A Little Blue Truck Birthday Party (and free printable)

Hey y'all. Apparently I now only post to show you birthday parties. This past Sunday our little J turned 2! We celebrated with a "Little Blue Truck"-themed birthday party, which we invited an obscene amount of people to. I was so nervous about the weather, but the day turned out to be gorgeous. 

Because I have found it helpful to see the ideas of what other party-planners have done, once again I am sharing our party with all of you.

Online Links

First, I used a few Little Blue Truck PDFs that are available for free. One is from the book publisher here. The other is a free PDF with some of the characters, which I found here. I also used this image for the activity.

Invitations

Using a very old design program that I have on a very old computer that I keep only for that program, which I use once or twice a year for projects like this, I designed invitations. I used the character PDF I linked above to cut out the characters and implement them in my design. 

Games/Activities

I'm incredibly blessed to have a husband with some not only artistic talent but also a basic understanding of how to use power tools. In this case, both were used to create this amazing wooden Little Blue Truck photo booth. 

I can't get over how well it turned out. Is there some reason that makes sense to keep this??? He used the cheapest plywood we could find -- subfloor plywood. And it still turned out amazingly, in my opinion. He always borrows his dad's projector to sketch out the plan really well for things like this, though I know many people have made their own similar photo booths using cardboard and freehand. 

I'll admit, I'm pretty proud of this next activity. I came up with the idea of creating a "passport" using stickers for kids to collect at various carnival-type games. I used these stickers, which had five animals (also on Amazon here). I designed the passports, and I'm happy to share the PDF here. I printed them on both sides of a piece of cardstock and then cut them out. 

I used yarn and binder clips to make them into lanyards for the kids. I didn't want to hole-punch them, because I wanted the kids to have the cards for keepsakes if they wanted, and I thought it was nicer this way. But you could easily just hole-punch them (or not make them into lanyards at all) if that was your preference. The idea in my head was what I wrote on a chalkboard of instructions for kids as they arrived: "Hey kids! You're the Little Blue Truck, and the animals need a ride! Grab a passport and play the games to collect all 5 animals!" 

The games are fairly basic DIY games that I just made fit the theme, although a couple were yard games I picked up at Five Below and Party City: 

Horseshoes

Got this at Five Below. It worked well. I didn't hear any complaints!

Bowling for Sheep 

Yes, I printed clip art sheep heads on cardstock, cut them out, and scotch-taped them to the bowling pins I got from Five Below. They were hilarious, and I love them. This was also the least successful of the games, just because the wind kept blowing them down. Funnily enough, J received a different set of kid bowling pins as a birthday gift, and they were more weighted, so investing a little more money would probably make it more successful if your party is outside. Of course, you could stick sheep heads to anything to make it sheep-themed. 😆

Duck Fishing

Party City in my town was going out of business, so it was discounted heavily when I bought it. I'm sure rubber duckies, a hot glue gun, and magnets could get a similar result. Or you could do some other rubber ducky game. This was actually matched with the chick stickers, so maybe you'll be better than me at finding a chicken-themed game.

Piggy Buckets

I used pink trash cans from the Dollar Tree, plus a package of ping pong balls from Dollar Tree. Husband drew pig faces on them because why not? But I'm not sure it was necessary. ha. This is the standard Bozo game, right? Try to get a ball in each bucket.

Cow Bean Bag Toss

Husband made this using the off-cuts from the Little Blue Truck photo booth. We got a package of bean bags from Party City, again discounted heavily because it was going out of business.

He just cut holes in the board and then attached a board to the back with a hinge to make it stand up. Painted it in a cow theme. 

We didn't follow this tutorial exactly, but you could use it if you were looking to try your own hand at it. We didn't bother with the mesh.

I was really happy with how much the kids seemed to like the "passports." When they collected all the animals, they went to collect the prize, which was the party favor.

Favors

For favors, I just ordered these twirly straws with animal charms on them. I had ordered a cheaper set, which I returned because the animals charms were too loose and didn't stay on the straws. The kids seems to really like these favors, and I recommend the exact ones I linked to because the "charms" or whatever you want to call them stayed attached to the straws! The kids got to pick their animal, which is always more fun, I think.

Decorations

It seems that old-timey pickup trucks are like, a thing, when it comes to what's "in" right now and what's around places like Hobby Lobby and the Dollar Tree. I got several truck decorations at 75% off after Valentine's Day at Hobby Lobby, and Husband painted them blue. Voila. 

Food

We wanted simple, so we grilled hot dogs and served them with chips and watermelon. I think it would have been even simpler to not serve food, as Husband spent much of the party grilling. But otherwise, the food went over well. 

