I can’t take credit for this super-cute robot birthday party. My friend Erin did 99% of the work, but she had some great ideas I wanted to share. Her 3 year old is totally obsessed with robots, especially Wall-E and the Iron Giant, so this really was a perfect theme for him (and basically every other 3 year old). Who doesn’t like robots?! It was simple and very DIY, but still full of fun.

 Erin had the party at her mom’s, because she has this gorgeous patio and a big yard for the robots kids to run around.

My contribution to the party: A Happy Birthday banner. I downloaded free robot fonts from dafont.com and printed the letters on scrapbooking paper (it comes in that size).

For activities, Erin had a Robot Work Station with balls, tubs and those grabby robot arms from Target:

Fun fact: those robots across the bottom actually say “Reid” in one of the fonts I downloaded

The grabbers were a HUGE hit with the kids.

She also had a bean bag toss to “feed” the robots energy:

But my favorite activity was the make your own robot station:

Those are just paper bags spray painted silver with a paper plate glued to the front (for a “dial”) and holes cut for head and arms. The kids decorated with peel and stick foam shapes and robot shaped crayons.

And here are the robots in action:

Besides the very active robots, we had some robots guarding everything from the front door to the food:

Erin says she got these at Michael’s

Erin didn’t really have a theme for the food besides “stuff kids and grown ups will eat”, but I made her a few signs to tie it together with the party:

That’s beef, chicken and beans & rice for a burrito assembly line

All the toppings

That’s Reid’s “say cheese!” face

And all the kids went home with goodie bags that contained robot crayons, robot painting pages, robot stickers and a robot eraser.

Thank you Erin, Mitch and Reid for sharing your special day with us!

The kids an I made you a super cute present, but as usual I didn’t make it to the post office in time for you to get it on your actual birthday.

I bought cards for the kids to sign, but they decided to run off with the pens and  write on each other so I had to take them away.

We’re going to try to FaceTime you tonight, but I’ll have to convince Evan to stop watching PBS Kids on the iPad so I can borrow it long enough to connect.

But you’ve been a mom for half you life now, so none of that comes as a surprise to you.

Thanks for being a wonderful mom and a fantastic Mormor. Happy Birthday!

p.s. With your face right up there next to my face I don’t think ANYONE is going to say I look like Dad :)

You know you are getting kind of desperate for adult-only time when you dress up to go to Friendly’s and to the movies. This was my attempt at CASUALLY fancy, like “Oh, this old thing? I wear this to weed the garden! These are my dishwashing shoes! I always carry a giant clutch when I’m jogging!” but I don’t think I fooled anyone.

Scarft: H&M
Dress: Old Navy
Shoes: Missoni for Target
Clutch: Krust
Cuff bracelet: Spiffing Jewelry

Evan’s wearing Christmas jamz and having a great time playing with the camera remote.

When I add the pink to my hair this time I left it on a lot longer so it is REALLY pink. I also dyed the rest of it blonde (blonder) a few days ago, although it STILL isn’t the color I was going for. I think when it grows out a little and my roots look terrible I’m going to have to suck it up and go get it done by a professional. Or maybe I’ll start buying Sun-In by the gallon and bleach it the way I did in college. HAWT.

p.s. The Hunger Games was amazing. As was the enormous chocolate peanut butter sundae I shoved into my face for dinner.

My birthday week is ending tonight with a husband-acquired babysitter and a viewing of The Hunger Games in an actual theater, which might seem lame but is pretty much the best thing ever. The weather today was amazing and is supposed to be even MORE amazing tomorrow so it’s easy to avoid looking at the piles of laundry and dishes I’m supposed to be doing by staying outside.

Sunday:

CUDDLES

We're letting him practice with the toy mower now so we can put him to work for real when he's 4

Yoga: Yur doin it rong.

Monday:

Lazy baby slept until 8:15

Practicing our kissy faces

The jets in the tub turn a bubble bath into a BUBBLE BATH

Tuesday:

My birthday present was a baby who refused to wear clothes

I took a birthday nap. Sort of.

Purple roses from my sweetie

Wednesday:

Crafty like a fox

These are all gone now

Couch naps have turned into floor naps

Thursday:

Poor feverish baby slept late

Toy box nap? Weirdos.

Single-parent bedtime means sometimes you carry a naked toddler on your shoulders

Friday:

This is actually her happy face

Chalk & toes

Outside is the BEST side

Saturday:

Hmmm, maybe the peanut shells really aren't for eating

Practicing his slapshot

I enjoyed the sunshine for exactly 6 minutes before I felt my skin starting to fry.

 Now I’m going to go re-pink-ify my hair and take a nap so I don’t fall asleep half way through the movie tonight. Happy weekend!

Did you take any camera phone photos this week? Link up with one or lots using the linky below and grab the code (so it shows on your blog too!) over at Amy’s . It’s really fun!

This post contains affiliate links.

