ryann's glitter dinosaur party

This post probably isn't going to be as elaborate as I intended it to be, but the party didn't end up being as elaborate as I wanted it to either, so it's fitting.  Whatever, I'm mostly over it.

A while back Ryann concocted the idea for her third birthday party.  Dinosaurs + glitter.  Now at the time she really wasn't all that obsessed with dinosaurs, but now dinosaurs are pretty much her favorite thing so it worked out really well.  Ultimately there wasn't all that much glitter, or really, dinosaurs, but enough that it made Ry happy.  Which I guess is the goal, right?

We opted to do a brunch-ish party this year for two reasons.  One, I thought Ry would like that kind of food a little bit more.  Two, I wanted an excuse to make the colored deviled eggs.  Cause they're dinosaur eggs.  Duh.  I don't even like deviled eggs...  Other food items included muffins and cinnamon rolls from a local bakery, sausage crescent roll bites, frozen fruit cups, sesame asparagus and glittered lemon cake pops.  For drinks we had water, coffee and orange juice available.

The polka dot table cloths were from Ryann's first birthday party.  The fringe tissue paper garlands were pretty simple for my mom to make.  We she cut 10x15 rectangles of tissue paper, laid three sheets on top of each other and folded them in half.  Then we got all the colors lined up how we wanted and hot glued them to some cording.  Lastly my mom fringed them with her rotary cutter.  You can look for tutorials on pinterest, but we just kind of winged it based on what we found and what we wanted.

To get the dinosaurs in the mix I picked up some plastic dinos from the Target dollar section.  Then I grabbed some pink and purple spray paint and made Chris paint them.  We had some glitter purple spray that was AWESOME, but it stopped working after the first coat (we may have left it in the cold garage, whoops).  Oh and Rustoleum paint covers way better than Krylon, just an fyi.  My only other decor consisted of balloons, but we were running late (as usual) and I didn't take all that many pictures.  Oh the pink glitter frame was from Hobby Lobby. 

Ryann's skirt came from a local botique (it's the same one we had for her Halloween costume), and her dinosaur shirt was made by my mother of course.  Elsie had a matching onesie, but I failed at life and didn't get a picture of her (or the girls together) on my big camera.  To glitter the candle (did you notice there was a purple glitter candle?) I used modpodge and edible glitter on one of those regular wax number candles.  It was easier said than done, but it worked.  I found the idea on One Charming Party.

To entertain the kiddos (well, the only other child at the party who is Ryann's age) we put together a little fossil dig.  At first I wanted to use sand, but it was freezing so we had to be inside, and Chris pretty much said hell no.  So he bought me bird seed.  We stuck some plastic dino skeletons in there, along with some plastic eggs with mini dinosaurs in them, in the bird seed and gave the kids some shovels.  They had a blast.  I had wanted to do a 'dinosaur egg hunt' outside, but again, freezing.  Oh well.

Other things I had wanted to do but didn't get a chance... make food signs with dinosaur themed food names, make party hats for the giant dinos that Christopher picked up for Ry, um, probably more stuff that I just can't think of right now.  Honestly though?  I'm impressed with what we pulled off, considering we didn't start putting anything together until the Thursday before the party.  Yep, we had two days to prep.  I mean I had an idea of things I wanted to do, and had ordered some dinosaur favor crap on Amazon, but we didn't put together any decorations or outfits or anything until two days before the party.

I really wish I had started earlier / had more time, because it ended up being such a fun theme and I would have liked to run with it a little more, but Ryann still had a blast and everything looked cute.  Can't believe beginning of next year I'll be trying to put together two parties!  I keep saying eventually we'll just keep it super simple, but I love planning these parties.