Diego Dinosaur Rescue Party: Part 4

This is Part 4 of a series of posts about a Diego Dinosaur birthday party.  To go to Part 1, click here.

After finding Maia the Maiasaura, we began our rescue mission to take her home.  First we had to pass through the Muddy Mud Pits.  To do this, I made cardboard “stepping stones” out of rectangular flats of cardboard.  I wrote the numbers 1 – 15 on them with a sharpie and placed them in a path leading across our yard.  We instructed the kids to follow the path in order, being careful not to fall into the “mud” which was really just our dirt/grass lawn. 

You can’t see it too well in the photo, but the kids are walking across the path.

Once they all reached the end of the path (we stressed sticking together throughout the activity), they next had to find their way to the Rocky Rock Mountains.  In the movie, they climb the mountain and there is a rock slide, which is how I thought to use our slide, but I couldn’t come up with a very creative way to make it look more like a mountain.  

I had thought about maybe making some cardboard stands to put on either side and painting them to look like a mountain, but that would have been too time-consuming for me to tackle!  So we ended up getting a bag of grey balloons and tying them along the side of the slide as “rocks.”  The kids didn’t seem to mind, and while I thought this was the least exciting of the obstacles, they loved it and I even heard someone say “Wow! This is fun!” so I guess we did ok with this one!

After sliding down the slide, they used their binoculars to find the volcano.  When we got over to it (I had placed it in the corner of our garden) we told the kids that they each had to erupt the volcano in order to pass by. 

The Owl and I had made our volcano from cardboard, tape, and paper bags, and it came out great.  I will share details on how we made it in a separate post.

We had the kids line up alongside the garden and they took turns erupting the volcano.  Each kid got a little bathroom-sized paper cup of baking soda and one of vinegar and got to dump them in one after the other.  Right before we started, and after every 3-4 kids had a turn, I put in about 4 drops red food coloring and a couple squirts of handsoap, which helped the eruption to look red and bubbly.  It worked great, and the kids really loved it! 

Finally, we needed to get to Egg Island, which involved crossing the water.  We luckily had a blue play tunnel that we set up leading from the garden to our stone patio, and each child got to “swim” through the tunnel to the island. 

At the bottom of the island, the boys and I had made a nest from pinestraw and placed in it 14 paper mache Maiasaura Eggs.  I’ll write a separate post on how we made them.  The kids took Maia to her nest, and as a thank-you for their help, each kid was invited to choose an egg to take home.  We told them that there were some special goodies hidden inside and they could open them when they got home.  Inside the eggs were dinosaur stampers, dinosaur crayons, dinosaur gummies (found at Kroger), dinosaur silly bands (clearance at Hobby Lobby) and some Diego playing cards (found on the clearance aisle at Party City).  Plus the kids got to take home their hats and binoculars, so it was a pretty good haul!!  Since we saved on so much of the other aspects of the party, I didn’t mind spending some extra money on nicer goody bag items.

As I said, each kid got to select an egg, and while planning the party, I was trying to think of a way to keep each kid’s egg identified, since kids this age are specific about things like that.  I had made tags to attach to bags that I was going to have each kid put their egg in after selecting them, but I couldn’t find an affordable option that was big enough.  So I just printed the tags (put together in PowerPoint with some cute dino clip art) and figured I’d tape them to the eggs.  The kids all filed back in the house after the hunt, and started taking off their hats, so I had the quick-thinking to put each kid’s egg into their hat, along with their binoculars and their name tag.  This worked great as the hats were just the right size to hold the egg, and we just lined them up on the kitchen counter until the kids went home.  It worked out great, because we didn’t waste a whole bunch of bags!

The kids had a few minutes inside to play, use the restroom and wash their hands, and then we filed them back outside to get food.  We set a folding table up outside our patio and decorated it with this cute banner I made in PowerPoint, printed on cardstock, and strung together with the same yarn I used on the binoculars.   

For food we went nice and simple- dinosaur-shaped nuggets (made by Perdue, not frozen so you'll find them near the meat or prepared food section), Fritos, grapes, and juice pouches.  I can't advocate enough having all finger-food at a kid’s party- it makes it so easy!  I helped the kids fill up their plates and then sent them over to the side yard where we had put out a couple big quilts for our picnic lunch/snack.  Again, we were so lucky with the weather, because I’m not sure we even had enough chairs to seat 16 kids inside, let alone the grown-ups!

