material.  Fabulous!

Bottles of “Avenger-ade” kept guests refreshed.  I covered the Hawaiian Punch and Welch’s labels with my own.

I love my six-feet-long, three-feet-wide craft table that folds up and stores in the garage.  It’s the perfect size for backyard party food.  Since I’m not fond of plastic table covers (as convenient as they certainly are), I have a fabric store cut some cloth to fit my table (using a 40% or 50% off coupon, of course).

For this occasion, I was delighted to see some Avengers material!  It’s extremely busy, so I used it only for a runner.  I admit that I didn’t bother to sew at all.  I just folded the fabric to the width I wanted, and called it good.

My favorite healthy treat for a party is cucumber… sliced, then cut into stars with a small cookie cutter.  I’ve used them with party themes such as the ocean and Star Wars too.

And now for the story behind the cake.

Though we haven’t seen the Avengers movie, Tanner knew there was at least one scene in which some bad guys are doing damage around a big city.  He had the great idea of a cityscape cake with cars and such getting wrecked.

But it was late into the night before the party by the time I started to decorate the large cake I’d made.

The sleek gray “sidewalk” I intended to create with nearly white cream cheese frosting and black food coloring wound up a rather sickly hue of pale almost green.

And then for the bigger problem.  I discovered that my brilliant plan to make 3D buildings with some of the Rice Crispy treats I’d made, some gum paste, and some spray-on food coloring would take a great deal more practice to look anything like the vision that Tanner and I had come up with.

But I was determined to have that very sizable sweet decorated somehow the next morning!

I realized at some point in the wee hours that the only part of the cake I liked was the small “park” area, on which I had tossed bright green sparkles.

Ah ha!  I started scattering those lovely little sparkles over most of the cake, not sure what would come of it.  At least it was looking pretty, rather than disgusting.

I had just enough black icing to make a two-lane highway through my new “countryside.”

Next, in near delirium from want of sleep, I figured out how to make a couple of colorful gum paste cars.  Sloppy jalopies, they were, but they looked better than the buildings had!

And finally, a tiny plastic toy really cheered me up.  It was yellow, but I figured that with a bit of acrylic paint it could pass for The Hulk.  So at around 3:00 am, I sat in my office/craft room painting a toy green.

Now you might ask why The Hulk is bounding along the countryside near some unsuspecting drivers.  I don’t know.  I figured I’d leave that to the many imaginations that came to the food table.  Perhaps you can think of a good story to go with it.

I ended up with a few hours of sleep after all.  Phew!  And more importantly, we ended up with a happy Tanner and many adorable smiles.  And Tanner was especially pleased with the cake when we cut into it and started wrecking the road, showing the chocolate brown “earth” below.

Have a lovely day!

Robin