dino dinner

it's not a party without some yummy foods - so we had lots! carnivore cuisine (meatballs), dinosaur bones (pretzels), stegosaurus plates (potato chips), dinosaur eggs (easter candy), dino-dig cups (pudding cups), triceratops treasure (fruit salad), herbivores delight (veggies w/ dip), and dinosaur cookies. gramma and grandpa were a huge help with food prep and set up!

here is a better look at the dino-dig cup. it's really just a dirt cup with the addition of these rocks and some candy bones i was fortunate to find at the party store.

the food must have been good because the kids were very quiet for awhile!

birthday boy

after eating his breakfast, the birthday boy got to open one of his presents:

a special party shirt! doesn't he look thrilled?

cakeasaurus

oscar's cake was definitely a process this year.. i started out with some instructions for a 3D dinosaur cake and some tips on working with fondant and went at it.


the fondant tips were very important because otherwise i would have tried to make the plates the same day as the cake and they would have flopped over. so if you're making a stegosaurus cake definitely do the plates a few days ahead of time.


here is the cake in progress. at this point we all went outside to fly the kite while i let my butter soften for the frosting.


the boys are always ready to help with clean-up (well.. clean-up that is frosting related anyway...)

the head flopped over at some point but i was ok with that. i also had some troubles with the moisture in the frosting softening the big plates until one of them snapped. also needed to prop the spikes up while the frosting around them firmed up. it was a bit scary for awhile there but after a few operations he pulled through.

tada!

oscar was very excited about all the people singing to him and blowing out the candles.

and then he got to pick the first piece of cake - he requested the head. the tail spikes were a huge hit and the kids all fought over them.

favors

each of oscar's buddies got a little bag of goodies to open when oscar was opening presents. they had a sheet of stickers, a dino puzzle to paint, plastic dinosaurs

their volcano erupting kit with instructions

a cookie with their name on it

and some dinosaur eggs (how nice of the stores to be full of easter candy already!)

crafty time with the kiddos

we had more kids at oscar's party than we usually do, so i thought it would be fun to have a craft planned. i figured making volcanoes would be a good way to go, so each kid got a plastic plate, a small bathroom-size plastic cup, and a chunk of air dry clay.

the kids did an awesome job on their volcanoes and only the youngest ones needed a bit of help from parents. they used some rocks, gravel and moss to decorate them.

tada! i took a picture of each kid with their volcano and they were sent home with a supply of volcano explosives. thanks again to grandpa for making the demonstration volcano and helping instruct the kiddos!

volcano game

well the dino bean bags from the last post really did get tossed in a volcano - and i didn't even need to make it! since gramma and grandpa came down to visit this past week, i put grandpa to work making a volcano out of a box. luckily grandpa is awesome at building cool stuff and made this:

all i had to do was paste on some tissue paper and paint!

we added some special effects to make it more interesting (special effects = buzz lightyear flashlights)

jeremy helped the kids play the game and they seemed to enjoy it. this is a picture that was taken right as lexi was celebrating getting all 10 bean bags in.

thank you grandpa and jeremy!!

dino bags

this weekend i decided to whip up some dinosaur bean bags as party favors for the kiddos coming to oscar's birthday party. this project took care of my bean surplus. while i was working on them i thought maybe i could incorporate them into a party game. like throw the dino bag in the volcano. of course i'll have to make a volcano to do that.. so who knows what i'll actually end up doing. any ideas?