Mia's Dinosaur Party

So we had my little girl's birthday party this past weekend and it was dino-mite!  Most decorating was done the night before and when she woke up that morning, she was in awe.  She went around looking at everything and then said, "Thank you, Mamma, for my birthday party!"  Really sweet.

And since I had lots of help from various searches all over the Internet - from teacher sites to party sites to other blogs - I thought I'd return the favor by posting as many pictures and details as I could for those planning a dinosaur party...for a girl...

A few posts ago, I showed the picture I found that inspired it all. (Jusami.com!)  

I really liked the feminine simplicity about this little picture.  I thought the idea of doing silhouettes instead of actual dino pictures was a cuter idea for a girl, as well.  This picture was perfect.  Not too boy-ish and realistic and not too cartoon-ish and cheesy.  I also found dino silhouette cupcake toppers (yellowmums) on Etsy (love Etsy!) and just asked the seller to change the colors to our pink/green colors with no problem.  I used these toppers for several things, including her invitation.  I asked my brother to draw out this particular picture on a poster board and make a "Pin the Mia on the T-Rex" game, which he did.  It turned out so darn cute.  I didn't have time to color it, so it stayed in it's outlined form, but it was still too cute and worked just fine.  I'll probably eventually color it and put it in her room somewhere.  I really love this picture. 

I made the invitation.  I found a similar design on Etsy, but thought I could make one myself and change a few things that I wanted done differently.  It turned out very cute.

Almost everything that we bought was from dollar stores/dollar sections.  We found lots to fit our color needs (pink & green), lots to fit our dinosaur toy needs and I got really paper crafty with the rest.  I made the banners myself.  I saw lots of cute similar designs on Etsy and thought I could do that with a little work.  Lots of cutting since I mainly used good ol’ fashioned scissors.  Didn’t realize how expensive actual scrapbooking equipment was.  Holy canole.  So scissors worked just fine.  The squares and circles were easy to cut and the scalloped version of each I got from a free template online.

The big banner was just that – big.  Mainly the “Happy Birthday” portion.  I love the way it turned out, though.  It’s just beautiful with its mixture of patterns and colors.  It took me a good week (mostly my nights) to make it because I did everything by hand.  The letters were the hardest.  I cut them out with a craft knife and then decided I wanted to shadow them to make them pop a little more, so I set myself up for more work right there.  But it was fun and I really enjoyed making it.

 

The little banner over our mantle I made in one night because it wasn’t nearly as big or as detailed.  Funny thing is, I kind of like that one better than the big one?  Haha :o)  I also framed our mantle mirror with brown craft paper to give it a modern, neutral base.  Thought it matched the decorations better.

I made paper fan flowers, again.  I made some at Christmastime and liked them so much, I had to make them again.  Heck, I’ll probably make some for Mia’s room one of these days, too.  They are just beautiful and a cinch to make.  I used the cupcake toppers again, for the center of the flowers.  I found the idea to put them on dowels and stick them in vases on another blog.   

I found some felt dinosaur silhouettes at the dollar store and put one on each shutter door that leads into our dining room.   

This is as far as I went with decorating with actual dinosaurs.  Have you ever tried decorating for a “pretty" dinosaur party?  Not exactly pretty creatures, dinosaurs.  Amazing and awesome, yes.  Pretty, not so much.  So not an easy feat.   But I think we pulled it off by keeping it sweet and simple - with pops of dinos here and there - and concentrating more on the colors than anything else.   

But that’s just speaking of the décor.  When it came down to the games and prizes and goodies, of course we went all out with the dinosaurs.  It was, after all, a dinosaur party at heart.  When the kids first arrived, I had their table set up with a couple of arts & crafts projects for them to do while we waited for the BBQ to be ready.  I found a pack of T-Rex cut-outs and put out a bucket of markers and crayons for them to color with.  I also set out google eyes and a glue pen for those who wanted to put eyes on their T-Rex (and they all did).  I also found some dinosaur rainbow scratch/etch pictures for them to work on.  

After the party, I found a few casualties that were left behind and snapped a pic.

Instead of regular goody bags, I made paper mache dinosaur eggs for everybody and put a couple dinosaurs and other goodies inside them.  Each child got to take one home before leaving.   

I started making them a week before because each layer takes about a day-and-a-half to dry.  I applied two complete layers, then cut a nice sized flap to insert the goodies and applied another generous layer over the cut areas.  

I didn't have use of my Tupperware bowls for a whole week!  Donna and Liz helped me paint the eggs the night before while I worked on other things, as I was running very short on time!  But the kids loved them and some even "called" theirs right after arriving.

