Do It Yourself Parties: 3 years old

Showing posts with label 3 years old. Show all posts

Since my boys birthdays are only a week apart, I decided that I would combine their parties this year. We went for the classic Dinosaur theme! Who doesn't love dinosaurs? Especially little boys. We had a lot of fun with this party and here is what I came up with...

THE INVITATION:
For the invitation, we moved to the world of evite. I picked a dinosaur theme for the evite.

THE CAKE:
I went SIMPLE with this party! We had cupcakes. Super easy and I topped them with toy dinosaurs so they went along with the them. You can also try using dinosaur candies so they can be eatable. Place them on dino footprint napkins and its a win!

THE DECOR:

So I bought a couple of key decor items from the Oriental Trading Company. I chose theses hanging swirls for the center of the room but I used crepe paper streamers from the Dollar Tree.

Other things I used were their personal dinosaurs and I just printed some basic pictures off the internet to hang on the wall. I also made huge dinosaurs out of cardboard but I can NOT find a picture of it. I turned our garage into a dinosaur cave where I had several games. I will keep digging around for some photos but to be honest party days are the busiest and I rely on others to take pics.

I has also places a trail of dinoprints around the room that led to each game center and the bathroom so people knew where they were going.

We also had a photo station with this cut out. It was a pricer purchase than I'm used to but I'm sure I'll be pulling it out for several more parties since the dinosaur theme never goes away.

GAMES:

We had a "Dig Site" where I picked up doggie bones from the Dollar Tree and some small dinosaur skeleton toys.

We also had a "Wild Dinosaurs" game where all the dinosaurs (the kids) had to chase the grown ups around and eat them while wearing a dinosaur hat or a mask. This was a hit!
The Land Before Time movie was playing in the background.

FAVORS:

Every child received a dinosaur hat upon arrival. This really put them into character. I added fabric bows to the top of the hats with a glue gun to appeal to the little girls at the party. If they didn't like the hat, I gave them the option of masks instead.

Their favor bags were just simple paper lunch bags containing bubbles, dinosaurs, silly straws, candy and a thank you note.

To seal the bag I just punched holes with a hole puncher and ran ribbon through and tied a bow. I glued a little thank you note on the outside and they were ready to go.

So, that was our Toy Story Party... Happy Partying to you!

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SOME PINTEREST IDEAS

I held a "Thomas the Tank Engine is a zoo train" Party for my two sons as they turned (2 & 3). I had tons of ideas for this party but my efforts were quite minimal as we had just moved countries and had not really settled yet. We minimized the effort by holding it at the zoo and walked around in a line as a train to entertain the boys. Since I don't have a lot to offer for this party, here are a few original ideas and some ideas from Blog searching.

THE INVITATION:

I made this invitation myself but here are a few favorites: easyinvitations, CBDesignCollection, priyasdesign.

THE DECOR:

Well we were at the zoo... so I just took balloons.

That is the extent of my personal party. However, I did research some ideas in hopes that I could have had held it in a home. Anyway, here are some Ideas I did like and would have done if this was a party at home:

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THE FAVORS:

Some more ideas from others:

Party Hats/Favors by Enchanted Expectations

You can get Engineer Caps from Oriental Trading Company as well as the Train cups on the table. Another idea I love is train whistles.

THE FOOD:

Some more ideas from others:

Snack Train by www.tonyastaab.com

THE CAKE:

Simple was the best option for me so I got store-bought cupcakes and threw in some numbered candles in. But here are some more ideas from others:

Thomas Cupcake Tower found on cakecentral.com

GAMES:

Some more ideas from others:

Pin the 1 on Thomas found on www.birthday-parties-for-kids.com

More cute ideas from Tip Junkie (Thomas), Tip Junkie (Train)

So, that there are some ideas for a Thomas the Tank Engine Party... Happy Partying to you!

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SOME PINTEREST IDEAS

My youngest daughter went through a Mermaid phase for YEARS! It started just before her birthday so we did a Little Mermaid theme for her 3rd Birthday (2008). We utilized the whole backyard for her party as it was spring. We turned it into a "lagoon" with streamers outlining the yard so the kids knew when they were out of water (aerial pics below). Here are some ideas...

INVITATION:

I found this image so long ago and I can't remember where it originated from. I just basically found the image and placed the poem over it just the way I wanted. Easy Peasy.

DECOR:

This was an outdoor party so my goal was to make it look as much like an ocean as I could with my minimal resources. We had steaks in the ground spaced about 3' or 4' across and we put up dark and light blue steamers in layers to look like waves. By the end it looked like a big fish bowl.

I also let the kids color some Little Mermaid coloring pages the week before. We cut them out and places them along the top of the steaks to complete the ocean look. If you are indoors you can hang them from the ceiling with ribbon for effect.

