A Mystery Science Theater 3000 birthday party

I love birthdays. I think everyone should celebrate them and I like to go above and beyond to make the birthday person feel special. So as my partner Andy’s birthday approached, I asked him what he wanted his party theme to be. Now my husband is not over excitable or enthusiastic like I am. We are opposites in this way.

So he indulged me when he told me what he really wanted: to have his friends over to watch a movie with prepared jokes in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I had my challenge. MST3K-themed party supplies aren’t exactly hanging next to Dora the Explorer paper plates, so I was going to need to make everything myself. I created my plan. I’d make invitations, napkins, cups, cupcakes, and decorations for our party.

Making the invitation shown above was easy: I used PowerPoint and the internet.

I cut a giant bone out of cardboard, spray painted it and had my husband decorate it with a sharpie to make the Satellite of Love.

I’m proud of my cupcakes!

Once I’d figured out how to make Boston Cream cupcakes, I popped them into homemade wrappers and added marshmallows. To make the marshmallows look like popcorn I used a pastry brush to dab a little water onto them before shaking on yellow sprinkles to give them the buttered look.

For a Joel-and-the-gang centerpiece, I flipped a trifle dish, added a tap light, tissue paper, and an MST3k window cling.

Napkins took more thinking. I figured I would stamp them and contemplated making a potato stamp.

Instead I printed things off the internet, used transparency paper and traced them on the transparency paper with puffy paint. Once they had dried for 24 hours I attached them to extra foam pieces I’d saved and with the help of friends stamped several plain napkins.

The big thing to remember is to print your images backwards because I didn’t (this photo is reversed!). Oh well, live and learn.

We also used some printed 11×17 graphics mixed with a 2008 monster movie calendar’s pages. Perfect!

Thing I learned with this party? Slant-themes! I used some ideas for generic night-at-the-movies-themed parties because it’s much easier to find movie-themed items.

Another little detail I made were labels with the Gizmonics logo on them. This transformed any regular person into a member of the Gizmonics workforce even if they didn’t wear a costume.

I made a normal guy in a jumpsuit costume for Andy, and I dressed as the Dr. Forrester because wearing a mustache is hilarious to me.

Luckily for me our friend Joe has white hair and accidentally wore a long sleeve black shirt which made him look exactly like TV’s Frank.

We had friends prepare riffs for Clash of the Titans, and played our own MST3K.

I believe I accomplished my mission and Andy had a memorable birthday.