Hosting a MARVEL The Avengers: Age of Ultron party with fun ideas for a great party, delicious recipes, free printables and even a Photoshop action to turn your photos into fun comic book look-a-likes!

True to my nerd nature and my mother-of-boys, sister-of-a-brother and Aunt-to-{mostly}-nephews status in life I confess myself pretty excited about the upcoming Avengers movie – MARVEL’s The Avengers : Age of Ultron. And I promise it has almost nothing to do with the fact that James Spader and Robert Downey, Jr. are in it. So to celebrate and combat the cabin fever that was settling in after a cold and rainy Spring Break we celebrated with what was possibly one of our coolest parties yet.

The best way to throw a successful party is to have fun from beginning to end. For this one it meant bringing my boys on a shopping trip to Walmart and having them pick out their Avenger favorites from the toy aisle end cap. This way we had decorations for the party and party favors all in one.

And ironically they had just as much fun picking out their favorite Avengers packaged foods for the party.

We invited several of their school friends over (who were also suffering from rainy and cold Spring Break cabin fever) to have a movie watch party. Iron Man 3 for Momma and Captain America and The Avengers for the boys.

All of the superhero Avengers were accounted for, including my favorite – Iron Man. Or Tony Stark. Oh OK! Robert Downey, Jr!

There’s just something about themed food that makes eating way more fun than just your every day average corn dog.

That and it gives you a certain freedom to get creative which usually leads to something crazy delicious like this Captain America’s White Chocolate Popcorn.

Captain America naturally requires something red, white and blue.

And of course, in my mind, that means red, white and blue chocolate. I got the red, white and navy chocolate candy melts from the party section of Walmart. I added it to layers of popcorn and topped it off with red, white and blue sprinkles and chocolate candies. And. It. Was. Crazy. Good.

You can see the deliciousness, can’t you?

Then I dressed up a cheap plastic popcorn tub with a Captain America shield printable.

And of course I had to represent Black Widow, the only girl Avenger. I grabbed this great Black Bean Dip from Two Peas And Their Pod. It’s quick, easy and super delicious.

But of course for this party I had to dress it up with a Black Widow olive and pepper spider.

Some easy, but pretty cool, cheese cube and pretzel stick Thor hammers.

And Hawkeye’s Chicken Wings. You know. Because of reasons.

But possibly the piece de resistance for the food table were these Hulk Shakes. A little sour, a little sweet. For a child who grew up with old school Bruce Banner ala Bruce Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, Hulk is still pretty awesome in my book. So I wanted to put together something easy, a little different and…GREEN

Hulk Shake Recipe

• 1 Quart Vanilla Ice Cream (softened for 10 -15 mins)
• 1 large Box Lime Gelatin
• 1/4+ cup milk (for desired consistency)

Pour lime gelatin and milk into mixer and mix until incorporated then add in ice cream. I mixed all of this up in my Kitchen Aid mixer with my whisk attachment and then popped it into fridge until ready to serve. (Freezer if you won’t be serving within the hour) but it’s best if it gets to sit for 30 mins or so for the gelatin to thoroughly dissolve and for the flavors to incorporate. Give it a stir again prior to serving.

What would a Hulk Shake be without an awesome glass to serve it in? I used my Silhouette SD to cut several Hulk faces to add to the clear cups I’d gotten during our trip to Walmart. These I found in the paper supplies aisle of the grocery section. I’m sharing the Hulk SVG file that I used to make these cups so that you can DIY your own and you won’t have the extra work of turning an image into a cuttable file. Lucky ducks!

They are kind of impressive aren’t they!

They were pretty tasty, too.

Everyone loved the little straw tags that I had printed up, cut out and attached to black and white paper straws. I’ve included the You Won’t Like Me When I’m Angry printable straw tags for you to use at your party. It is my favorite Hulk saying. Simply right click to save, print them up on cardstock, cut them out and tape or glue them to your straw for a fun effect.

I say it every time I post about a party, my favorite part is, and always will be, the photo booth. I swear, it just makes the party. And if you’ve got props and dress-up supplies, your guest are guaranteed to get into character and have just as much fun having their pictures made as you will taking them.

I had several comic book action words printed up on cardstock at our local print store for the kids to use in the photos. After cutting them out I taped these to small wooden dowels. In addition to these, each of the  kids got to choose one of the paper Avengers masks that I found in the party section at Walmart for their photos. And hilarity ensued……

And how about the comic book effect in these photos!

I am so excited to be sharing for the first time a Photoshop action that I recorded just for you so you can create these fun Comic Book Photo Booth photos, too! I have been a Photoshop nerd for many years. Long before you could pay around $10 a month and use a web based version that won’t hog all your computer’s resources and well before the many, many amazing tutorials on using it were made available, for FREE, online. If you haven’t used Photoshop, now’s as good a time as ever to get started and learn. I still have so much more to learn about Photoshop myself but I never get tired of all of the fun things I can do with it, like these awesome Comic Book photos.

Get your FREE Comic Book Photoshop Action here. {Created in CS5}

So many of you have reached out about the awesome Minecraft parties you’ve thrown after reading my Minecraft Party Posts. So how about it? Ready to throw your own awesome Avengers party