Ok so here's the thing. While I have not posted in over six months :S I have had such good intentions of posting at Halloween and Christmas. I even had a draft Halloween post from a little Halloween party I threw for Max and a buddy, but it did not get done within a timeline that would have made sense to post. Sooooo, I'm saving it until next year. For those of you who have still been checking all of this time to see if I had posted, thank you and I'm sorry. Life got in the way. Big time. But in a good way :)
But then something happened that brought me back. That made me say to myself MAKE TIME!
My Max turned 3!
... and I threw a Dinosaur party. My mom and MIL kind of shook their heads at me, and questioned why go to all the fuss that I did. But people, this is what I LIVE for. I love details. I do not care if no one else notices them. I do, and this is one of things that makes me happy and smile. I love to see little ones have fun and do activities and crafts that I have put together. I actually have been questioning myself over the past few months that I should have been a teacher after all :/ But that ship has sailed so I will just have fun creating for my boys and their little friends.
I always like to have something outside the door to let everyone know where we are celebrating. This year in keeping with the theme, I made dino tracks.
I decided to have three different activities for the kids to do. We had one hour do to activities and eat and then the second hour we swam (the party was held at the YMCA).
The first activity was decorate a safari hat. I thought this would be cute in lieu of the typical party hats. I found them on Amazon, and had to buy way to many, but I had a friend who was a life saver in helping to decorate and she is a teacher so I will share the rest with her and her students. I bought a huge container of foam stickers from Micheal's, threw them into a few Chinese take out trays, made a cute sign with the chalkboard I use for everything, and put everything on top of my Mexican blanket. Boom. done. so cute I can't stand it. The total cost was $35. Pricey but worth it to see that adorable decorated hat on Max.
The second activity was Feed the T-Rex. I used paint I had around the house, rice that I had in my pantry and bought the white and burgundy felt to make the steaks. Super easy and cheap.
The last activity was Max's Dino Dig. I made a cute sign and filled two plastic bins with rice. The rice was $25. I bought shells, rocks, mini dinos from the dollar store and plastic eggs I had around the house. I used little paint brushes and rakes/shovels I had at home and made two containers for the "dino tools." I used my kitchen utensils container and taped a sign around it. Be resourceful and thrifty where you can be people!
For the centerpieces for the table, I had planned on having helium Dino balloons tied to wooden number "3"s, but unfortunately my vision did not happen. As soon as I started adding the card stock Dino pieces to the helium balloons, the weight was too much for them and they all fell to the ground. I had to do some quick thinking and I ended up taping them all to four small vases I had lying around. I put a single piece of blue tissue paper in the bottoms of the vases for filler. The wooden "3"s then just stood on their own. I was bummed that what I was hoping for wasn't going to happen, but in the end I really liked the look of the balloons in the vases.
The backdrop to the food table was a labour of love. I found the template for the leaves online and drew and cut them by hand.
For the food we kept it simple. I had four themed bowls of snacks (triangle chunks of mozza as dino teeth, bugles as dino toes, yogurt covered pretzels as dino bones, and timbits as dino eggs) and then I did a large tupperware filled with fruit in the shape of a Brontosaurus. We ordered pizza and had juice boxes and bottled water... and of course the most important part of a birthday party meal.. the cake. I make vanilla cupcakes and used green icing, chocolate sprinkles and toped them with little plastic dinos.
Side note... on Max's actual birthday, the week prior, we had this cake :)
For the treat bags I made potato stamps to decorate dino bags. Each little friend took home a small bag of "dino eggs" (mini eggs), two "magic dinos (dino grow capsules), a small pad of paper with a dino on the cover, and a dino nose which I was the most excited about :).
My little Triceratops
Finally, I borrowed three large dinos and made party hats for them. Two were stationed at the food table and the other one was by the treat bags, along with a small chalkboard sign that read "roar means thank you in dinosaur" :)
... and there you have it! A fun Dino Dig party for the little dinosaur lover in your life :)
See you sooner than six months from now ;)
~ K