We also did cupcakes (with toppers from the link above), dirt cups (because the Dump truck and Little Blue Truck got stuck in the mud, obviously), and then I also made cookies using animal cookie-cutters using this recipe. The recipe was good, but honestly, this was an unnecessary step, and I wouldn't do it again. I'd probably pick one or two of those three sweet treats to bother with.

Party!

Whew, it's always a whirlwind! But I think everyone had a good time, including the birthday boy. So many generous friends and family gave him lovely gifts and lots of love and attention. We were so glad to see our friends and family! Thank you to everyone who came!

Our children's book-themed birthday party

Hey all, long time, no see. I wanted to jump on ye olde blog just to post about the picture-book birthday party I threw for my little one's first birthday. Because I did a lot of "Google research" using other people's Pinterest pins and blogs for inspiration and ideas, I thought I'd give back by way of making my own blog post. I hope it's helpful to those of you looking to put together a book-themed party of your own!

Invitations

I wanted my invitations to look like library book cards, which I had seen others do on a few blogs. I found a free download here of a library card, and I used a very old version of InDesign to add create the final version. I found the fonts I wanted here. 

Decorations

My favorite part of the decorations was the banner I made from old book pages. I used books that started out in pretty rough shape, which I had already used to decorate my son's room anyway. These books will not go to waste! From the photo, it's probably fairly obvious how I did it. I created a two templates: one bigger, one smaller, and then I cut out the pages. I hole-punched them along the tops and used baker's twine to connect them into a banner and hang it from the ceiling. I was quite happy with how it turned out. 

Along with that, we had a few other odds and ends proclaiming a first birthday. And I taped photos along the wall showing baby boy as he grew through each month. Several people remarked on the photo wall. 

I also used crafting Scrabble tiles as decorations on the table, and I used books as decorations around the room. 

Food

My dad and stepmom were a big help for the cooking. My stepmom came over to help with the birthday boy while I baked the day before.

I made cupcakes and attempted to decorate them to look like Llama Llama's bedspread (not sure that was recognized as such though). 

We made "Green Eggs and Ham" deviled eggs, which were quite delicious. Husband did most of the work on that, although my dad actually did the hard-boiling, which was sooo helpful. 

I made chocolate chip cookies ("If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"), my sister made puppy chow ("Clifford"), and I cut up some fruit ("The Very Hungry Caterpillar"). We also had store-bought macaroni salad ("Strega Nona") and Goldfish crackers ("One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"). 

Activities/Games

When everyone entered, they were greeted with a book to sign, plus a book swap box to drop any used books they might have brought per the invitation. As people left, we encouraged them to take a book or two from the box, which we had also stocked beforehand with extra books from our Little Free Library. Some of the guests enjoyed the swap, I think.

We had two games: one for any kids who had come and one for adults and kids alike. We played the game for everyone first, and I think it ended up being really fun. It was played like the "forehead game." If you've seen "The Office," you might be familiar with it. In our version, I took images from children's books and taped them to everyone's back. Each person had to ask others yes-or-no questions to try to guess which book was on their back. Then they had to find their partner, as each book had two images out among the crowd. The first team to find each other won. Not everyone initially wanted to play, but a little cajoling convinced them, and everyone ended up having a lot of fun being forced to mingle. 

The second game was "pin the hat on the cat." My husband is ridiculously good at drawing, in my opinion, and he was happy to draw a hatless cat for me. I printed off some Cat-in-the-Hat hats and had them ready on the table for the kids who came to color. We didn't end up having as many kids come to the party as were originally expected, so it was just my nephews who played the game. But it worked well, and I'm still pretty proud of that freehand drawing. 

Favors

As silly as it is, these are probably what I'm most proud of. I spray-painted the tops of baby food jars and hot-glued these Hungry Caterpillar counting toys to the tops. The hot glue didn't hold as well as I expected, though it worked well enough for the purpose. I'm sure there are probably glues that would have held better, though. 

I created little labels saying, "Caterpillar food," cut them out using a 2-inch hole punch, and then filled the jars with Runts candy, because it looks like fruit. Probably the most challenging part of this party was finding enough Runts for the amount of people I was expecting. Others might want to try filling them with fruit snacks instead. For the very young, I included a few filled with Trix cereal. :)

FUN!

OK, I'm going out of my way to not really share anything too personal about my little guy here, but he had a wonderful time. He was surrounded by friendly faces and enveloped in love. He enjoyed his cupcake, for the most part, and he actually did get into opening his gifts. He received a wagon, a little comfy chair just his size, and many toys and books. In the days following the party, he has loved playing with it all, and we are so grateful for everyone who came and gave of their time to be there, as well as those who gave gifts. You are all a blessing!