A super(hero) party for a super girl

When I say “super hero”, what image springs to mind? A tall, dark and handsome man in some kind of body suit with a mask and a cape? Am I close? Did your mind venture at all to a female super hero (or heroine to be more grammatically correct)? If it did not, do not fret about it. It is not your fault that the term super hero is often synonymous with men. Is it anybody’s fault really? Some feminists would argue that the blame could be laid squarely on patriarchy. Which, to be fair, probably does play a large role in this, but it is not the only reason. There are probably more reasons than I can begin to think of and a lot of history which, to be honest, I do not feel like researching and getting into right now. The point is that super heroes are traditionally associated with being both about and for the males of the species. And quite frankly, it is a load of crap. Girls can be super heroes. Girls can be kickass. And girls do enjoy comic books.

My husband and I are dedicated to raising our daughter “geek”. Obviously there is always the chance that she will not embrace the geek (I would say that that scenario would result in seeking out DNA testing, but there is no doubt of whose child she is!), but we will do our utmost to ensure that she is exposed to all things geek (except for maybe Star Trek… we are not too keen on Star Trek). So with her being an October baby and with very little opportunity to dress up for Halloween in our sleepy city in South Africa, we decided that her first birthday party would be a geek dress up. A little refinement came about along the party planning route and we settled on super heroes as the dress up theme. Because we do not want our daughter to follow traditionally gender assigned themes. We want her to know that she does not need a tall, dark and handsome man wearing a cape to “rescue” her, because she can be the hero. Yes, she is far too young to understand these concepts (and constructs) and her only memory of her first birthday party will be from photographs, but nevertheless, we hope that they will serve as a reminder that, right from the start, her parents encouraged her to be more than her gender.

So how to plan a super hero party for a little girl? Making it authentically geeky, but still maintaining a feminine tone? Mom and dad teamed up: dad brought the passion of the comic book geek and mom brought the passion of party planning.

Nik jumped onto the party planning early, looking at different ways to transform himself into Batdad and create an awesome outfit for El. I took my time deciding on my super hero persona. To be honest, I took my time to get into the spirit of things. But when other moms from my antenatal class started talking about their babies’ upcoming birthdays, I decided that it was time to get my butt in gear.

I started off with making a Save the Date. I decided that it would only be fair to give our friends and family appropriate warning that El’s birthday party would be a dress up party so that they could plan and prepare. I did not want anyone to go to the expense of hiring expensive outfits, but I also did not want to get excited about a dress up theme and not having anyone bothering to dress appropriately for the occasion.

With so many comic book characters being either revamped or piloted as Hollywood blockbusters over the last two decades, there was a wealth of different inspiration for style. Actually, there was just too much. And it was too diverse. So I decided to go back to basics and embrace the classic retro comic book look. Bright colours, vectors and the classic onomatopoeic words – pop, bang, zap, whiz (to name a few)!

I did many, many Google image searches. And saved a lot of images. I found a great source of retro vector speech bubble backgrounds from Vecteezy. I sourced my onomatopoeic words from a number of sites. Eventually I had a lot of images and needed to put them together. These were my “raw” starters:

I combined them to create this:

The Save the Date

Quite chuffed with my efforts, I decided to tackle the actual invitation about a month later. I wanted to maintain the classic retro look that I had already established, but to make the fact that it was comic book themed stand out. So I went in search of downloadable comic book style panels to use. This was an exercise in patience. Almost every one that was a workable size was watermarked. And the ones that were not watermarked were, well, not what I was looking for. I eventually settled on a watermarked image that I could tweek into something new:

I then set about adding different backgrounds and elements in addition to the "zaps" and "bangs" to morph it a suitable birthday invitation:

And the finished product:

The finished invitation (with personal information removed)

Yay mom!

In the meantime, a friend had posted an awesome Facebook link on my timeline – different super hero dress up outfits for little girls! I looked through it and decided on El’s super hero persona. My little girl would be Thor, Goddess of Thunder! I would be Ironmom. And so, in between making templates for a Batman cowl and eventually ordering one online, Nik now had to plan putting something together for El. He looked up templates for Thor’s chest plate and discovered a new love – craft foam!

Chest plate in process

The inspiration

The execution

The initial attempt at making a hammer did not go as planned - Nik had been a bit over enthusiastic and had put primer onto a layer of resin which had not dried properly yet and the surface went tacky. Nik started from scratch, but I managed to resurrect Mach I and help get Mach II ready for completion using trusty old papier mâché.

Mach I again after some fibreglass

Mach I and Mach II after some papier mâché

The Goddess of Thunder testing out the almost complete Mach II Mjolnir

Mjolnir ready for the party

I initially decided that I would just ask for help to make a tutu, wear a red T-shirt and craft something that looked like an Arc Reactor to attach to my chest. That was not good enough for Nik. Together with my mom, he ordered an Iron Man shirt for me through Funky Tights. He also managed to repurpose some scrap material that I had gathered for a different craft project to make a tutu for me.

