Lane's 3rd Birthday Party - The Details

We had Lane's 3rd birthday party at my mom's house in Mansfield on March 9, 2013.  We kept it pretty small this year and only invited a few friends and family.  I always have so much fun party planning and end up going all out on themes and decor, but I can't help myself!  This year Lane decided a long time ago that he wanted a dinosaur birthday party.  I picked out a few things for it and saved a few ideas on interest early on.  He is still into dinosaurs now, but back a couple months ago it was an OBSESSION.  I think if he could have changed the theme last minute he might have chosen a fireman birthday party, but he was happy with the dino theme, so we stuck with it.  I took so many pictures that I will have to break up the posts into sections.  This one includes the decorations and food.

The mantle turned out pretty cute.  I had seen a picture of a little boy running in the woods with a T-Rex chasing him and knew I wanted to recreate it for Lane's birthday.  I took him to the park near our house and after about 20 takes, we finally got a few shots that would work!  I would tell him to look scared or yell out while running to me, but in most of them he was just cracking up while running.  I ended up getting 2 perfect pictures and photoshopped the T-Rex into the photos.  I was so happy with how they turned out!!!  I bought the green frame that the picture is in at IKEA for really cheap, as well as the smaller colored frames which were only 99 cents each!  I finished off the mantle with some toy dinosaurs, a number 3 and a scrapbook paper banner that I attached with tulle.  

 

 

Here is a close-up of how the pictures turned out.  He's a pretty good little actor, huh?

I knew all along I wanted to have a dinosaur egg hunt and a dino dig, so I bought some buckets from Target for the kids to put their treasures in.  I ordered the white vinyl dinosaur cutouts from ETSY and used my cricut to cut out the kids' names.

 

Here is the other T-Rex picture and a birthday subway art print that I made on photoshop and had printed at Staples.  I figure I will keep it and just put it out every year around Lane's birthday!

The weather outlook was not great for the party.  It was supposed to storm all weekend and was pretty dark the night before the party.  I was bound and determined to do the dino fossil sandbox, so mom said I could just do it inside on her tile floor.  We put 2 plastic tablecloths down as a tarp and I used an inflatable baby swimming pool covered in burlap for the sand pit.  I ordered some little dinosaur skeletons from Amazon and we buried them in the sand.  The kids had fun digging them up!  The blow up T-Rex was a Zulilly purchase from a  while back.

A close up of the mantle decor.  Newborn Lane, One Year Old Lane...

 

Two Year Old Lane, THREE Year Old Lane!

The food table

 

My friend Tara had the cutest Mickey Mouse cake at her son's birthday a few weeks ago and we ended up using the same cake lady on Lane's cake.  I showed her a picture of a dinosaur cake I found online and she recreated it and added her own little tweaks.  I thought it turned out so great!

 

I found these dinosaur cups at Walmart a while ago and thought they would make perfect party favors!

Fruit and veggies for the "herbivores."

Dinosaur PB&J sandwiches for the littles.

I made the little food cards on photoshop and just printed them in a wallet sized photo.  We had signs for the herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and "sweetivores."  :)

I framed pictures of Lane in his triceratops Halloween costume.

Dinosaur fruit snacks from Walgreens

I made a ham sandwich recipe from Kyle's grandmother.

Dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets for the carnivores.

 

Next up....party FUN!