Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party

Roar.

Roar.

You know what that means?

Well, Roar is dinosaur for Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday in particular to this cutie pants.

In case you didn't know, an almost three year old can be very specific in his birthday party desires. He was very adamant that he wanted a dinosaur party, a blue Tyrannosaurus Rex to be specific. Fortunately he was completely satisfied with this Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party instead.

Now, before anybody says anything about the "simpleness" of this Dinosaur Birthday Party, let me just defend that whole simple title.

This party was thrown together in very little time with very little preparation. The most time consuming part of this party are these little dino-topped cupcakes and they weren't even that hard. These cupcakes were made from a cake mix. I used my favorite buttercream recipe. I probably should share that sometime, huh?

I topped them with coordinating chocolates. Then I made cupcake toppers from paper straws, painted mini dinosaurs, and washi tape.

Speaking of paper straws, I also used them for the drinks. The drinks you ask...well my friends I simply opened up a couple of bottles of Gatorade (of course they color coordinated) and poured them into mason jars.

The color coordinating just kept on going.

With this little close up of the fabric, I should probably give a little shout out to the star of the show and the basis for the rest of the party decoration. I found this dinosaur fabric at JoAnn Fabric, and what you can't see is that it has blue T-rexes all over it. I refer you back to the birthday boy's previous request.

So the fabric was a must, and everything coordinated with it.

Besides color coordination, another simple part of this party was my simple focal wall decorations. Balloons are the cheapest and easiest way to decorate. Even if you don't inflate them with helium. I use balloons all the time.

All. The. Time.

This time I simply blew them up, tied yarn to them, bunched them up with some tissue pom poms (another favorite of mine) and hung them from the ceiling. I also added a paint chip banner and a banner I made by sewing napkins together. Yeah, I am pretty resourceful like that.

So for this Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party I literally threw some fabric on the table, blew up some balloons, made a few banners, and put out some food.

Like I said, simple.

Again, these babies were the hardest part. They may be my favorite too.

So,  see simple.

Simple, but the birthday boy loved it and that is all that matters.

Number three birthday, dinosaurs. Number two birthday, football. Number one, fiesta. That is a whole lot of party in three years. I guess he is worth it.

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Family Game Night Party- with Monopoly Plus

Our family is a big fan of playing games together. We laugh, we cheer, we tease, we play, and we have fun. Like a lot of fun. We recently amped up our family game night and turned it into a little bit of a party. A little Family Game Night Party with invitations and all.

I mean the invitations was stuck to the door and just for our boys, but they were impressed nonetheless.

I felt invitations and a Family Game Night Party were necessary because we were going to game it up and play Monopoly Plus on the Hasbro Game Channel. The Hasbro Game Channel is the place for family game entertainment on leading game consoles, featuring Hasbro's most popular games Monopoly, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit. Starting this fall, the Hasbro Game Channel will be available to download on Xbox One, video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, and PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system. All games will also be available for download individually on the Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system.

We have previously played Hasbro's Family Game Night on our XBox 360, and we LOVE all of the games. Since we have a family game night addiction, we were pretty obsessed with Hasbro's Family Game Night. So we were really excited to play Monopoly Plus on the Hasbro Game Channel. Family games are in the genes. Both The Hubs and I both come from families who play games. We are gamers, you could say. Ha. Some of my favorite memories of my family include playing games. Now we are making memories with our own kids.

If a Family Game Night Party and some Monopoly Plus don't make memories, I don't know what will.

So before we got our Monopoly on, we needed to have a little party.

This little game night party was so easy to throw together. I gathered some snacks I had in the pantry.

I used some party stuff that I had hanging out in the closet, and I rounded up a few other party supplies from the store.

I used the monopoly property cards from our traditional game. I hung them up on the wall with some washi tape.

I found these cute mustache plates, reminiscent of Mr. Monopoly, at Target in the party section. I paired them up with a fun patterned napkin.

I even made it a special occasion and whipped up some red Kool-Aid. Man did that make the boys happy.

To get ready for our Monopoly Plus marathon we needed to load up on the snacks.

Fuel up dude. Fuel up.

I am pretty sure this face says I am ready Mom!

