Happy Birthday [little] Dinosaur!

Rowan turned two yesterday and to celebrate, we had a few family and friends over for a party!

I chose a dinosaur theme because Rowan is in L-O-V-E with them.  Here are a few things I put together:

Dinosaur tracks to the front door.

Paper pinwheels.  The plastic pinwheel handle is from Martha but I changed up the paper to suit my colour scheme.

Birthday banner and pom-poms.

A custom birthday shirt, which he refused to put on until right before cake-time. 

Dinosaur nest cupcakes.  Really easy to make!  After smoothing brown icing (could be chocolate, mine was just a buttercream dyed brown), I piped green icing with a grass tip and 'laid' (teehee) three yogurt covered almonds for eggs.  The R-O-W-A-N is paper taped to toothpicks.  I used my Cuttlebug and the 'Olivia' alphabet set to cut out the letters.

The cake!  I love that you can rent different shaped pans from Bulk Barn, otherwise I would need a second house for all the pans I'd have to buy!

For some birthday fun, I kept it simple and only planned one activity.  A dinosaur egg hunt!  Well, dinosaurs and candy :)  Rowan loved his dinosaur 'babies'.  He cuddled them as if they were real and gave them kisses.

A friend of mine gave Rowan a ginormous dinosaur colouring book for his birthday.  So a few sheets went up on the wall for an art break before dinner.  Between a 1, 2 and 4 yr old, only one line of crayon got on the wall!  I'd call that a success.

Rowan thought our 'Happy Birthday' singing was utterly hilarious.

Yummy-yum-yum!  Happy Birthday, my little dinosaur!

Felt Birthday Banner Tutorial

A homemade banner has been on my must-make list since Rowan's 1st birthday.  He's turning two next week and I got my act together and made him a felt and ribbon banner to fit into his dino-themed party.  Yay me!

To make this retro-style, uber neat banner, you'll need:

Felt; 7 sheets (8.5 x 11") each of two co-ordinating colours and 4 for lettering.  An iron and ironing board, iron-on transfer paper (such as Heat N Bond or Wonder Under), sharp scissors, lettering (I used 'Airplane' which you can download for free if you type in '0' for the donation amount.  It's kind of a jerk move, but I have a hunch that a lot of people do it), 5.5 m of 4cm (6 yds of 1.5 inch) wide ribbon and a pencil. 

Depending on whether you want to sew the pennants on or glue them, you'll also need straight pins and a sewing machine with co-ordinating thread or fabric glue.

Let's get started!

Print out your lettering (I used airplane in size 500) and cut them out.  I noticed that the 'p', 'd' and 'b' were essentially all the same (just flipped around...it was a "duh, Anne" moment) when I cut them out, so you can save paper if you use this font and just type out one of them.  I also cut out a dinosaur (a brontosaurus - I'm becoming reacquainted with dinosaur species) silhouette just for kicks.

Arrange them on top of the paper side of the transfer paper reversed and trace around them with the pencil. 

Cut around a few groups of letters (don't cut out the letters yet) and arrange them on top of the felt.  Iron according to the transfer paper directions. 

Cut out the letters.

Cut a large triangle out of the coloured felt, I left about 5cm (2") off the bottom. 

I wanted to do a blue-green-blue-green pattern with the dinosaur on a ivory pennant at the end of 'happy'.  To make sure I didn't fudge it up, I layed out all the triangles in the pattern and placed the letters in order.

Peel off the paper backing and iron letters onto the pennants.

Be sure to place the letters on the same spot on each pennant.  I used the first 'h' to keep me on track.

The dinosaur's head was a little too tall and would have been run over by the sewing machine.  I left it un-ironed until after the banner was sewn.  If you're gluing the triangles on, it doesn't matter.

My banner ended up being H-U-G-E, so I split up the 'happy' and the 'birthday' on seperate lines of ribbon.  I decided I wanted the ribbons the same length, so I made up the 'birthday' banner first.

Place the pennants side-by-side on the ribbon, or over-lap them if you prefer.

Pin on each end of the triangle.  Obviously if you're gluing, you can skip that part.

Sew with a straight stitch on the top and the bottom of the ribbon. 

Iron the dino head.

 Well done!!  Relish your birthday banner success.

"RAWR" is 'Happy Birthday' in Dinosaur

I'm 8 days away from having a two year old.  We're getting ready to P-A-R-T-Y!

R-man has evolved into a dino-nut in the past few months.  We went to the Indian River Reptile Zoo in July to see their super cool Dinosaurs Live! exhibit.  They move....they roar....

...they make kids eyes bug out.  Rowan sobbed as we walked (I walked, he was carried) around to see all the different kinds of dinosaurs.  I was amazed.  AMAZED.  Of course, I was 10 when Jurassic Park came out and my youngest brother got the whole family caught up in dino-mania.

If you're on Pinterest, you'll know that a LOT of people (I think it's safe to say it's mostly women) use it to plan their wedding...even if they're not engaged......or in a serious realtionship.  It's also a damn convenient way to plan a birthday party (or any party for that matter), so today I'm sharing my favourite dino themed pins.



Homemade Dinosaur Party





'Rawr Your World' 



Dino-Roar!



Girl's Dinosaur Party

 

Dino Banner



Dino Egg Party Favour

 T-Rex Tracks



Stegosaurus Cake

I'm so pumped for this birthday because Rowan (sort of) knows what's going on.  He knows there is cake served at birthday parties and he's cake's biggest fan. I'll be sure to to share all the things I'm preparing for the big day, and how the whole thing goes down! 

Now I must leave, someone is begging to feed apples to the horses.  If you were to ask Rowan, sometimes they eat cake.