My Neighbor Totoro Birthday Party

One way to throw a 3rd birthday party on the cusp of a quarantine:

My Neighbor Totoro!

Ingredients:

massive amounts of time, spaced out over two months, for tasks executed in thirty minute increments when both a 4 month old and a turning three year old nap

green, black and white construction paper

various shades of green streamers

two large pieces of cardboard

grey, black, blue, pink and white paint

pack of party puffs

sharpies

palm leaves

I used the leaves as decoration everywhere, to give the impression of being in Totoro's camphor tree

I hung some streamers here to give the impression of rain falling on Totoro at the bustop.  

The Japanese on the bustop sign is Olivia's name.  

This is an old, glass candle base that I cleaned out and painted with a little Totoro face using acrylic.  I printed out a bunch of Totoro coloring book pages.  The bullshit about Totoro is that it isn' a mainstream thing, so I had to make like, all the decorations.....it twas...a thing.  

I made little Olivia a three tiered cake from scratch! With my specialty buttercream icing (see previous blog post) and these damn soot sprites, made from THE MOST DELICIOUS OREOS EVER, these dark chocolate oreos are so fire, and melted choclate which I then dipped the oreos in, then covered them in brown/black jimmies(sprinkles whatever you wanna call them)  and let them sit.  It took a long, long, LONG time for them to dry.  The reason being is I used like, old chocolate that I had in my cupboard, so as to be thrifty, but it turns out you gots to use like actual little baking chocolate chips, these bits, so that the chocolate sets correctly.  Wtf, who knew.  Anyways, they DID dry and I attached these little eyeballs.  So fuckin cute.  Then, since the Totoro film is loaded with acorns, I made these little guys here.  Using the same chocolate, which worked much better in this project, I took one mini Nutter Butter cookie and "glued" a mini chocolate chip, for the "stem" and a large hersey Kiss for the acorn nut part.  

an additional baby

Then I, as the main Totoro I suppose, wore a premade Totoro apron and a leaf hair adornment I cut that morning from a piece of felt.  I was basically running on fumes at this point.  

Dressed the birthday girl as Mei. Pieced the outfit together from thrift stores over months.  Save for the Hunter Boots, a special gift from her Godmother. 

I also cut out little black spikey circles and taped them to the walls and in the corners for soot sprites!

Success!