9 year old - birthday party invitation for sushi/cooking bday party theme

[meemee]

mama's i am not creative at all. i am a genius at appreciating a great idea when i see it, but i cant for the life of me come up with an idea myself. 

so i need help. dd would love a sleepover but i know a few kids would not like that. 

today dd came home with an invitation which i thought was really really creative. its for a movie night sleepover and the invitation was a popcorn bag wrapped with purple paper with little white clouds in which the information was written. i loved the idea. 

i would love to make a sushi themed idea. vegetarian sushi. dd is sooo into cooking these days and her favourite show is good eats. she follows many cooking shows on food network and would love to have her friends join in decorating the cake too. she finds cooking shows even on youtube. she cooks a lot on her own and is getting pretty good at chopping.

 how do i plan the invitation card. 

i actually borrowed the sushi theme from dd's geography project where she created her sushi island with different forms made of different sushi ingredients. 

the take home gift could be a recipe card. 

[4evermom]

If you can find a bunch of sushi rolling mats cheap (or something smaller that looks like them), you could write the invite on a piece of paper (something fancy, rice paper?) and roll it up in the mat (maybe attach it with a dab of glue).  Then your dd could hand out the rolled up mats.  I'm seeing mats for as low as $2 on google...  Expensive if you need a lot of invites, though.

[ollyoxenfree]

You could make the invitation using origami paper. Write out the information, and then make something fairly easy to fold - a frog or a balloon, maybe. 

For the take-home gift, you could give a pair of chopsticks, either the plain wooden ones or some with a colourful pattern. My supermarket sells them in the International Foods aisle and they are fairly low cost. If you have a Chinatown nearby, you can find them there too. 

For party decorations, I think it's okay to mix up Asian decor for a kids' party, unless you are a real stickler for authenticity - so Chinese party lanterns, colourful parasols, etc. There are origami patterns for boxes to hold snack foods, coasters, cup holders etc. to decorate the table. 

Great idea for a party! Have fun! 

[meemee]

AAAAAAAAAAH mamas MWAH!!!! THANK YOU!!!! yes yes yes. origami paper. dd loves origami and started her own business in school making origami boxes and creatures and selling them to parents and costudents. yes that would be perfect. 

could combine the two. 4evermom those mats could be going home gifts too. we already have some. some of the nori here comes with mats. and there are tonnes of asian stores. so we could get them pretty cheap there. 

[4evermom]

Ah, origami.  Much cheaper!

[sapphire_chan]

Are you going to make a sushi-shaped cake? if so, pictures!

[meemee]

oh gosh sapphire i have NEVER baked a cake. never. ever. ever. however my roommates are bakers. 

she wants a chocolate cake with whipped cream frosting with strawberries on the side. her fav. anime is yumeiro patissiere and one of her favourite episodes was when ichigo had the strawberry tart competition (that's why the strawberry theme since not sure how many of her friends would like strawberry tart)

http://www.crunchyroll.com/yumeiro-patissiere/episode-50-dream-strawberry-tart-544202

on the top she wants a drawing of ichigo - the main protagonist, alton brown from good eats and the poodle Francis from cooking with dog her first fav. cooking show she discovered years ago while searching on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_hbPLsZvvo). 

maybe i'll email him a picture of the cake (that's her favourite cooking show coz of all his trivia and scientific explanations apart from the cooking itself) and he might get a kick out of it.