Dinosaur Birthday Party for my Five Year Old

Oliver is five.  Wow.  I can remember the day he was born so clearly.  Every detail etched in my mind.  It was a hard labour but a joyous one.  
Oliver is the sweetest boy.  Just a few days ago he spontaneously came up to me as I was wiping off the kitchen table after dinner, gave me a big hug and said 'you are so beautiful mommy."  I cried happy tears.  

The big dinosaur party for my new five year old was a great day.  I was pretty nervous about the weather but it turned out fine.  Cool but dry.  I can handle that.  Oliver had about 10 little buddies come celebrate with him on Saturday morning at the park.  I love celebrating birthdays and making sure my kids feel special on those days.  I wonder if it's because I love celebrating my birthday and always felt so special growing up. My birthday landed on a national holiday which meant that everyone had the day off, it was summer and their was always fireworks at the end of the day.  I always felt so loved and special.  And I want the same for my child.  Not just one day of the year but always.  

Oliver requested a dinosaur theme.  He had a safari theme the year before so I wasn't thrilled about the choice at first.  The thought of a typical brown, orange and lime green birthday wasn't doing it for me.  I needed to do something different.  I played around with some colours and I finally decided on grey, navy and leaf green.  I can work with that.

Everything came together nicely.  I'm a detailed person so I carefully planned a few key items.  Some of my favourites were the mini party hats on the dinosaurs, fossil dig in the dirt and candy jars.  Overall it was an easy party to plan and not expensive.  It's amazing the stuff you can find at a good dollar store.  

Because the weather wasn't looking great, I knew I needed to have shelter just in case.  We have a park close by with a picnic shelter but it doesn't have any tables or chairs so I was lucky to borrow some small tables and chairs from our church.  



I made a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing.  I found a new recipe and it was amazing.  The boys loved the chocolate rocks.

Here is the recipe:

Chocolate Buttercream Icing from The Kitchen Magpie
  • 1 cup salted butter
  • ½ cup of unsweetened cocoa
  • 3 one ounce squares of melted then cooled semi-sweet chocolate
  • ½ tsp instant coffee
  • 1-2 tbsp heavy cream
  • 3¼ - 3¾ cups icing sugar

Instructions
  1. Melt your three chocolate squares in the microwave, slowly and carefully until they are liquidy smooth. Set aside to cool.
  2. Whip the butter in your mixer until it's light and fluffy.
  3. Add in the cocoa, beating until combined.
  4. When the chocolate is cool, add it to the butter. Make sure it's cooled!!
  5. Add the instant coffee to one tablespoon of cream, then add to the butter mixture.
  6. Now you can put in the icing sugar one cup at a time, beating until combined.
  7. Adjust the thickness/texture by using another tablespoon of cream, adding it slowly until the texture you want is achieved.


I had fun with the menu.  I bought things I normally don't [aka corn dogs and bugles] and kept it simple.  



Navy gift bags from the dollar store worked great for the goodie bags.  Each child got a dinosaur in their bag plus a dino sugar cookie, a fossil dinosaur from the dino dig and a mini candy jar.  I used white ink to stamp the kids names on the bags.


I cut out dino tracks from construction paper.



 Kids running carefree in the field.


 Auntie Lindsay taught the kids Red Rover to start the party off.


The mini candy jars were simple and looked great.  A friend gave me a bunch of empty baby food jars, I glue gunned the mini dinosaurs from the dollar store onto the lids and Trevor spray painted them.  Filled with candy and it was a perfect favour for each of the boys.


Dino sugar cookies were a great addition.  My no-fail sugar cookie recipe is on an early post from December 2013.  Found the cookie cutter at Scoop N Save.


Trevor hid this large dino egg in the forest for the kids to find.  Whoever found got to take it home.  Inside is a dinosaur that will emerge after a few days in water.  Egg is from the dollar store.  Pretty cool.





I had another activity planned but it failed.  I made mud dino eggs from a pin I found on Pinterest.  Forgot about them outside the night before and either a person or animal broke all of them open. 


This is what they should have looked like.




Here is the dino dig.  I order these small fossils on Amazon.  They came in a set of 12.  I hid them in the sand with scoops and then they had to dust them off with the brushes.




Unfortunately I couldn't keep the candles lit so Oliver had to pretend to blow out his candles.  Next time .... sparkler.


Cute little superheros.

Opening gifts after the party.  He was spoiled!



May 26th 2014: Oliver turns 5!  We are so blessed.  He brings us so much joy.

Oliver, Isla and myself went to Denny's for a birthday breakfast.  He ordered chocolate milk, spaghetti and mashed potatoes and gravy.  And he ate almost all of it.  



Oma, Opa, Auntie Lindsay and Uncle Kyle came over for pizza, cake and presents.  Here is Isla 'filming' as Oliver opens gifts.


Oliver got a new bike for his birthday but wasn't as excited about it as we had hoped.  We tried. I'm sure he will eventually like it.  



We all had a great day celebrating our little man.  He must have had a fun day because he slept till 10am the next day.  

2 comments:

  1. These are such great photos, Marnee! It was a wonderful party, with lots of attention to detail (of course!);)
    I can't believe a person or animal broke into your cute dino eggs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Laura! Glad you and Levi could come. I totally forgot about them outside but wasn't expecting the dino eggs to be smashed. Oh well.

    ReplyDelete

 
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