After the kids ate, we brought out the cake.  The Owl had specific requests for his cake- he didn’t want it to have Diego’s face on it- he doesn’t like cutting into/eating things with faces (!) and the Diego character cake our local bakery makes was way too pricey.  $50 for a (small) cake is too much, in my opinion.  We looked around online for ideas, and he really liked the idea of a volcano cake, so that’s what we went with.  I was going to make it from scratch, but since I don’t often have the best success with cake construction, I had the smart idea to purchase a plain cake from our bakery.  I just ordered a ¼ sheet cake with plain white icing.  I also ordered ½ lb of chocolate buttercream frosting on the side, which I used to frost the volcano.  I’m so glad I did, because it was much smoother than regular store-bought frosting.  The volcano part of the cake was just a vanilla cake mix baked in an oven-safe bowl (it used about ¾ the boxed cake mix).  Once it had cooled, I turned it out onto a plate and frosted it, then put it in the fridge for about an hour.  A couple hours before the party, I carefully moved it onto the cake.  I used crumbled up vanilla wafers for the dirt and green frosting from a can for the grass.  The can of frosting came with tips to use, and I think I used the leaf tip to make the squiggly grass, and the writing tip for the number 5 on the volcano.  Then I put some of The Owl’s dinosaur and Diego figurines on the cake.  Easy peasy!!

Once the cake was eaten, we had about 15-20 minutes until the party was over, so we let the kids run around the yard and play.  Everyone had a great time, and The Owl was so happy to have all his friends at his house!  I’m all for the relaxing element of parties outside the home, but there’s something that can’t be beaten about a nice, at-home party.

We opened presents after the kids had left.  I’m a big fan of not doing that at the party, it just makes things simpler.  All in all, a fantastic party, and the birthday boy was so happy!

Diego Dinosaur Rescue Party: Part 3

This is Part 3 of a series of posts about a Diego Dinosaur birthday party.  To go to Part 1, click here.  

After the digging, we began our “Dinosaur Rescue Mission.”  While the kids were digging, an envelope was delivered to our house with an important message from Diego.  We gathered the kids around and read them the special message from Diego:

Dear _____ and friends,

Hola!  I need your help.  Maia the Maiasaura is lost!!  She needs to find her way home.  Can you help? 

Gracias!!  Let’s go on a dinosaur rescue mission!!  First you need your dinosaur rescue gear.  I’m sending you all super spotting binoculars so you can spot the Maiasaura, and I’m sending you official dinosaur rescue league hats.

The first thing you need to do is find Maia the Maiasaura.  You will need to jump back 250 million years to the time of the dinosaurs.  When you find Maia, please take her to her nest.

To get to Maia’s nest, you will first need to go through the Muddy Mud Pits, then over the Rocky Rock Mountains, past the Great Volcano, to Egg Island.

Muchas gracias, dinosaur rescuers, and good luck!

Your Amigo,

Diego

After the first part of the letter, we handed the kids each a pair of binoculars and a hat.  I ordered the hats from Oriental Trading Company, and they are really great!  It was totally worth the money to get them.   My only complaint is that the “Safari Guide” badges were facing every way but up on the hats, but I had already planned on covering them up, so it was no big deal.  I made a Diego dinosaur badge that I glued over the existing badge, to change them from safari hats to dinosaur rescue hats.

The only other problem we had was that I ordered a dozen, thinking that we probably wouldn’t have more kids then that, but then when so many of the kids RSVP’d yes, we ended up needing more and didn't have time to order more (plus they are only available in increments of 12).  Luckily I found some plastic pith helmets at Party City and got a few of those to give us enough hats for every kid.  They weren’t as nice or as cheap, but they were still pretty cool, and the kids didn’t seem to notice the difference.

