It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Super Mario decor! I’m super excited to share my basement with you. I’m first going to warn you that my basement is not finished. Maybe someday we can finish that (and even make some blog posts about it) but right now, totally not in the budget. Even though it’s not finished, both of us still wanted to make our basement a fun place to hang out, especially since my workout room is down there. No one wants to work out in a dingy, dark space!

Why I created the Super Mario Basement…

My husband and I are giant nerds and both of us love Super Mario. We needed a space to put our video game systems and thought it would be fun to have a video game themed basement. We have always been a huge Nintendo fan and Super Mario is definitely one of our favorites, so we decided to go down this route and create a video game themed, Super Mario Basement! We have done a LOT to create this basement so it will be broken down into multiple posts. This week we are going to start with Boo, the awesome ghost from the haunted mansions. I will start off by saying this was not my original idea at all. If you search on Pinterest, you will find a lot of these! This is the post I pinned that inspired the Super Mario basement and also inspired me to create the Super Mario Cheep Cheeps and Urchins which will be coming soon!

Where to Buy the Materials…

First things first, I obviously needed a paper lantern. I wasn’t planned on putting a light in these so I just went to Amazon and bought a box of 10, 10″ paper lanterns ($10.75). If you want to make lights out of these, IKEA has lights ($6) that go inside of these. I also bought black and red paint, but later decided using a black paint pen and red sharpie was a lot easier! My husband used fishing wire to hang it from the rafters in our basement. That’s it! Nothing else was needed. Super easy and cheap project.

Creating the Boos…

If you love Super Mario you know all about the Boos. When Mario looks at them, they shy away and cover their face and when he turns his back, their face lights up and they start chasing him. We decided to create the same effect, as we wanted to be as true to the video game as possible. We have a couch in the basement facing our TV and thought it would be cute to have the Boos with the “chasing face” behind the couch and the “hiding” Boos in front of the couch.

To make these, I googled a picture and did my best. I don’t have any fancy tips here, I literally just took my paint pens and sharpies and tried to recreate pictures that I saw. I made a few awake Boos and a few hiding Boos.

Tip: If you screw one up, don’t throw it away! I screwed up a couple and saved them for my next projects. You will cover them with spray paint so it’s like your mistakes never even happened!

This was the final result! I think they turned out pretty cute. My husband hung them from the beams with some fishing wire at different heights so it looked like they were flying.

This was just the beginning of our Super Mario basement adventures! I can’t wait to share the rest of the pictures with you. Don’t forget to follow my blog for our future posts.