Jurassic Party
Updated: Sep 11, 2018
Still adjusting to the idea that our son is now a TODDLER! His 1st birthday party was soooo much fun, and the weather made it extra memorable (think literal rainforest, 110+ degrees plus rain and thunder all in a couple of hours). I've put together a little compilation of Pinterest tutorials and shopping links for all of the party details.
When deciding on a theme for Milo's first birthday, I was going back and forth between Jurassic and Galactic. Since this is probably the first and last time I'll get to choose a theme for his party, I really wanted to make it count :). Ultimately, with the release of the second Jurassic World movie this summer and Milo's love for dinosaur toys, Jurassic won out!
Food
We went with a no-fuss menu of chicken and waffles! I ordered some chik-fil-a nugget trays and my sweet sister helped me make 100+ waffles the week ahead of time that I was able to freeze and just warm up the day of. My amazing family filled in with the sides! The only homemade thing I took on were these volcano bundt cakes that were inspired by this pin. I was able to just use boxed cake and pipe on yellow and red/orange buttercream. So much easier than frosting a whole cake!
Favors
Weeks ahead of time, I was able to make these Jurassic hard hats and security lanyards. The hard hats came from Amazon and were originally a yellow color. I originally planned on keeping them yellow, but some blue spray paint from Home Depot gave them an easy makeover that looked more like the movie. I found the Jurassic World logo online and printed it on sticker paper. Again, easy!
The lanyards were also found on Amazon. I didn't want to pay for the ones with the plastic covers, so I found self lamination paper at Target , which was actually pretty simple to use! The security image was just an image online that I was able to printout.
Apparently I was too busy the day of the party, but we also had little paper bags with stickers labeled "Dino Bones" that were filled with white chocolate pretzels (bought not made! :)).
Decor
This Jurassic Wreath was another gold hoop project. The velociraptor image was printed out and attached to scrapbook paper along with leaves from the Dollar Tree.
The balloon garlands were super easy to make and their tutorials can be found here.
My amazingly talented dad made this jeep for Milo out of a cardboard box. I wish I had a tutorial for this but my dad just has a way with this stuff and just makes it happen. I don't know how I'll be able to part with it!
Activities
Instead of having a ton of coordinated games, we decided to keep it simple and have activities for the kiddos. I used an awesome salt dough dino bone tutorial to make a little excavation setup with cheap plastic kiddie pools. We also had a little inflatable pool for the babies. Soooo I had an inkling that a birthday in July would be hot, so we rented an inflatable water slide that was big enough for kids and adults. BEST DECISION EVER. Especially since I did not think hot would equal almost 115 degrees!!! That's where kids and adults spent most of the time, and even if you weren't on the slide you were probably subject to the splash zone! To top it all off, our amazing brother-in-law bought an inflatable T-Rex costume to surprise the kids at the party. Props to him for wearing it in the extreme heat and for being ok with little kids chasing him around!
Our Mamasaurus and Daddysaurus shirts were also Amazon finds!
Invites
My friend recommended an awesome app called "canva" that I used to make the invitations. Most of the templates are free and totally customizable, from font to color schemes. It has amazing uses for invites/flyers/blogging etc.
Hope that you enjoyed all the details! Every birthday definitely won't be this big, but we had fun making it special and memorable for us and the people who love our kiddo!
Feel free to reach out to me here or on instagram if you have any questions about the links or tutorials.