Dinosaur Birthday Party

For the last year, my oldest son has been begging for a dinosaur birthday party. Most dinosaur parties I've seen are for very young children so I really had to get creative for this party.  It was his 8th birthday and he probably won't be having too many more parties so I really wanted him to have fun and make long lasting memories.

We had this party on a Friday afternoon right after school so I wanted to make sure they had filling food to eat.

Party Colors were Black, Green and Natural Brown Paper. I used black tablecloths and I found a great camouflage role of gift wrap at Homegoods that I used to top the cake and food tables, as well as one of the eating tables. I found lots of clip art on the internet for dinosaur decorations and cupcake toppers.

The Menu:

Deceptively Delicious Mac N Cheese (my son's favorite) Link below. 

http://jessicaseinfeld.com/recipes/macaroni-and-cheese-with-butternut-squash 

( I sub the organic brown rice and quinoa noodles from Trader Joes, and if I don't have cream cheese, I use a spoonful of sour cream instead). Parents appreciated that this had veggies in it! ;)

Bean and Cheese Burritos

Organic Green Grapes

Organic Veggie Cups with Carrots, Grape Tomatoes, and Cucumbers

Hummus (from Trader Joes)

Pirates Booty 
Goldfish

Trader Joes Lentil Dip and Tortilla chips  

Here is a link to the recipe: https://www.traderjoes.com/recipes/appetizers-sides/1-minute-lentil-salad

This is always a hit!! You can pair it with crackers, pita chips, or tortilla chips (which I used for this party).

Drinks:

Ice Water

Sparkling Water

Honest Juice Boxes

 My go to recipe for amazing chocolate cupcakes:
Martha Stewarts One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes (from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook)
(*When I make these, I use all organic ingredients and fair-trade cocoa powder. Also, I sub coconut oil for the vegetable oil, and instead of salt, I use sea salt*)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 large whole eggs, plus 1 large egg yolk
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups warm water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two standard 12-cup muffin pans with paper liners. Into the bowl of an electric mixer, sift together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Attach bowl to mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; add the eggs and yolk, the milk, oil, vanilla, and warm water. Beat on low speed until smooth and combined, about 3 minutes; scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Divide batter evenly among the muffin cups, filling each about two-thirds full. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool slightly. Invert cupcakes onto the rack; then reinvent and let them cool completely, top sides up.

Once they are cooled, I frost the cupcakes with Martha's Fluffy Vanilla Frosting:
https://www.marthastewart.com/341903/fluffy-vanilla-frosting

I used these natural parchment cupcake liners for the cupcakes, purchased from Target. Here is a link: PaperChef Natural Baking Cups

Dinosaur Head made from boxes, duct tape and brown paper. The teeth are made from poster board and I stuffed some black paper in his mouth.

Entertainment consisted of:

(While eating)

Build A Lego Dinosaur--I put some Legos on one table and added some pics of easy lego dinosaurs to make for inspiration

On the other table I put a dinosaur coloring roll and crayons, markers and colored pencils to get creative. The kids loved this! https://www.amazon.com/Color-ON-Group-Activity-Dinosaurs/dp/B003G9SKWM

Next we had a dinosaur egg hunt in the front yard. I bought some dinosaur skeletons and made some eggs following this you tube tutorial. Super easy and they blended in perfectly because they were made from dirt in my yard.

I purchased the dinosaur skeletons from Amazon. Here is a link: https://www.amazon.com/Pixnor-Assorted-Dinosaur-Skeleton-Figures/dp/B01B7MLIXW/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1515001353&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=dinosaur+skeleton+figures&psc=1

And here is the you tube video I used to make the eggs: https://youtu.be/5y9Eo9-Hmss

The kids got super dirty digging for dinosaur eggs. They took it to a whole new level so prepare for LOTS of dirt!

And then the last thing we did was a Dinosaur Exploration Tag Game. The kids each dressed up as either dinosaurs, dinosaur explorers, or dinosaur protectors.
The dinosaurs wore these hats (from Dollar Tree):

The dinosaur explorers wore these hats (from Dollar Tree):

And I made some binoculars out of paper towel rolls to go with these. 

And last but not least were the dinosaur protectors. We tied a green thin piece of material around their heads to make them look like ninjas, and they carried dino slings that looked like this:

We had a tent set up in the front yard  and the goal of the game was for the dinosaurs to make it safely in there. The dinosaurs would go and hide, and then the explorers would try to find them and keep them away from the tent, so that they could learn about them. The protectors job was to sling shot these small dinos at the explorers to stop them from taking the dinosaurs.  This game was the highlight of the party. There were some tears over kids not wanting to be explorers, but the kids had so much fun just running around all over the neighborhood!

And for party favors....Each child got to adopt a dinosaur to take home. (Purchased from Dollar Tree)

Again, another low budget party that forced me to be creative, and as a result made lasting memories we will never forget!