I was also going to order binoculars for the kids, but the reviews were pretty terrible, and I didn’t want to spend the money for something that might break during the party, so The Owl and I made binoculars for everyone from toilet paper rolls.  We asked Grandma to help us collect some, and we ended up with just enough to make 16 pairs.  I had remembered The Owl’s teacher last year making some, and we improved on them a bit by covering the toilet paper rolls with scrapbook paper.  The Owl and I picked out some different patterns from Hobby Lobby when the paper was 50% off and we found some good designs- dinosaurs, leopard print, jungle/leaf prints, and some pretty flower and butterfly prints for the girls.  They were really simple to make, but I’ll post a little how-to when I get the chance.

I ended up with some paper left over, so I cut out some triangles and stapled them to a piece of crape paper for this cute, easy, and cheap bunting that we hung up in the Family Room, which is adjacent to the playroom and kitchen.

The kids looked so cute trekking around the yard in their hats and binoculars! I wish I had set up a photo-op spot or taken the time to photograph each kid individually, but alas, that is one of those things you realize after the party is over and everyone has gone home.  Oh well.

Once the kids had their gear, we stepped outside and looked for the Maiasaura’s footprints.  Originally I was going to have two paths and we were going to have to follow the one with a 3-toed footprint, but I ended up doing just one path, down our stairs that sit to the side of our yard.  I just drew a footprint in PhotoShop and printed about 15 of them on cardstock and placed them down the steps for the kids to follow.  Of course, I don’t have a good photo of them on the steps, but here is the file I made.

Once we got to the bottom, the kids were instructed to use their binoculars and try to find Maia the Maiasaura.  The Owl found her right away under a bush.  I was hoping one of the other kids would find her, but oh well. 

Meet Maia.  I knew we needed her, because the whole point of the mission was to find her and take her to her nest, but I didn’t know what to use for her.  We had a few stuffed dinos, but they were obviously not Maiaisaurs (Stegasaurus, T-Rex, etc) and the dinos we had that could pass were much too small (the little plastic variety).  So I ended up making her, something I thought I would regret but ended up enjoying.  I purchased this really awesome T Rex pattern from Tiddliwink Toys on Etsy, and I’m so glad I did!  It is such a well-written pattern.  I enlarged the pattern by about 200% and extended the arms and tail a bit, but really I didn’t change the shape that much.  Technically Maiasauras had larger front arms, etc, but who can really tell, right?  Just by simply making her in yellow and orange felt, omitting the sharp teeth, and adding  the cute girlsish eyes made a big difference.

Looks a lot like her, huh?

I sew a lot, but this was the first plush animal I made, and I was quite pleased!  It would have turned out better using wool felt, but I had regular felt on hand so that is what I used.

Ok, no more time to write just now, but I’ll be back soon with Part 4 to tell you all about our mission to help Maia find her way home!

Diego Dinosaur Rescue Party: Part 2

This is Part 2 of a series of posts about a Diego Dinosaur birthday party.  To go to Part 1, click here.  

For the party, we turned our home into dinosaur land.  I didn’t get a good picture, but we made “Dinosaur Crossing” signs from a dinosaur crossing image printed on cardstock.  We’re lucky (?) to have a lot trees in our yard and thus a lot of down branches, so The Owl and I collected branches and used them for the posts for the signs.  Two signs printed on cardstock and stapled around the branch did the trick!  Another totally free item for the party!   

I finally did get a picture of one of the signs after it was taken out of the ground.  

We stuck them along our walkway, and we also had some balloons on the mailbox and The Owl drew dinosaur footprints up the driveway and walkway.  I was going to make something for the front door, but forgot, which worked out OK since the door ended up being propped open as the guests arrived.  The Owl was super excited to stand in the doorway and greet his friends as they arrived!

We gave the parents the option to stay or drop-off, and about half stayed for the party.  It was just right- not too many, not too few, and the parents who did stay seemed to enjoy watching the kids and chatting with each other.  Since all the kids were from The Owl’s school, many of the parents already knew each other.

