BIG Fun

I present to you...

An Event 65 Million Years in the Making...

BIG Fun! Oh we had a lot of fun!

I did go over the top just a teensy bit. With egging from my friend, Heather, who loves this kind of thing (and is so good at it!) and help from my friend, Emily, we included lots of little dino touches. (Our dinosaur party inspiration is here.)

We started off with the Dino Egg Hunt! We borrowed a bunch of Easter eggs from our egg hunt friends, and bought a few special ones to add to the mix. Darling and Emily suggested decorating the bags before the party, and I'm so glad. The assembly wasn't particularly fussy, but I could see wind, 4-year-olds, glue sticks, and excitement merging to form a perfect storm.

After the egg hunt, we had some pizza. Our dino snack food was out the whole time, along with Blueberry Tea and water. Darling was in charge of the watermelon T Rex and he did a fantastic job. We had veggie shrubbery for decoration and an odd assortment of finger food mostly spurred by what Oliver likes: olives, radishes, carrots, popcorn, trail mix...

After lunch we lined up for the Dino Egg pinata. Darling was insistent on making the pinata and he did a great job (O helped, to be sure). It was filled with dino stickers and tattoos and figures and whatnot. No candy, but that was our personal preference.

And then after the pinata was, of course, cake and gift opening. We had lava cakes inspired by a pinterest find, but used boxed cake mix for time's sake. The fossil cookies didn't hold the image particularly well (I should have tried shortbread or sugar cookies instead of peanut butter), but no one seemed to mind. The dino rice krispy treats didn't even make it until the pizza arrived.

The free printables from HP were a huge help. I made the dino invitations from there, the bag decorations, the dino mobiles, and the little dino props. I printed the decorations on card stock and the bag dino on recycled 20# paper. The bags were both the kids' egg hunt bag and their goody bag (yes, we did party favors) and pinata loot. The favors were:

• dino crayons
• dino stickers
• a 3D dino to assemble

I wanted to add a dino egg but there just wasn't time. No one missed it, I'm pretty sure.

What a fun day! We had some wind gusts but absolutely beautiful weather and Big Fun. O really loved it and had a good time with his friends. We opened his gift at home (some dino books, a tape player, construction videos, and a red-tailed hawk). He knows that we had his party before his actual birthday and said, very matter of fact, "Mama, I want a bird party for my real birthday party. We can do a bird egg hunt, and a bird egg pinata, and I can get bird gifts..." Ahhh, yes.