When my son mentioned having a Dinosaur Train themed party a few months back I was happy to start planning out all of the details. I searched through Google and Pinterest and even created a
board of inspiration to go off of.
But I was surprised to find very little in the form of ideas and details. Most of the posts I came across linked back to the same two designs and I didn't quite love them. So I decided to pick and choose design elements from various sources and pieced them together to form my son's Dinosaur Train birthday.
The Cake
Any dinosaur themed birthday has to have a volcano cake. It's a must. And my kid is kind of obsessed with any thing that explodes. We recently purchased a mini volcano set from
Lakeshore Learning Center that allows you to add baking soda and vinegar to watch the volcano erupt over and over again. It's one of the only toys that he asks repeatedly for every night when daddy gets home!
I had great visions of multi-tiered, fondant covered cakes with tunnels and trains but just couldn't come up with the money and lacked the talent to make one myself.
So this easy-to-do volcano cake was my go-to. And boy did it give me trouble! The bundt cake stuck in the pan not once, but twice, the day before the party. But I just went with the flow and pieced the second failed cake together to create my final product.
To read more about the volcano cake
check out my post here with recipe and design details.
The Cupcakes
In addition to the volcano cake, I also made cupckaes for the kids. They're much easier to deal with when feeding 3 year olds and the kids love them for the frosting.
When I searched for ideas for cake toppers I knew my friend, Jeanna, over at the
Sweets Fairy Bakeshop would know just what to do. She created these darling toothpick cupcake toppers with dinosaur train images on them and even created some decorative dinos and train fondant pieces to go along with the theme.
We placed the dinos and trains around the cupcakes and sprinkled the tray with the first bundt cake crumbs (way to reuse, right!?) to give the illusion of the cupcakes laying on dirt. Half of the cupcakes had the cute toothpick tags on them and half had whopper eggs on them to make dinosaur nests.
The recipe I used for the cupcakes is from
Glorious Treats.
The Place Settings
Yes, I know it seems silly to have place settings for a kids birthday but I thought this added a special touch.
My husband's aunt surprised my son on the morning of his birthday by dropping off some dinosaur cookies. These cookies were absolutely adorable so I asked if she wouldn't mind making a few for his party too.
She packaged a few of them up for each kid and put them in a plastic bag with ribbon to make cute favors for the table. I also made some dinosaur and train paper hats for each of the kids as well and set them next to each plate, napkin and cookie.
To read more about how to make your own dinosaur party hats
check out my post here.
The Food
In staying with the Dinosaur theme we created fun food names for each of the snacks we offered. Since the party started at 10am we stuck with a brunch menu. Here's what our menu looked like:
Sweetivore Grub
Rip Apart Raptor Bread - Cinnamon Pull Apart Bread
Ceratops Cookies - sugar cookies
Cephalosaurus Cupcakes - vanilla cupcakes
Chocolate Lava Volcano Cake - devils food cake with chocolate frosting
Herbivore Grub
Brontosaurus Burritos - potato, egg & cheese, and bean, egg & cheese
Herbivore Delight - fresh fruit with fruit dip
Dinosaur Bones - pretzel sticks
Carnivore Grub
Brontosaurus Burritos - ham, egg & cheese, and bacon, egg & cheese
I was amazed at how much the kids (and adults) loved the breakfast burritos. They were seriously the easiest thing I've ever done besides ordering pizzas and pleased everyone. And since we live in So Cal everyone loves Mexican food! We also served some hot carrots and had salsa on hand. We also had Jurrasic Juice for the kids and coffee & tea for hte adults. Since the party was held at a place with a cafe there was no lack of caffeine.
Here are some photos of the grub:
Herbivore Grub
Carnivore Grub
Paper Goods
For the food and drink labels I simply designed a template in Word that included the name of the food and the dinosaur train image. I played around with the fonts and downloaded a Jurrasic Park font from
FontSpace.
After playing around with the fonts, sizes and picture I decided to add a thick orange line around the wording and picture. After I printed the pages out I cut them to size and layered them with blue cardstock.
I did the same with the favor bag tags but used a different layout and orange and blue cardstock (without the orange line). I absolutely loved how the signs turned out. They were perfect for the party.
If you would like me to email you the Word documents with the template for the paper goods just email me at simmworksfamily (at) gmail.com.
Snacks
Jurassic Juice to drink
My son blowing out his number 3 candle
The Party Favors
We tried to include some fun goodies for the kids to take home in their favor bags. It all started with the wooden train whistles I found in the dollar section of Target. My son and I painted and personalized the whistles for each of his guests. He had so much fun in the process and was so excited to give each bag to his friends (later at the party when he found out he didn't get to hand them out he was a little upset but we remedied that by showing him all of the presents he received!).
Here's what else we included in the favor bag:
All in all I'd consider this party a big success. I loved talking with my son about what he wanted to include and how he wanted to celebrate. And seeing the joy in his face every time he talked about his "Dinosaur Train party at Kid Ventures" was more than enough reward for us. I'll be posting more about my experience with KidVentures and their party packages soon!
I hope the guests had as much fun attending the party as we did throwing it!
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