Our playroom is right off the entryway, so we decided to have the kids play there as everyone arrived.  Prior to the party, we emptied the room of most of the toys, like all the GeoTrax that is usually housed there, and took them down to the basement.  From upstairs we brought down the train table (usually in our office/upstairs playroom) and all the dinosaur toys, of which we have a lot!  On the train table we put a lot of the Diego sets that The Owl got for Christmas.  We have an Ikea Expedit shelf in our playroom that holds bins of train track, workbooks, puzzles and other miscellaneous toys.  Instead of moving this out, we just put a green plastic tablecloth over it, added some streamers and put some of the dinosaur toys on top.  This kept the kids out of it, and gave us an extra surface!  I also brought in the little round table we usually have in the kitchen, and the felt playmat I made The Owl for Christmas for some added play areas.  As the kids arrived, they were super excited to explore all the toys, and played together really well for about half an hour.

We decorated the room with streamers over the windows and some simple streamer "volcanos."  And of course, lots of dinosaur toys, which made the place look festive and fun!

After some free-play, we invited the kids out to our back porch.  I should take a minute to say that as I planned this party, I envisioned many outdoor activities, but with a birthday in mid-February, there was a good chance we would have to do the whole thing inside.   I anxiously watched the weather for weeks, and we were so lucky to have a beautiful sunny day with a high of 76!!  It was the perfect day for the party, and a week later we were back to cold, rainy, dreary weather so I say that was amazing luck!

Anyway, on the back porch we had set up our sandbox for a dinosaur dig.  I had originally planned on making salt dough bones to bury, but that got scrapped as I ran out of time, so at the last minute my Mom picked up a couple bags of plastic dinosaurs (thanks, Mom!)  I don’t think the kids cared- they were happy to dig.   

We also added two Rubbermaid bins filled with sand to accommodate all the kids, and we also placed the boy’s water table there, or anyone who wanted to wash their dinos, or just have some fun playing in the water.  The kids really loved this!  A few of the boys snuck back inside to play with the toys after a few minutes, but most of the kids stayed really engaged with this activity.

For another simple decoration, I did a google image search for "dinosaur posters" and printed off a whole bunch of them on standard-size cardstock.  Poster-sized would have been even better, but these worked really well for another totally free decoration!  I taped up a bunch of them around our porch (you can sort of see them in the above two images) and also placed some around the house- on a shelf, on top of our mantle, etc. 

Stayed tuned for more fun in Part 3!!

Diego Dinosaur Rescue Party: Part 1

The Owl turned five last week, which is still totally blowing my mind.  I can’t believe my sweet little guy is growing up so fast!  This is first year we’ve done a proper party- in the past we’ve done little family parties paired with a special outing.  But this year we decided to have a party with friends, goodie bags, the whole deal.  When asked what he wanted, The Owl requested a party at home with a Diego Dinosaur theme.  I was happy about having the party at home (well, besides the cleaning part) since we were on a very small budget, but the Diego theme left me stumped.  Dinosaurs I could work with, but I wasn’t sure what to do beyond that, and I couldn’t find any ideas on the web that combined the two- plenty of Diego jungle parties, but he had specifically requested dinosaur.

Well, all it took was for me to pay attention to the Diego’s Great Dinosaur Rescue movie, and I was hit with inspiration!  In the film, Diego, Dora and Alicia visit a museum, where they learn about a lost Maiasaura.  They then travel back to the time of the dinosaurs to find Maia that Maiasaura and lead her back home to her nest.  I decided to use that as the overall plan for our party, and to re-create the dinosaur rescue mission.

I’ll try to take you through the whole party and the planning process, and I’ll include as many links and photos as I have. 

The invitations:

I created the invitation in PhotoShop from a Diego image I found online.  I’m not sure the original source of the image, but if you do a google image search, you can filter down to the higher-quality images by selecting “large” from the list to the left.  Once I found a large, good-quality image of Diego, I edited the colors to match the colors of the invitation, then put the rest of it together.  I also added a dinosaur footprint I drew in PhotoShop.  If you’re not comfortable designing your own invitation, Tiny Prints actually offers a Diego Dinosaur invitation, which I used for inspiration when designing mine.

Personal information is blurred out, as you can see. I printed the invites on cardstock and put them in envelopes I already had on hand.  My husband was able to do all the party printing for us through his company, so the invitations were totally free!!  We invited my son’s preschool class, plus a few extra friends, so all invitations were hand-delivered, saving us even the cost of postage!!  Still, even with the cost of printer ink and postage, making your own invitations is a great way to save money on your party budget!!