We also had 2 clam shell sand boxes out for some of the games. I always have one area in the party where I can take pictures with all the guests so that we can keep it as the kids' special birthday picture for that year. I made a large Ariel out of cardboard holding a cupcake and a large Sebastian the crab and Flounder the fish. If you are not artistic, you can download a picture and blow it up at the print shop and hang it up. This is a more personal touch than a regular banner. I drew these but I let my kids paint them the weekend before as a fun activity.

The main colors I used were OCEAN COLORS. Dark Blue, Light Blue and Teal. I also added small portions of pink to break up the color. You can also partner green and purple streamers together like Ariel's outfit... or if you are indoors you can hang green streamers from the ceiling to create a seaweed effect in the room.

I didn't really have a backdrop so I quickly grabbed an old sheet and took some spray paint cans out of the garage and whipped up the backdrop. This is something I wish i would have thought of earlier but did it about 10 min before the guests arrive.

GAMES:

For games we had the sand boxes where we had a sandcastle and dig for shells competitions. Other games we played follow the leader as a school of fish. We also played chase and the person who was it was a shark!

FOOD:

Because this was an afternoon party, we just prepared snacks for the children. Water, juice, popcorn and fruit were apart of the spread.

THE CAKE & PARTY FAVORS:

We didn't have a traditional cake as it was a very warm day. We had Jello/Jelly Cups with gummies inside for the kids. This was a lot of fun and an unexpected surprise for the kids. They all loved it! I also gave them toy ocean animals as their party favor which was a HUGE hit!

So, that was our Little Mermaid Party... Happy Partying to you!

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SOME PINTEREST IDEAS

For my eldest daughter's 3rd birthday we did a Big Top Circus Theme. It was summertime so I thought I would make it an outdoor water party!! So fun!!

THE INVITATION:

I searched high and low for my original invitation but I COULD NOT find it for the life of me. So I recreated one to the best of my memory. I found a few links to invitations for sale that I really liked for those of you who don't know how to make invitations (BlissfulNestStudio and LollipopPrints).

THE DECOR:

As an outdoor party I decided to use 3 kiddie pools to look like a three-ring circus. The main colors I used were red and yellow. I popped a few extra colors in there to balance out a primary color look. I also decorated the inside of the gazebo with red and white streamers and hung a few stuffed animal monkeys from the top.

I had a kiddie slide that I bought on sale from Big W (a WalMart type store) for $15. It was pretty plain so I decided to paint the side looking like an elephant drinking out of the water.I just painted it grey added eyes and a smile and taped (with packing tape) ears I cut out from a grey foam sheet.

The other think I find almost CRUCIAL in every birthday party is CARDBOARD!! I went to my local white goods store and asked for left over Refrigerator boxes. They brought out a few for me and I brought them home. I painted one side of the boxes to make a Circus Train! I cut plate sized circles on the side so the kids could put their faces through the side and pretend to be the animals. I almost always try to have a place where we take a picture of all the guests together so we have one single photo to capture the day. The train served as the photo scene for this party.

Martha Stewart has some good ideas... And there are affordable decor options at The Oriental Trading Company.

THE FAVORS:

I bought popcorn style bags from Spotlight Craft Supply Store (Australia) but they have them at tons of places. From the Dollar Tree to The Oriental Trading Company. I gave out candy, hand held games, stickers and of course boxes of Animal Crackers which I had to have my family ship over from America. I had a cousin give out goldfish as the party favors as they won the different games at the party.

THE FOOD:

I really wanted circus type food but it was near impossible to find in the part of Australia I was in. I had to special order corn dogs for the Big Top type feel. We had fruit salad, popcorn and M&Ms. We also had Nutter Butters, Circus Peanuts, and Mother's Circus Animal Cookies sent over especially for the party.

THE CAKE:

Since my last cake attempt was a failure, I ended up going with Popsicles! It was summer so it worked perfectly and especially because it was an outdoor party.

I ended up buying a round piece of styrofoam and used yellow and red crepe paper streamer and glued them vertically along the side to look like tent stripes. To finish off the ends I glued blue crepe paper strip along the top and folded it over and glued it. Then I had a plastic 'Happy Birthday' candle holder for the top of cakes and I just stuck it into the styrofoam side. I also glues some foam animal shapes I had leftover from another craft I did ages ago.

We just stuck the popsicles in the top of the styrofoam and also the birthday candle. It was a hit.

GAMES:

There was definitely no shortage of things to do for this party. We had the 3 ring pools. One pool had a slide, the other had ball pit balls and the other had water guns. We had a Balance beam, an animal cage (withed stuffed animals), and we had a ring of fire... I mean ring of WATER! :)