Saved by The Bell 30th Birthday Bash - The Max

So we had our main SBTB dessert table, but no "Saved by the Bell" party is complete without The Max.  

Oh the Max...so to "recreate" this epic space, I knew I wanted red letters to say "The Max".  Now originally, I bought some of those red LED rope lights, but I just couldn't figure out how to attach them & make them spell out the words in the correct shapes.  So I scratched that plan & moved on.  But before I get to that, the backdrop...

I really wanted to do the square glass look & thought about putting up tons of clear plastic square plates to resemble the window blocks at the Max, but 1) that was crazy time consuming & 2) this was set up in front of a set of closed doors, so there was no good way to do that.  So I got an iridescent tablecloth & taped it together with a clear tablecloth.

This is what it looked like.  It had just a little bit of the shimmer that I feel like the block windows at the Max had.

So back to "The Max" sign.  I searched & searched for something & finally decided on red glitter glue to draw out "The Max".  I had an old piece of cardboard that I spray-painted white & I just traced the letters out with a pencil & then traced them with glitter glue.

For the other decor, I just looked up diner decor on amazon & found these great signs.  You essentially cut them out & tape them wherever you want.  You could tape them to cardboard or something more sturdy to give them more depth, but I just taped them to the wall & to the backdrop.

I also found a mini cardboard jukebox on Amazon.

I really wanted to just make sure that "The Max" had an old school phone & especially a jukebox.  I also put some "Bayside colored" megaphones & pom poms.

Since we were celebrating me, Shannon & Ally all turning 30, I used some of our pictures throughout the years & put them in the clear glass containers that I used from our "Ladies Lunch" back in the Fall.  Just so everyone would know who we were celebrating of course. ; )

So that's "The Max".  There is no dance contest or hottie Jeff around, but it turned out pretty cute.  Stay tuned for more info on the food this "diner" served up.

See Other Posts on this Party Here:

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Main Party Page

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Dessert Table

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Kelly's Cheer Truffles

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max Diner Food

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-"Hot Sundae" Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash - Kelly's Cheer Truffles

Kelly Kapowski.  What girl growing up in the late 80s/early 90s didn't want to be Kelly?  Cheerleader, homecoming queen, pop singer...the list goes on & on.  Did you used to have the school picture guys who would give you a name when they wanted you to smile..."Hey there, you, Dylan Walsh, smile for me..." I always LOVED when I got called Kelly for picture day.  Most likely this was due to me having brown hair more than anything else since this was when I was in middle school, but I was still totally pumped about it.  Anyway, for Kelly's special dessert for the Saved by the Bell Birthday Bash Dessert table, I wanted to do something cheer related.  I had seen some pom pom cake pops on Pinterest & thought I could do something similar.

First step, buy a package of oreos & an 8 ounce block of cream cheese.  Crush whatever Oreos you didn't eat as soon as you opened the package.  I put them in a Ziploc bag & crushed them by pounding for 2 reasons...1) my food processor quit on me & 2) I kinda like the bigger chunks of cookie instead of the really fine crumbs sometimes.  Mix up your crushed Oreos with a softened block of cream cheese & roll into balls. 

I wanted to do red & white for the colors of Bayside so I then took a tub of cream cheese icing that I had tinted red with food coloring & melted it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it up.  I then dropped the balls into the red icing to cover them & then rolled them in coconut.

I don't really eat coconut, but people said they were pretty yummy.  I think they looked pretty cute too.

I present to you, Kelly's Cheer Truffles! "We're the Bayside Tigers & we're on the prowl!"

