LJ’s Three-historic Dinosaur Party

My sweet third born turned three this past Sunday and we got to celebrate his birthday with a epic DINOSAUR party!

Admittedly, most of the decorating was easy….just had to dig the dinosaurs out of the playroom and scatter them around the house.  I also used random things like green ‘dinosaur skin’ fabric and ordered two of these fun dinosaur blowups.

The cake was super simple – store bought from Walmart and I popped a candle (from Dollar Tree) and a couple toys on top.  It looks like an accurate dino fight is about to break out.

As guests arrived, we had a foyer table set up so that kids could snag a bucket (they would need it the entire party!) and head outside.

The first activity we did was a DINO DIG SITE.  The kid’s sand box was filled with miniature dinosaurs that I had made realistic colors (some of them in the box came in blue and yellow and red….nothing a little spray paint can’t handle!)

The little ones especially loved the digging…they sat there for hours just playing in the sand.

It was amazing.

Once they found a dinosaur, they could move over to our “BUILD YOUR OWN JURASSIC PARK”….it was the table set up to make mini dinosaur terrariums!  It was such a fun thing and the big kids loved making these.

Basically the table had a bunch of mini wide mouth jars and bowls filled with terrarium options like rocks, mini stones, and moss. The kids could fill up their jars and pop their dinosaur inside and take it home with them.

All of the rocks and things I just bought at the Dollar Tree.

Some of the kids liked packing the jar absolutely full and some liked making mini homes.  It was so cute to see their personalities!

One of the other things we did was a “FEED THE DINO” game where the kids got to try their hand at feeding the dino (I painted a poster board and just cut out the mouth) a plastic baseball.  It was not the center of attention by any means but the kids all tried it!

Friends 🙂

As for decoration, we kept it minimal.  The only thing I ‘crafted’ beside the main table was these large terrarium jars.  I talked about being inspire to do these before and they were SUPER easy.

They were on the big table where people hung out.  You can kinda see it behind this picture of my sister pretending to listen to me 🙂

After the terrariums we did a dino egg hunt.  We told the kids that the Daddy Dinosaur was supposed to watch his eggs but they were moved by those funny raptors.  Now it was their job to collect all the eggs and if we got them all then the daddy dinosaur would make an appearance and reward the kids for their help!  Some of the kids were a little afraid at first but they all warmed up to him.

After he got all the eggs, the Daddy dinosaur ran through the yard and tossed candy.  It was hilarious!  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.   The kids got to collect the candy in their buckets and take that and their terrariums home.  It worked out perfectly!

Then we all moved inside (all 55 of us) and got to sing to our main star…

Jeremy saying a blessing over the food and over our LJ.

He was so cute as we did the song and brought him his cake.  He is such a sweet kid.

When we clapped and cheered for him, he looked around the room and smiled at everyone and then gave me a big hug.  It melted our hearts!

After that everyone was welcome to eat.  I literally just ordered food….nothing was homemade.  We had pizza and grapes and veggie trays and cupcakes.  I didn’t put very much effort into the food because let’s be honest, I feel like I don’t get to be present then!  I want to enjoy the day and food always stresses me out!

Overall it was such a fun time to be together with our friends and celebrate our big boy!  I can’t believe he is already three.  Time is flying by!

And I can’t wait to share with you more parties in the future.  I feel like every party is different and this one we were able to really kick back and relax!  Except for when Daddy Dinosaur made his appearance….then everyone was peeing their pants.  Maybe I’ll post a video of that on Instagram later because it was SO good.