This one says Don't bother me I am eating.

Snacks and napkins in hand, we were ready to play.

To say that we enjoyed the game is an understatement. Monopoly plus brings all the traditional aspects of traditional Monopoly to life with a  pretty awesome 2D board and colorful 3D graphics. Another cool thing is that Monopoly Plus let us choose our favorite House Rules to customize gameplay.We could all play since the game plays up to six players.

My boys love board games. They love video games. Basically that means that Monopoly Plus was a big winner.

Most family game nights are pretty casual and impromptu. We love it that way. However, it was fun to make a special occasion out of a family game night. My boys felt pretty special getting a Family Game Night Party. The party took hardly any effort on my part. The excitement and enjoyment they had was completely worth a little extra planning.

Party Supplies Details:

Chalkboard Banner-Target

Red Striped Banner-Target

Black polka dot wrapping paper (table runner)-Target

Napkins-Target

Plates-Target

Washi Tape-Michaels

Blue Popcorn Container-Zurchers Party Store

Go go and get your Family Game Night on and make some memories of your own.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Woodland Theme Baptism Luncheon

We just threw this Woodland Theme Baptism Luncheon for Middle. The decorations were simple and easy to pull together. There was wood, pine cones, burlap, and lots of hunter green (my new favorite color for Fall and Winter).

The menu for the luncheon was full of yummy Fall inspired food.

The Menu:

Ham and Cheese Sliders

Spinach Apple Salad

Harvest Fruit Salad

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

Cream Cheese Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

Apple Cider

Apple Juice Boxes

One of my favorite decorations at the luncheon was this giant photo number eight.

I cut a number 8 out of foam board. Then I wrapped it in burlap strips. Then I hot-glued down square photos of Middle. I printed out these square photos at Walmart. Did you know they do that now? Well they do. The process was super easy and I had them in just over an hour. Woohoo.

The Woodland Theme Baptism Luncheon all came together perfectly because it all came together easily and that is always a good thing.

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Go Cougars Football Birthday Party

Rah! Rah! Rah! Time for a Go Cougars Birthday Party!

Our Little Bean loves football. Loves it! He is especially true blue for our BYU Cougars.

Whenever he sees The Hubs in a BYU shirt he says, "Football. Go Cougars!"

Yeah we train them up young around here.

This year I figured it would be fitting to celebrate his 2nd birthday football style.

A little Go Cougars Football Birthday Party to be exact.

I went with classic BYU colors for the color theme. Good old royal blue and white. I also added in some vibrant green to represent the football field.

 I made this Y art using flat canvases and vinyl.  Easy Peasy. I also made some classic pennant flag banners using felt.

An easy way to make a simple, cheap, but totally adorable birthday party backdrop is to print off photos of the birthday kiddo. I took these photos of Bean dressed in the birthday colors and holding a football. I printed off 4 8x10's and taped them to the wall with green washi tape. I hung them up right by the Y canvases.

He sweet face was kind of the party show stopper.

On the table I added some cute little hacky sack footballs.

I also used a similar process to the Pinata Letters I made last year to make these "grass" letters. I just cut the slits much smaller. I also made a football field table runner out of felt.

There was blue, white, and green everywhere.

I got these straws in Target's Dollar Spot. So cute right?

Mixing colors and patterns is really easy to do with napkins and plates. Love these polka dot napkins!

Speaking of polka dots...

Eek, these balloons!

To bring in another touch of football, I very simply decorated these cupcakes like a football field. I went for a minimalist look for the cupcakes.

I embellished the cupcakes with little homemade toothpick flags and pom poms.

For Bean's cupcake I added a few sparkler candles.

The little toothpick embellishments were made with the same green washi tape I taped the photos ups with. The pom poms were made with striped tissue paper. They were one of my favorite things.

We served stadium themed food. I really geeked out when I found Gatorade in the exact blue to match the party. It the little things people.

We had popcorn. There was nachos. We had hot dogs and chips. There were lots of good eats.

We had a blast. It was football madness.

He loved every minute of it. It was a fun party to throw and was worth all the work the minute I heard him excitedly repeating "football" over and over.

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