It's Party Time!!

My 10 year old daughter just celebrated her 11th birthday. When deciding what to do for it, I asked her which she would rather have (My kids have 2 choices, they can either invite 2 friends to go somewhere (movies, dinner, laserquest, swimming, whatever...) or they can have a home party and invite 6 people). She chose home party this year. Now to come up with a theme....I was at a loss.
I thought on it a while, and about what she was into. She LOVES kickboxing, so I had thought of going with something themed towards martial arts, but then I ended up having expensive ideas, like taking all of the girls in for a class and such....my ideas got a little out of control financially speaking. Then I thought....McKenna LOVES boardgames. She is always asking for someone to play a game with her. So then I decided that I should do a board game themed party.
I started with how the invitation would look, and came up with this: (I had also thought of an invitation having dice and saying "Roll" on over to the party! (but I like this one better)

McKenna was so excited by the whole idea. We got her 2 board games for her birthday present this year. She really wanted the game "Sorry" and also "LIFE". So those fit in perfectly with the theme.
I then decided that I needed to come up with a life sized board game. I didn't want this to take forever, since I only had 6 days until her party (talk about last minute eh?!)

Life Sized Board Game:
Supplies Needed:
~ Cardstock (how many depends on how many squares you want to have in your game)
~ A box (I used a waffle box) and something to cover the box (I used shiny wrapping paper, so it wouldn't rip when it was being tossed around)
~ marker
~ Fake money (monopoly, or sometimes the dollar store has fake money)
~ Candy

How to Play:
~ Each square has something written on it.
(ie. do jumping jacks until your next turn, dance on the spot, clap your hands, sing happy birthday to the birthday girl, sit down, 10 push ups, piggyback another player around the room,  etc...) Whatever their square says, is the task that must be performed until their next turn comes.
~If they complete the task by doing it the whole time until their next turn, they get some  fake "money". They do not have to do the task, but if they don't then they won't receive the money for it.
~ The player who gets to the finish first, wins the trophy (bought at the dollar store with some chocolates in it)
~Everyone gets to count their money up, and bring it over to "Candyland".  Candyland is the spot where I have some jars of different candies. Each jar has prices on them. They get to use their money to fill up their goodie bags with the treats they would like.

The Cake:
I had good intentions to make some elaborate cake resembling one of her favourite gameboards, or an UNO card deck....but I had to be realistic. I am not a cake decorator, and thought I would go with something much simpler. So I went with a Dice Cake. I used this Marshmallow Fondant Recipe to do the outside. I altered the recipe to 2 cups of icing sugar instead of 4 and it worked better.
I baked the cakes in bread pans and cut them in half to make them square. Alas, I am not much of a cake decorator, so here is the final product:

Since it didn't work out as planned, and was small (I didn't make enough fondant, and didn't want to make more at this point) So I made cupcakes, and put dice on them to keep with the theme (how was that less time consuming than the fondant?)
The dice were in a pack of 10 at the dollar store, so that was perfect!

I also made chocolate covered rice krispie squares (you can make them yourself and shape them into different shapes, but for the sake of time, I already had mini squares in our "fun" treat stash, so I cut them in half to be smaller and coated them in chocolate. I sprinkled some, and drizzled some pink wafer chocolate on them. Then I got pink chocolate wrappers at the dollar store to put them in. (This was an idea that I got from another blog. I put the link in my valentine post)

The life sized board game took up most of the time, and they all had a blast. It was so much fun.
Afterwards it was present time, cake and treats time and then they played Twister (one of the gifts she got for her birthday). All in all, the party was a success!