School's Out.....for Summer

I have the urge to break out into song, feel free to hum along.....

note: Alice Cooper lives in Phoenix (more accurately Scottsdale) Arizona, near where we used to live. I've never met him personally, but apparently he is quite an upstanding and philanthropic member of the community. So much for his Shock Rocker image of the 70's.

Little K finished up school last week and her class decided on a Movie Star Party to celebrate.

That celebration was in addition to the other activities that have been going on at school in the past few weeks:

Field trip to the Aquatic Center
Music Recital
3 Day Overnight Trip to Coloma, CA
(where gold was first discovered)
4th Grade Water Play Day

Phew - I am definitely ready for summer vacation after all that!

As much as I wanted to do all the planning for their Movie Star Party, Little K's teacher convinced me that the kids were more than capable of taking care of most of the details themselves.

As a perfectionist amateur party planner who has control issues - those are fightin' words.

In retrospect - the kids has some amazing ideas for their party and did a great job pulling it all together.

I managed to take control of making the cupcakes. This was a perfect time to try out the Popcorn Cupcakes from the Hello Cupcake book.

I used a different technique for the popcorn than described in the book.




Bowl of popcorn?
Nope - they are made from mini marshmallows, cut and squished to look like popcorn kernels.

I used the yellow mini marshmallows (from the pastel bag) and also white mini marshmallows.



With a pair of scissors, cut into each of the marshmallows (about 1/2 way down). I used a different number of cuts for each. (in the photo above from L to R: 3, 3, 2, 4)

Then dip the cut marshmallow in powdered sugar (because the inside of a mallow is very sticky) and squish it with your fingers (also dipped in powdered sugar). Squeezing the bottom uncut portion of the marshmallow so it opens up like a flower, and then flattening each of the cut sections.



I added the popcorn marshmallows to the frosted top of vanilla cupcakes. If you plan on making these - be warned. It takes a lot of marshmallows to cover the cupcakes, so mine ended up looking a little sparse after making enough for 30 students.

Given more time, I would have found/made red and white striped cupcake papers, but I still think they turned out cute - a little plain, but cute.



I made a few mini cupcakes and put them in a popcorn box - just for fun.



Now that I think about it - real popcorn would have tasted good as well (sweet and salty)



The Movie Stars loved them.

All the Party decorations were created by the students (with some on-sight supervision - I just couldn't stay away).



The classroom was dressed up with the Hollywood Hills, Stars from the Walk of Fame, and a Red Carpet covered in balloons and bordered with red paper chain ropes.



They collected autographs from their movie star classmates.



And we put together simple prize buckets for some of the games.

The paparazzi was on hand to snap pictures of all our Stars including Jack Black, Hagrid, Harry Potter, Jack Sparrow, Charlie Sheen, Bethany Hamilton, Quinn Fabray, Taylor Swift and Brittany Pierce. Even their teacher got into character and came dressed as Rapunzel.

It was a great way to end the year. Looking forward to summer relaxation, if only the weather would cooperate.