Go Diego Go! Birthday Party

We had the best time at Brady's birthday party. I planned for it to be outside, so of course there was a chance for showers on the day of the big event. We waited until the last possible moment to set up, so I ran out of time to take pictures before our guests arrived. Luckily, Ryan was on photographer duty and did a good job. I'll share the pictures I have and the fun details for our Diego Fiesta!

Our budget is tight, so I had to do the best that I could with as little money as possible (which I normally do anyway). The first thing I did was make binoculars out of toilet paper rolls and yarn. I saved the empty rolls from our house and also asked if they could save them for me at work. I hot glued two tubes together and punched holes to tie the string.
I made Diego vests out of paper bags. Publix was nice enough to give me those. I printed the logo from the NickJr.com site. My mom was a huge help with all of the diy projects. So far, my total is $0!

I scoured my favorite place for ideas, Pinterest, and there was a great example for games at Amanda's Parties To Go. I used a tarp and pallet slats to create an alligator swamp and brought home toy alligators from work.

They're lined up and ready to go!

They had to swing over a pool of quicksand, which was made with paper bags. I delegated the creation of the quicksand to my dad, and his idea was just to throw the pile of bags under the bar! Again, still at $0.

This led them to climb into the Animal Rescue Center (our playhouse), use their binoculars to find trapped butterflies, and go down the slide to save them.  The butterflies were "trapped" in the fencing around our vegetable garden. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of this part, because the kids were so excited about catching the butterflies, they did it as they were arriving! I got three nets at the Target dollar bins and the butterflies from the Dollar Tree. The cost is now at $8.

The food and drink spread I kept pretty simple. It was an afternoon party, so I served finger foods. I typically try to keep the food somewhat healthy, since I know they'll be getting their sugar kick with the cake. We had "Baby Jaguar Juice" (lemonade), "Alicia's Apples," "Bobo Brothers' Bananas," and "Animal Rescue" animal crackers. I made little tags for each on cardstock using clipart of each character. For protection, I laminated them. I also served bottles of water with labels that had Baby Jaguar on them. Here's the best picture I could find of the set up.

I'm not sure how much the food cost, because my parents picked it up for me, and my dad has this bad habit of losing the receipt. Can I count that as free? The decorations for the tables included table covers from the Dollar Tree (the paw print on the black table was wrapping paper), a Diego stuffed animal that we found at a yard sale for $4, blow-up trees and animals that I had from my old classroom decorations and the Dollar Tree, and balloons from Party City. That cost me $12, bringing the total up to $20 if you let me count the food as free :)

The cupcakes were from Sam's Club, and they were yummy! Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of them before we started passing them out. They were really cute with Diego toppers I made with paper punches, toothpicks, and printouts from NickJr.com. I bought the punches, but I don't count those as an expense, since I'll use them for other crafts. The cupcakes were $14, plates and napkins $4, so that's up to $38.

For the favors, I wanted to make Rescue Pack and fill it with goodies. I like to try to find something the kids will actually use once or twice. I know when my kids get home from parties, most of the stuff ends up in the trash pretty quickly. Dollar Tree did it again! They had orange bags that were perfect for Rescue Pack. I printed off the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth using yellow, white, and red card stock. Tacky glue worked the best for attaching them. I found some Diego and Dora stickers and pretty cool bug kits at the Dollar Tree to use as favors. My boys have used ours, so I hope that our guests have found some use of them. The cost of this was hard to calculate, because RSVPing must be seen as unnecessary these days. Each favor cost $2.33. I will be returning the unused products.

Overall, I think the party was a great success, and the kids had a lot of fun. Happy Birthday to my little guy!

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