See Other Posts on this Party Here:

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Main Party Page

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Dessert Table

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Kelly's Cheer Truffles

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max Diner Food

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-"Hot Sundae" Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash - Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

So for our Saved by the Bell Birthday Bash, I couldn't think of anything to symbolize Slater. Zack was easy with Blondies, Lisa with Turtles, Screech with Nerds, Kelly with anything cheer related...You get the idea.  But Slater was a little more difficult.  What did Slater love?  Well, Jessie (can't really do much with that), his pet lizard Artie (wasn't going near that)...oh & wrestling.  So I went onto Catch My Party & I saw this super cute wrestling party that had the cutest wrestling belt cupcakes.  So I tried to make some wrestling belt cupcakes.  Here is where my friend Ally who made our amazing birthday cake for this party wants to make sure I include a disclaimer that she played no part in these cupcakes.  Haha.  She gave me & Shannon (also known as the non-cake makers) her fondant tools & let us go nuts.  Probably not the best idea, but hey, they worked out okay. 

We started with some regular chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  

Then we cut out some little squares & per Ally's instructions were supposed to make little dots to make them look right.  These were for the sides of the wrestling belt. 

Then we used the little flower shape & cut out some more yellow fondant.  

As you can see, some looked better than others. 

The major problem came in when we tried to lift these little shapes off of my non-sprayed countertops.  They got a little stretched & a little wonky.  

So they definitely are not bakery material, but seriously what do I make that is?  But, we had some Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes anyway. 

And look at them on the table...in the dark light, you can't even tell they look weird. : ) 



See Other Posts on this Party Here:

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Main Party Page

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Dessert Table

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Kelly's Cheer Truffles

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max Diner Food

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-"Hot Sundae" Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash - Dessert Table

For the backdrop of the Saved by the Bell Birthday Bash dessert table, I just used a large piece of black fabric.  I got some decorations from Party City & taped them onto the fabric & put our awesome poster in the middle.  

Now about this poster...I don't want to brag (I'm just kidding, I totally do just a little about this poster, haha), but this was done in the Paint program on my computer.  I had our pictures from our last 80s party & I spent some time (ok way too much time), tracing our bodies to cut them out from the rest of the picture.  Then I pasted all of our floating bodies onto another page with the SBTB logo.  It was definitely time consuming, but I liked how we turned out.  Poor Shannon though, apparently she didn't take a single picture standing up at the last party, so I had to cut out someone's head who was squatting in front of her in a group shot.  So that looks a little weird, but all in all, not too bad for the Paint program.  

 For the table itself, I used a black tablecloth & little 80s confetti from Party City.  I wanted everything to be black & neon for this table because to me, that feels right for this time period.  

Now for food.  Of course we had the amazing cake that Ally made.  It was definitely an incredible masterpiece.  Lots of details that went so perfectly with the theme.  I'm telling you, one day we are just going to forget this whole law thing & just focus on parties.  I will do some scheming & theming & get her to do all these incredible cakes.  Ah, pipe dreams...

 I really wanted to do a dessert for each of the main characters.

Zack's Blondies...

These were amazing.  I found the recipe here at Girl Meets Life.  They are so easy.  A box of yellow cake mix, 1/4 cup of canola oil, 1 beaten egg, 1/2 a cup of milk & 1/2 a cup of white chocolate chips.  The original recipe called for sprinkles, but we had enough sweets going on so I left those out.  Mix all the ingredients together & put into a greased baking dish (I used a rectangular one so I could make more blondies & it worked fine. I think the original recipe calls for a square pan so they would be thicker) & then cook for about 25-30 minutes on 350.  So easy.  Now the hard part...let these sit for at least 20 minutes after they are made so they can firm up.  These smelled so good that I was dying waiting for these to be "ready".  They are worth the wait, trust me.  

Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

We also had Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes.  These were chocolate cupcakes with little wrestling belts on them.  Read more about these smackdown cupcakes (and the ridiculousness that went into making them) here.  

 As you can see in the above picture, Nerds were also sprinkled around the table in honor of Screech. : )

Now for the ladies...we had Jessie's Caffeine Brownies...

