A Thomas the Train 5th Birthday Party

Last month we celebrated Luke's 5th birthday. I blogged A TON about Chloe around her last birthday (see here, here and here) but just didn't take the time to do do for Luke's. So I am doing it now, it's only a month late :)

Luke LOVES trains, Thomas and Friends to be exact. So it made sense that he would want his party theme to match his obsession  favorite toys. There are a lot of great ideas all over pinterest of decor and food creations. I stuck with what I could do myself, my skills somewhat lack in the creative department.

Here are the favor bags. Each was filled with some red, blue and green candy, a sticker book, a Thomas mini, a Thomas bracelet and a Thomas plastic cup. I printed the Thomas pictures and then cut them out to tape onto the bags. For the garland , I printed the letters and simply taped them to red squares and hung with twine. Amazing how a a Krazy Cut scissor can change everything!

This was the best picture I got of the large garland. I printed these flags off of the Thomas and friends website, cut them out, and taped to different colored card stock.

Luke got a Thomas reader for Christmas so we laid it with the books on the coffee table in case anyone wanted to read them.

I found a Thomas Bingo game online and simply printed on card stock, cut out with my Krazy Kut scissors and taped to card stock. We never actually got to this game, but the kids have played several time since and love it.

 A few other print-outs: Coloring pages, mazes, connect the dots and more.

The Food:

We have a Thomas piggy bank, so he lead the food cars in the train. I also made railroad crossing cookies to add more of a train touch.

We had popcorn cups, blue, green and red M&Ms and cupcakes among the chips, fruit and veggies spread.

We laid out a few tracks and trains on our half-wall for more added fun.

I saw an idea where you take a white tablecloth and put electrical tape on it to look like a railroad track.... this is how mine turned out. Fail. But the kids like the Thomas decorations, crayons and of course ColorWonder books/pages to use.

These two:

Bought a Pin the Funnel on Thomas game and the kids loved it!

A few of the kids hanging out. It was such a nice day that the kids were outside playing a lot of the party.

The CAKE: oh man, this cake kept me up at night. I enjoy baking, and I like to get a little creative but this was the first time I had tried something like this. I saw a few designs online and did my best to recreate and add my own spin. I really like how it came out and it tasted really good too. It was a double-layer chocolate cake with white buttercream frosting. When Luke saw it he said, " WOW that cake is sooo cool!"   Made it all worth it.

MMMMMM cake....

This party turned out really fun and while it was a lot of work and cutting, it was fun being able to create most of it myself. 

Over The Weekend

What a nice LOOOOONG weekend. I am lucky enough to have every Friday off, so when there is a Monday holiday, I get a 4-day weekend!

Luke started Preschool last week and he loved it! I was able to be a part of drop-off and pick-up on Friday and it was so cute. At drop-off, he saw a few kids from him his class while we were waiting and begged to get out of the car to play with them. And at pick-up, he ran out of the class with his very first art project in hand. He was so proud. I was worried about this transition, but the kid has taken to it like a champ. Still working on 'non-parental supervised lunch' as he threw his whole lunch away on Friday for some reason, but we will get there!

Best friends...

We didn't do too much over the weekend. Next weekend starts a 6-week commitment to soccer, so it was nice to just lay low. We watched the playoff games. I went 2-4 on the games, better than last weekend. lol.

Also, Aaron started building a shed for our side yard. My husband is very much a do-it-youselfer, much to my benefit. He customized every closet in our old house- 5 of them- and both of the kids' closets in our new house. ( See here , here  and here ) He put a 20 x 11 foot covered patio in at our old house, attached to our house,  with shingles and all, and the list goes on and on. Well, our new house has a larger side yard on one side so we decided to put in a shed so we can keep the garage as clean as possible. We got all of the materials on Sunday and he began the work yesterday. Unfortunately for us, there is rain in the forecast for about the next week, so it might take a little longer than expected, but it will be so great to have it done.

 Chloe basically thought she was building it and was very helpful and supportive to daddy.

More to come on the shed :)

What did you do during the long holiday weekend?

Chloe's Unicorn Costume - A How-To

For Halloween this year, Chloe was a unicorn. I thought about a costume for her for days and days. I just didn't know what she could dress up as. I love being able to add a personal touch to things, so it had to be something I could either make or customize. My DYI skills lean more towards the rookie side, so it also had to be EASY. She has a few My Little Pony's, so I thought a unicorn would be fun and something she would actually like to wear- although I was a little worried about her keeping the hood up all night.

Here is what you need:

A zipped hoodie sweatshirt

A few sheets of felt in different colors- I used 2 sheets for each color and 1 for the horn

A headband

Safety pins

Hot glue gun and glue

Styrofoam horn

  

The felt sheets came in a 9 x 12 inch size, so I cut it like this. I didn't measure anything, just eyeballed it:) I cut about 1 inch down the long side (this would become part of the tail) and then cut every inch or so across to make pieces of the mane.

To make the mane, take one strip of felt and pinch it in the middle.

Once you pinch the middle, fold one side up so it crosses over itself. This is where you will put the safety pin. Once I cut all of my strips, I took one of each color(so 3 total) and pinned it to the inside of the sweatshirt.

This is how it looked on the outside.

 

This is how it looked on the inside.

 

 

For the horn, I hot glued a sparkly sheet of white felt around the styrofoam. I also cut thin strips to spiral around it. Finally, I hot glued it to the top of a headband. (I glued felt on the underside of the headband to the botton of the horn as well to help keep it secure)

The finished product. I have to be honest, I seriously doubted my crafting/DIY skills but I LOVE LOVE LOVE how this turned out! And we got comments all night about how cute her unicorn costume was! I just might leave the mane and tail on for her to keep wearing with the sweatshirt! OH- I did end up taping the headband to the hood of the sweatshirt so it wouldn't move :)

 

Side view

From the back. So CUTE! Baby girl wore it all night!

For more crafty/DYI posts, see here, here, here, and here.

Kid Workshops by Home Depot

Like most of you, I am always looking for fun, hands-on activities for my little ones. The Home Depot puts on Kid Workshops on the first Saturday of each month between 9am and 12pm. Each month is a different project, a wagon, a birdhouse, etc. This month's was a Fire Truck. My kids LOVE cars and trucks so this was such a big deal to them. The Home Depot has this whole kid workshop thing down. Each child is provided with their own The Home Depot apron, a certificate and pin for completion and all tools necessary for the project including wood pieces, nails, stickers, paint, brushes you name it! We have done this a few times and the kids have just loved it. And I love that we are all doing something together and it is new for all of us every time.

 

We were at Pismo Beach, CA this past weekend and actually popped over to The Home Depot in SLO to do the kid workshop.

 

Aaron helped Luke build his Fire Truck and my dad helped Chloe. 

 

This is how my 4-year-old takes pictures....

 

 Once all of the pieces were nailed and glued together, the kids got to paint! Chloe LOVES to paint, my little lefty :)

 

Luke did a great job too!

After the paint dried, it was time to get the wheels on....

...And add the stickers!

This is ALSO how my 4-year-old takes pictures...

 

Chloe and my dad, cheezing with the finished product.

 And of course, while the boys went off to look at Halloween decorations, Chloe painted the instructions.  

If you haven't done one of these workshops you should! Did I mention that it is FREE! Yup, not a darn penny comes out of our pocket for this great experience. Check it out in your local area.  The project for next week is a Veteran's Day Toy Helicopter!