I asked Evan want kind of party he wanted for his 3rd birthday and he said “Dinosaurs”. I told him he could have anything he wanted – trucks, trains, pirates, diggers, ANYTHING – and he said “Dinosaurs”. So we went with a dinosaur birthday. It ended up being an excellent and fun birthday theme.

It seems that no matter how much I try to stick to a color scheme I always end up with ALL THE COLORS. But since according to Dino Dan the dinosaurs WERE all the colors I figured I was safe as long as I toned it down with some natural accents. I got lots of moss, fake leaves, and branches from places like the craft store and the dollar store. All the tablecloths are cut from one big roll of burlap I bought in the garden department at Lowes. I made a zillion dinosaur “terrariums” (an idea I got from Mandy) with a bag of garden rocks (also from Lowes – $5 and I barely used 1/10th of them!) moss and tiny dinos left over from the favor boxes. The backdrop to the food table is two rolls of cork I bought at JoAnn’s. I cut every triangle pennant by hand with pinking sheers and printed the banners on my little printer.

For food, I had three sections: carnivores, herbivores and dessertivores. I thought I was pretty cute and clever, until I started looking at dino party supplies on Etsy and saw I was DEFINITELY not the first person to come up with “dessertivores”. It was still cute.

Menu:

Dinosaur shaped sandwiches (PB&J and cucumber)
Dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets
Mini hot dogs
Mozzarella sticks
Fruit
Individual hummus and veggie cups

Ice Age punch (blue punch with tiny dinos frozen into ice cubes floating in it)
Juice for the kiddos

Dessert Menu:

Brownies
Fossil cookies (I made mine with almonds)
Cereal bar “bones”
No-bake nest cookies (I did peanut butter & chocolate)
Dirt pudding cups (chocolate pudding & crushes Oreos)
Dinosaur shortbread cookies with royal icing
White wedding cupcakes with cream cheese cake batter frosting
Dino fruit snacks and candy eggs

And an AMAZING cake made by my friend Heather (I HIGHLY recommend her if you’re in the Eastern CT area and would be happy to put you in touch with her)

Since Evan and his friends are all old enough now for games and activities but the thought of trying to wrangle 25 kids into organized activities makes me break out in hives I planned lots of free-play fun.

We filled our old kiddie pool with sand for a fossil dig and hid tons of green eggs filled with stickers and candy for a dinosaur egg hunt. I also ordered a couple of inexpensive dinosaur coloring books from Amazon and dinosaur shaped crayons for a quiet, inside activity.

A few more details:

I saw dino party hats on Pinterest but didn’t really have enough ambition to make them from scratch. Just a few days before the party Evan said he NEEDED party hats so I dragged last year’s 2nd birthday party hats from Target out of my paper goods storage box and turned them into dino hats. It was really easy – they’re folded together with a tab, not glue or tape, so I just opened them flat, cut a piece of colored paper into a “spine”, cut a slot in the spine for the tab and reassembled with a little tape to reinforce it. I did a terrible job of explaining that, but trust me – if you take a look at a store-bought party hat you will definitely see how easy this is.

Between the hats and the masks we had quite a few tiny dinosaurs terrorizing the party.

My friend Amanda mailed me these leggings 2 seconds after I said we were doing a dinosaur party. So perfect!

Brilliant idea I stole from my friend Cheri – Take’n’toss cups for all the kids. No worries about juice or punch spills on my floors and they’re cheap enough to toss out if they get ruined.

Adorable invitations designed by the very talented Denae at New Mom Survival Adventure and printed (as rounded-corner post cards) by Overnight Prints – an idea I got from Tam.

I think that’s everything! Scroll to the bottom of this post for links to where I got stuff and as always let me know if you have any questions. I’m more than happy to share and info!

OK, just a few more pictures (the not awesome ones were taken by me)…

Resources and Sources:

Pinterest party board for inspiration
Template for straw flags
Custom stamp from Tickled Pink Paper + Ink
Paper straws & favor supplies from In The Clear
Evan’s dino shirt – Gymboree
Photography by Open Shutter (Website)

Dinosaur stickers – Amazon
Dinosaur cookie cutters – Amazon
Dinosaur sandwich cutter – Amazon
Dinosaur coloring books – Amazon
Melissa & Doug dinosaur stamps – Amazon
Dinosaur cupcake wrappers & toppers – Amazon
Dinosaur banner (I disassembled half to put on my cork backdrop) – Amazon
Dinosaur skeletons for fossil dig – Amazon and Oriental Trading (cheaper from Amazon)
Dinosaur masks – Oriental Trading Company
Dinosaur crayons – Oriental Trading Company
Dinosaur candies – Oriental Trading Company
Inflatable dinosaurs – Oriental Trading Company
Giant inflatable T-Rex – Amazon
Brown paper bags – Oriental Trading Company

Let me know if you see anything I missed or forgot to link!

(Oh and in case you are confused compared to previous party set-ups, we rearranged the house a few weeks ago and flipped the dining/family rooms. I was worried it wouldn’t be a good for the party but it was great! With the new set-up – and the patio – I have tons of space to invite even more people next time.)

Thank you to everyone who came and made our day so special!