Now if you have seen Saved by the Bell at all, you know that Jessie losing her mind because of using caffeine pills to study & sing & do everything that it took to be Jessie Spano, was an EPIC episode.  So naturally, I had to do something with Jessie involving caffeine.  I thought it may be frowned upon to just hand out caffeine pills, so I settled for brownies instead. : ) 

 I found some great recipes for Espresso Brownies & Coffee Brownies on Pinterest, but when I went to the store, I saw Pillsbury Mocha Fudge Brownie mix & that pretty much made up my mind.  I was running out of time & that sounded perfect.  If you ever see this brownie mix, it is AMAZING.  It has just a slight coffee taste that is so good.  

I feel kinda bad that I was pretty lazy in Screech's "dessert", with using Nerds, but I didn't just single him out.  Lisa also got a "cheat dessert".  For Miss Lisa Turtle, yeah, she got store-bought turtles.  They were right there on the shelf looking so delicious & easy, so they came home with me & were put out on a platter with Kelly's Cheer Truffles...which I actually made.  Of course Kelly was my favorite character because duh, she was awesome.  Even when she was a total idiot a lot of times.

You can read more about Kelly's Cheer Truffles here...but spoiler alert, they originated as Oreo Truffle Balls...delicious!

Sidenote, for the food descriptions, they were made from neon scratch art paper.  I just cut up pieces the size that I wanted & used the little tool to write the descriptions & the little swigglies.  The black & neon went with the theme & totally rocked my world.  

See Other Posts on this Party Here:

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Main Party Page

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Dessert Table

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Kelly's Cheer Truffles

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max Diner Food

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-"Hot Sundae" Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash

So last Fall, I turned 30.  I may be in the minority of people, but I actually didn't mind it. Especially since two of my best friends from law school were also both turning 30 within a month of me.  So what are 3 almost-30 year old girls to do in such a situation?  Well throw a Saved by the Bell birthday bash of course!  

There were two tables set-up...the dessert table that was just Saved by the Bell/80's theme & the food table that was The Max.  Remember The Max?  Who doesn't?  That place was incredible.  Especially since it seemed like it was a school requirement for the gang to be there like ALL THE TIME.  And how realistic was this diner?  I mean, how many times have you been in a diner & wondered, "When is the dance contest going to start?" or "Hello? Where is the high school girl group & why are they not singing?" I know, me too.  Anyway, here is my Max set-up. : ) 

If you came here to see a picture of an incredible birthday cake, well here you go.  If you came here to learn how to make this incredible birthday cake...I'm sorry, but those are secrets that my friend Ally will have to share with you.  She is an incredible cake baker & one day when I finally talk her into blogging, I will get her to tell you all about this amazing cake.  It had all the cute little squigglies (is that the technical term?) that were featured during the intro to Saved by the Bell, along with a cassette tape, boom box & what else...a replica of Zack's phone.  

I am going to break this down into a few more posts so that you don't get too overwhelmed with all of the awesomeness that is Saved by the Bell, but here are a few highlights.  : ) 

As you can see from this picture, this was not our first rodeo when it comes to 80s parties.  This poster was made with pictures of the 3 of us from our first 80s party 2nd year of law school.  An oldie, but a goodie. 

And here are some of the delicious treats that you can read more about on the Saved by the Bell desserts table post.  We had Jessie's caffeine brownies, Lisa's Turtles, Kelly's Cheer Truffles...

Zack's blondies, Slater's Smackdown cupcakes & Nerds for Screech

And not to be left out...the Hot Sundae cupcakes that were on the Max diner food table.  Remember when Jessie, Lisa & Kelly formed the girl group "Hot Sundae"?  Incredible, right? "Put your mind to it, Go for it, Get down & break a sweat"...am I the only one who really wanted a mini trampoline after that music video?  I didn't think so. ; ) 

See Other Posts on this Party Here:

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Main Party Page

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Dessert Table

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Slater's Smackdown Cupcakes

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-Kelly's Cheer Truffles

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-The Max Diner Food

Saved by the Bell 30th Birthday Bash-"Hot Sundae" Cupcakes