Anderson turned 4 | Dinosaur Party

Anderson wanted a dinosaur party this year (so much easier than the monster truck, kitty cat, and rainbow theme he chose last year!). I searched around on-line to gather some ideas, but nothing quite fit the bill. Most everything I found was either too scary, too cartoony, or just plain ugly. There was, however, no shortage of over-the-top parties that included dinosaur bone excavations, real paleontologists, and lava-flowing volcano cakes. And while I sincerely hope that one day Anderson is lucky enough to attend such a party thrown by a clearly much more dedicated mother than I, all he got was a total down-home, homemade little party with actual party games for a few classmates on a Monday afternoon after school. It's all about keeping expectations low, right?

I kept it all very simple and kept the budget at around $30 total by using what I already had. Most importantly, I only focused on details that Anderson would care about and cut a number of things from my "maybe" list. Needless to say, the fossilized baby dinosaurs in homemade dirt eggs did not make the cut. Yet, miraculously, the dozen hand-made miniature dinosaur egg piñatas filled with plastic dinos and candy did manage to get finished. It's all about priorities, you know. These were so not necessary, but so cute. I would cover my kitchen floor in liquid starch all over again for those little paper-mache balls. I cut out a giant dinosaur for the mirror in the entry which came down only yesterday, nearly a month later, because, well, "I loooove him, mommy!!!" and I changed out the pictures in the frames to be more dino-friendly. Yep, still there. I also used a cardboard box I had lying around (leftover from the giant 50 I made for the anniversary party) and cut it into a flying pterodactyl which, by the way, was pretty spectacular (even if I did forget to give him an eyeball) and took a total of maybe 10 minutes to complete. I got the idea from the super cute party here. Because the party was at 2:00 I served only cake, dinosaur footprint cookies, and drinks.

I made a pin the arm on the T-Rex game and we also had a stegosaurus/triceratops hybrid piñata. I found some dinosaur cut-outs and, at the last minute, threw together a little craft table with whatever supplies I had in the closet. My boys have zero patience for such things, but apparently girls love crafts and anything with sequins. Other than that, the activities consisted of the boys running around in dinosaur tails (which I made as Christmas gifts for the boys following this tutorial) and wrestling each other to the ground.

It was a fun afternoon and I am so happy that I kept the party small by limiting it to only Anderson's classmates. With only about 12 kids total (including siblings) Anderson was able to play with everyone and have a genuinely good (and not overwhelming) time. It also allowed me time to just sit and get to know the moms of the kids in his class which I had never been able to do.

Party Success.