Buddy turned three a couple weeks ago, and we had a big party to celebrate. I have always loved planning themed birthday parties, so I like to start planning early. Buddy and I talked for months about potential themes for his party. He still loves Thomas the Train, so he really wanted another Thomas the Train party. (Read about his Thomas the Train 2nd birthday party here.) And then two weeks before the party, he decided he wanted dinosaurs too. Fortunately, there is a dinosaur park in the show, so we were able to do both Thomas the train and dinosaurs without going too far from our original theme.

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I decided to do the Thomas the train things on our main floor and to create the dinosaur park in our downstairs family room. Most of the Thomas the train parts were the same as last year. I did stations again, because it worked really well last year. The kids could do whatever they wanted, and there were lots of choices. The Thomas stations were pretty much the same as last year. They were a Photo Booth, train tracks, books and puzzles, playdoh, crafts and coloring, and a toss the coal in the hole game. (I go into detail about these in my blog about last year’s party, so please follow this link to read more.)

This year we got a Instax Mini for Christmas, so we added it to the photo booth. It was a lot of fun to have pictures right away. I also added decorating picture frames for the Instax photos to our coloring/stickers table. I made the frames with popsicle sticks from the dollar store, hot glue, and magnetic tape. I found sticker gems similar to these and I set them out with Thomas stickers and star stickers. Then we used tape to keep the photo in the frame.

Frame decorating in progress

Here is the finished frame on our fridge.

I made more frames with mini clothespins and washi tape and set them out for our adult guests. We also had candy coated pretzels as favors for our adult guests. 

I added three new stations for our dinosaur park. They were a triceratops toss game (Tricera-toss!), a dinosaur world bin, and a dinosaur Duplo challenge activity.

I saw the idea for the Tricera-toss game on Mom Trend’s blog. It was made from foam board, party hats, and glow in the dark bracelets, which were all bought from the dollar store. I painted the picture of a tricertops, and used hot glue to attach three party hats as the horns. Then we used the glow bracelets as rings. This activity was the hit of our party! All of the kids loved it!

Another station was a dinosaur Duplo challenge. I made pictures of dinosaurs out of Buddy’s Duplos. (Here is the pdf in case you want to use it too: Duplo Dinosaur Cards) No one actually did this station at the party, but Buddy and I have had a lot of fun with it since then. 

I created the dinosaur world bin for Buddy’s dinosaurs, and I pulled it out for this party. It was a fun station that the kids loved. Read more about this bin here. To decorate our dinosaur world, I used vines and green streamers to cover our fireplace. I put some trains and dinosaurs on our mantle to tie the two themes together. I also had some dinosaur balloons hanging using the template found on  Baby Wants Baby Gets blog. (I didn’t get a great picture of them though.) Finally, I set out some white chocolate pretzels marked dinosaur bones as a centerpiece on our coffee table. 

It was a great party, and we all had a lot of fun! Please comment if you have any questions about specific party elements.