We invited 17 kids and ended up with 14 at the party.  Add to that the Owl and the Tiger, and we had a total of 16 kids! 

Stay tuned for more party details in Part 2!!

A New Start...

I’m back after a very long hiatus.  When I took a break from writing (got behind in writing) it was the beginning of my son’s third year of preschool.  Now, we’re over halfway through the school year and into the second month of the new year.  It’s amazing how fast time slips by.

In the time I’ve been gone, I’ve gotten overwhelmed adjusting to a new schedule of taking The Owl to and from school and trying to spend purposeful time with The Tiger.  But what has really ended up happening is I’ve gotten myself so stressed over housecleaning, kindergarten decisions, and finding time to work on my part-time job, that I caught a virus and ended up in the hospital for 6 days.  Way to put things in perspective when you’re away from your children for the longest time ever in their lives!  It was hard and the recovery from that ordeal was slow, probably because I had gotten myself so run down in the first place.  I’m trying harder to stress less and do what the mission of this blog is- to recognize the joy in the everyday moments with my sons.

This was a very frugal Christmas for us, and I loved it.  So many gifts that were given to the boys and to family and friends were handmade.   I made a number of photo books for our family members, collecting the many photos we had taken over the year.  Looking back at our year in photos, I was struck by how many wonderful, fun, memorable moments we have shared this year.  Looking at these photos was a wonderful reminder that those times are what I will remember, and I won’t really care that the laundry was piling up or the kitchen floor was super grody. 

So here I am, back hopefully with more consistency, out of my funk and feeling hopeful that I can capture all those wonderful moments, and forget that I don’t have a maid to keep my house clean.

I need to remember to...

• Listen to music more often.  Something about hearing a great song can turn even the lousiest day around, and yet I don't do it often enough.  I'm trying to get better about putting on Pandora and playing music.  The boys enjoy it too and adds some good ambiance with having the TV on.
• Shower.  I'm not even going to admit to myself how long I'm willing to go without one, but let's just say it's a major luxury.  But it's not just about hygiene- a shower gives me a chance to decompress, relax, and have some very important alone quiet time which I need so desperately.  I feel so much better after a shower.  And since it's such a rarity, I can take a long one without feeling guilty about wasting water.
• Make phone dates with friends.  This is something else that too often falls into the "I don't have time for it" category, but it's so important to stay in touch with friends, and I always really enjoy talking with them, even if it's just to listen to each other's kids screaming in the background.
• Take some me time.  I am horrible at doing this.  I never take time to myself.  But I've started making a weekly date with myself.  We don't get an channels on our TV, but I'm a big fan of the show A Big Bang Theory, which unfortunately is not available to watch online.  So every Thursday at 8pm I'm leaving my husband to fend for himself and going over to my parent's house to watch the show, sit, and do nothing.  I'm sure there are more exciting things I could be doing, but this is a first step and it feels good.

What do you (or wish you did more) to help you feel more like you?

Music time for kids

Music is very big in our house, and while neither my husband or I have any real musical talent, we are trying to instill a love of music in our boys. Over the past few months, The Tiger and I have been taking a toddler music class, and I've learned a lot of great ideas for sharing music with children.

• Encourage free play with instruments- lay out a bunch of instruments (shakers, rhythm sticks, bells, drums, etc) and encourage them to play and experiment. Even if gets loud and annoying, they are learning about music and sound
• Play music and encourage them to dance to it. Play both fast and slow songs and ask them to dance along with the music- this will teach them about tempo.
• Give your child a simple instrument like a shaker and have them keep time with a piece of music.
• Encourage interactivity by playing songs that they can participate in- for example, "Ha, Ha, This-a-Way" which goes like this: "Ha ha, this-a-way, ha, ha that-a-way, ha, ha, this-a-way, all day long. Walking walking, up the street, walking walking, to the beat." You can change the verses to "crawling crawling oh so slow" or "dancing dancing away we go" and engage your child to follow along.
• Vary the music you play to include upbeat dancing songs and more mellow "listening" songs.

No matter what you do, just giving your child time to explore music will be fun and enriching!

(Side note: the classes we take are the Musikgarten curriculium and we love them!)