Unfortunately for Nik, his outfit was proving troublesome. He had managed to make a cape, gauntlets (although those also needed a second generation before coming right) and shin guards, but was having difficulty with making a muscle top and utility belt. Then there was the issue of how to attach the cape to the cowl properly. He managed to outsource the muscle top creation to a fashion designer, who really liked that pattern that he gave her. And he eventually decided that Batdad would be a mash-up of a number of Batman interpretations, a throwback to Adam West's days, Christian Bale's Batman and a nod to Ben Affleck's Batman and the dream sequence from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Skinny jeans, a vintage suede jacket, the cowl, boots, gauntlets, a repurposed Karate yellow belt and some riding goggles completed the ensemble.

Super family

Then of course party food, decor and entertainment were very important aspects to cover! Pinterest is always great for this variety of things. We found some great ideas, like using liquorice strips and labeling them as Wonder Woman's Lasso or finding a green candy and calling it Kryptonite. cake and the colour scheme was decided! I knew that my skills in cake decorating would not cut it, but I really wanted to try keep as much as I could "in-house". I decided to ask my very talented sister-in-law for help with the decorating while I baked the actual cakes. But I also wanted to do a Cake Smash. I did not like the idea of devoting an entire cake to this activity as I have known of many instances where the little tyke was not interested in their cake (or was too tired for the activity) so I decided that the two tiers of her party cake would be divided: the bottom tier as the guest's cake and the top tier removable for her to smash. Unfortunately this meant that the end result would not site perfectly and flush, but hey, in the end it looked good and tasted great. And being a blessed little girl, El even had another outfit just for her Cake Smash, so she could be Thor and Batgirl (with mom's Batman symbol redesigned to designate the very important birthday number).

The Cake Smash outfit (thank you Godmommy Rikki!)

The cake

Creating popcorn cones with comic book pages (downloaded and printed, not actual pages from comic books), using pretzels and marshmallows to make little Thor hammers... there were so many awesome ideas! And since we were doing super hero themed food, Nik decided to call in some help from his little brother and nephews by getting some super hero action figures to add to the decor.

Nutrition facts

For the party packs, I decided to have a little bit of fun as far as some of the contents went. The standard juice box, packet of Flings (oh the horror of giving children such processed crap!), a Chomp then some kind of gummy sweet for the older kids and marshmallow fish for the smaller ones. Not wanting to waste money on buying a whole lot of individual sweet packets, I opted to repurpose medicine cartons (unused!) to put sweets into. So obviously dull little carton is not much fun, I got creative with the name of the contents and their nutritional value. I Then I thought it would be fun to include a classic eye cut out mask for each kid. I had originally thought to make them different colours, but then Nik made the suggestion of them being made up by comic book pages much like the popcorn cones. They looked pretty awesome.

I eventually filled the boxes with milk bottles

Super hero masks

Party pack contents

Packed and sealed with each child's name

The wall smash game boxes

As far as games went, I decided that the older kids could be entertained by a Jumping Castle, but that they might want some other activities. This Wall Smash game was an awesome idea! Super Hero Tic Tac Toe was another great find – I just varied it a little by finding symbols from other super heroes and villains (both Marvel and DC) to make it a little more interesting. "Pin the mask on the Superhero" was my own invention, with some help finding most of the masks here. Sadly Hulk fists were not an option, but since Mjolnir Mach I had been saved, there was a prop for the game. I decided that instead of the normal red facebrick, I would incorporate the party colours of blue, yellow and pink and that way I could also use the boxes as a background for the cake smash.

Pin the mask on the super hero!

Hydra thwarted by Cap again!

Unfortunately the actual day of the party was a complete rush. My parents were helping with prepping and fetching food, Nik had to fetch El's Godparents from the airport and our little madam did not want to go down for the nap she so desperately needed. I was a wreck by the time the first guests arrived. I rushed to put my outfit on and get El changed (after she eventually napped for a grand total of about 30 minutes!) and then only managed to get all the food set out after some guests had already arrived. I was frazzled. I was upset. I was tired. But then I saw how much fun El and her friends were having. And by the time the cake smash rolled around, I forgot that I had not been able to take a photo of the completed food table or much of the decor and I decided to just enjoy the party. We had gone to so much effort over so many months, it was silly to waste the fun on a few plans that went a bit awry and guests that could not make it.

After all the planning, life seemed a bit dull after the party. But thankfully we had a great time, with so many photos to show El when she is older. And many lessons learnt about throwing children's birthday parties. The idea was to keep it small, but that did not happen, one cannot help but get caught up in the excitement. Hopefully next year we can curb our enthusiasm to keep things fun, looking (and tasting) great, but without so much fuss! Either way, I hope that El will know just how much effort went into trying to make her first birthday the special event that it was.