I found foam dino masks from Oriental Trading and I made foam dino feet from a free template I found online.  I added elastic straps to go under the kids' feet so that they'd stay on better.  The template also wasn't straight enough for me, so I tried to perfect it as much as I could (below are my versions - feel free to copy).  I was having bad flashbacks from Drafting class...

So I hung the masks and feet up on the wall so that the kiddos could choose from them right when they came inside.

The games were a lot of fun.  One was the "Pin the Mia on the T-Rex" I already mentioned.  I also made "treasure stones" from recipes I found online and we had a dino egg hunt.  I put mini dinos inside the stones, baked them dry, and then the kids hunted them in the yard.  This was super fun.  My house smelled like coffee for three days :o)

We had to mark them with red stars because they looked so much like rocks.  I read that some people broke them open with hammers, but we had hesitation about putting hammers in the hands of little ones.  Only the outer shell was hard and the rest of the stones were actually kind of soft, so we just had the kids throw them on the cement or break/rip them open with their might and that worked just fine :o)

We also did a fossil dig game.  I bought a cheap inflatable pool and some bags of sand so that we could hide the dinosaur skeleton fossils I found at the dollar store and have the kids dig them up.

The "sandbox" was just meant to be used for this particular game, but try telling kids to stay out of sand.  It does not work.  This is about the time Mia's shoes came off and never went back on.  The kids were either in or around the sand most of the time.  In fact, a lot of the party took place outside because it was such a beautiful day.

Oh yeah, those inflatable dinosaurs there were also from Oriental Trading.  There were six of them and we let the kids play with, throw, sit on and just generally abuse them.  They were a lot of fun.

That was it for the games.  I wanted to use our bowling game set that we have, but when I went to look for it, I instead found the pieces mysteriously scattered all over the house/yard, so that went out the window.

As for the food, we had hamburgers and hot dogs from the good ol' BBQ.  Now, there was a point early on in the party where my husband, not knowing how to use my brother's grill, burned a whole mess of patties...a table...my spices...my Ove-Glove...our house...and himself.  Thank goodness his dad showed up and saved our meal...and our house...and his life.  So we had the usual side stuff along with the burgers and dogs.  In addition to the main food, I wanted to make the kids some dino nuggets and PB&J sandwiches and fruit cabobs, but that didn't come to fruition.  But what we had was plenty so it was fine.

My good friend, who happens to be a baker, made Mia's cake and cupcakes.  She always makes the best cakes and the colors matched perfectly.  And oh yes, they were yummy, yummy.

I didn't get a chance to set the cake table up, so I would have totally straightened those cupcakes had I noticed beforehand that they were awry.  Psycho, yes.  But it bugged me afterwards :-\  I could have easily spent a good 15 minutes - with only a ruler and my obsessiveness - perfectly aligning the cakes and toppers

That didn't take away from the yumminess at all though.  The birthday girl opted to blow out her candles outside and then cupcake madness ensued...

This is what you get when you ask a goofy girl to smile for you :-p

Originally, I was going to put lots of sweets on the cake table, but my table isn't very big.  The cake and cupcakes were plentiful, so they basically took up the whole thing.  So I made a little candy bar or candy buffet table?  Either way, I put lots of candy on a table and everyone helped themselves throughout the party.  I wish I would have snapped some pictures of the "frequent users" in action (who by the way, were not the little ones), but I never got a chance.  But it was cute and funny to hear the constant clanking of the lids on the jars in the background during the whole party.  I'll tell you, we provided lots of sugar that day.

Before I filled them all up...yes filled them all up

And after the madness...

The candy bar was a big success.  I'm glad I had Christopher and Donna bring me more candy before the party....because we used it.

There were a lot of things I had planned or meant to do, but not all of it was done.  My psychotic perfectionism was overtaken by my utter exhaustion so I wasn’t too bad about the little things that were awry.  It was a crazy madhouse with a lot of kids, so some things went right out the window.  But that's okay.  That's life and that's what always happens.  Nothing is ever according to plan.  

I am glad, however, that I remembered Ziggysaurus, even if it was at the last minute.  He got to run around with the kids as they were at the peak of their sugar-highs.  And he was quite abused, the poor pooch, but he enjoyed it all :o)

Leah trying to put his ears back in the hoodie

He got shot...a lot

It turned out to be a really nice party and I'm glad Mia and everyone else enjoyed it.  That made it all worth it.

Random pictures...

Yes, I took the sucker out of her mouth

She couldn't wait to bust into her Olivia dress-up trunk

Abisaurus sporting the pink feet

Little Jane-Jane looking cute

Gabrielsaurus

That one at the end there is a Miasaurus ;o)