For every birthday party I can remember, my mother would display pictures from birth through whatever age I was celebrating. In my teenage years it used to embarrass me. As I was preparing for T’s party I found myself considering this tradition. When I came across these four $1/each wooden frames at Michael’s I knew it meant I had to do it: whether I will display pictures for every birthday I don’t know – but I loved painting the frames to match the color scheme and looking for pictures to display…even if I was printing two out and putting them in the frames as the first guests arrived!
Tarleton’s first birthday was Winnie the Pooh themed; partially because one of his nicknames is Teddy Bear and partially because Winnie the Pooh is my favorite little cartoon character. His second birthday was Thomas the Train themed due to his, then, new found love/obsession for all things Thomas the Train. (He still loves Thomas, but it’s less of an obsession – i.e. we are able to watch other shows besides Thomas and he plays with a more variety of toys now, thankfully!) This year as we realized that Dave was truly going to be HOME with us for the first time to celebrate T’s life – we knew we had to a dinosaur theme. Shortly after Dave returned from his first deployment and met Tarleton, he dubbed him T-Rex. So, there you go, the background to the party theme and basis for my over-Pinteresting to find cute, fun dinosaur party ideas.:-)
I found these inflatable dinosaurs (there were five of them in the front “garden area”) and in my decoration searching had seen a similar set up with a similar sign. It was just too cute to not do! As luck would have it, while I was preparing to create or find invitations and decorations to use, one of my best friends from high school sent out a FB post about her new company, ThinkRSVP, she started with her two college best friends. You can see why it was a no-brainer to help a friend out and get a quality product and some amazing customer service!
After finding a picture of a watermelon cut similarly to the T-Rex head above, I convinced Dave that he had plenty enough artistic talent to create a T-Rex head. 🙂 He sure came through didn’t he? AND the original picture he based this off of used toothpicks for teeth! We didn’t think that was safe for poky little hands so Dave managed to make teeth just fine with the watermelon. Makes his better in my book! I had to have a sweets table with “Prehistoric Cave Crystals”, Sweet Gummi Dinosaurs and chocolatey “Dino eggs” – the leftovers of which have been great potty training/good behavior bribing tools!
There was a “Water Hole” with waterfall, dino ball toss game and volcano slide; “Dino Dig Hole” full of dinosaur fossils to find (Birthday boy wanted to uncover and recover ALL of them before any friends could); and “Discovery Base Camp” (that picture was pre-party and taken by me- the hammock was enjoyed mostly by the adults of the party and we were encouraged to keep the burlap shade cloths!) The pool was a birthday gift from Lela & PopPop (my parents) and the “dig table” a gift from Grandma & Grandpa (Dave’s parents). Both have gotten a lot of use both pre and post party!
The kiddos painted dino sun catchers, pretended to be roaring dinosaurs with these foam masks I found online and each took a picture as the “Cave-kid” caught by the friendly T-Rex. I love this picture of K, one of T’s friends getting into the silliness as Birthday boy takes his turn in the photo-op.
I found a Wilton cake mold for this cute T-Rex cake and decided to do the cake myself this year. This task reminded me why, as much as I love to be creative and decorative, I enjoy letting someone else do the work for me! My cousin got T a cute set of dinosaurs to play with and they came with palm trees and volcanos so I “stole” a few to use as decorations around the cake. Though it took a couple of days, I was really proud of the way it came out. And, most importantly, T loved it! He also enjoyed singing Happy Birthday to himself along with every one else, which was super cute.
When all was said and done, the stress I put on myself to make this day as wonderful, magical, perfect as it possibly could be for our special T-Rex was probably more than I needed to, but it really felt as though I was planning his very first Birthday party. For us, this was a first we were celebrating together, the way everyone hopes to celebrate on the day their son or daughter is born, the way we weren’t able to that day. T’s birthday and birthday party-day were two of the best days of my life and though I’m sure he may not remember it when he’s 13- Dave and I will.
Thank you to everyone who made it out to celebrate with Tarleton and us. We appreciate you helping make it special! For all of you who would have loved to have been there, you were in spirit. 🙂 Traveling isn’t easy these days, we understand! Thank you Steph for taking pictures for me, Sarah for staying up late chatting with me on FB about ideas and Stacey for putting together such a cute decoration packet (and all the times I asked for changes or extras!!)
Team Thiessen 