All Aboard!

The Dinosaur Train!!

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Snacks (the cutest boy in the world) had a birthday coming up this month and that his FAVORITE show right now is Dinosaur Train, so I was looking for some inspiration for his party.  It's a really cute show and arguable has THE BEST theme song of all the kids shows on TV right now!  If you haven't seen it, you can check it out at PBSkids!

I looked around Pinterest (of course) and found lots of dinosaur cakes and train cakes, but nothing that was Dinosaur Train, so I had to come up with my own CRAZY creative plan!  And despite a few hitches along the way (stay tuned!), it went great and everyone had a great time - most importantly, the birthday boy!!

It's such nice weather right now, and hasn't gotten too hot yet for an outdoor party, so I decided to turn our porch into "Pteranadon Station" and have activities in the house and yard, just like the stops on the train!

Guests were directed to the train station with a note on my chalkboard sign by the door and some dinosaur tracks stenciled in the grass and on the driveway.

I grabbed some leftover spray paint from my Valentine's KISS project for the yard and Sheep was able to use the stencil and some chalk for the driveway.  She LOVES prepping for parties almost as much as I do (Looks like dad, acts like me I always say!) and she did a fantastic job!!

She also helped me with the signage for the Dinosaur Nursery.  Notice anything amiss??  Wish I could say that was her misspelling, but it was mom's!  I guess a Master's degree just isn't what it used to be - ha!

We shopped all of our local party stores for Dinosaur Train party supplies, but ended up having to order plates and napkins online.  I also took a coloring page from PBSkids that had buddy on it and traced the image of buddy onto a sheet of paper, enlarged it and copied it with the words "Birthday Buddy" to make a template for the Triassic T-Shirt Craft!

For this craft, I used the tutorial from Lil Blue Boo and a bottle of Citra-Solv to transfer the image onto t-shirts for the kids to color.  This was not as simple as it looked, but I ultimately got it to work and I'm intrigued enough to try again on some other projects, so stay tuned!!!  We used Crayola fabric markers to color the t-shirts - so much fun and a great party favor too!

The Jurassic Jumping Ground presented another one of the 'wrinkles' in this party plan.  I had asked a good friend of mine if I could borrow her bounce house and she happily agreed.  I had been to her daughter's carnival birthday and seen a HUGE bounce house there so in my mind, that's what I was borrowing.  When she told me I could pick it up in my CR-V, I should have realized there was a 'little' problem.  But I was so busy with the other party plans, that I didn't blow it up until Saturday afternoon about 2 hours before the party - only to discover then that it was TOO SMALL for the older siblings to use without potentially damaging it!!  Ackk!!

Speed saved the day by finding a 'full-sized' bounce house that could be delivered in time for the party!  And the little ones had fun in the borrowed bounce house as well!  I do love him!!!

He also 'fixed' my Dinosaur Nursery that, after an afternoon of weeding, tilling, prepping and adding 10 bags of sand, wasn't nearly ready to hide eggs!  It was a stroke of genius though and so easy to do with Easter just around the corner! 

Sheep and I filled eggs with candy and small dinosaur figurines from the dollar store and then buried them our vegetable garden-turned-sandbox for the kids to dig and find!  I purchased small sand pails with shovels from the dollar store (along with some dinosaur stickers) for this activity so the kids could take home their loot in their buckets!

All of the kids LOVED this activity and spent the rest of the party in the sandbox - so much easier than a pinata at this age!

Best of all, Snacks and Sheep have a 'new' sandbox to play in for the summer!

I saw TONS of train cakes on Pinterest, most of which were much better attempts than mine turned out to be, but at least it tasted good!  And two-year-olds are notoriously good at overlooking the decorations in favor of candy!!  In this case, Skittles leftover from Sheep's Art Party did the trick!  And it worked with the Dinosaur Train figurines I got for our own little 'Buddy's' birthday!

Burgers, babies, beautiful weather (don't forget beer) and bouncing until the sun went down . . .

Birthday fun for everyone!!

Happy Birthday Snacks!

Mommy and Daddy love you more than words can describe!

Rawr!

Sharing this sassy party idea at Savvy Southern Style, School House Scraps, Skip to My Lou, Randees Organized Chaos, The NY Melrose Family, The Girl Creative, Cowgirl Up!, Serendipity & Spice, Fingerprints on the Fridge