A Dinosaur Birthday Party

We finally had Isaiah's birthday party after postponing it due to Isaiah being sick and our niece being in the hospital. Hence the reason I haven't been posting much...life has been crazy! But all the party prep was worth it because we had a blast celebrating our little guy turning 1.

I decided on a dinosaur theme which was tons of fun to play with. I made his card (and matching Thank You cards) based on the green fellow in this picture I found:

Amazingly enough, I did that dinosaur totally free-hand. And trust me, I am no artist! I usually bust out my Cricut (and did for other parts of the party prep - see dinosaurs on banner) but decided to give this one a go without it. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out!

I wanted to make a banner for the party and had been brainstorming for sometime without settling on anything I really liked. Then I happened to stumble upon an easy adorable banner idea over at Small Fry & Co (banner post here). I had all the supplies necessary to make it so I sat down and got it done in one night. I just glued everything together instead of sewing for sake of time but I think the sewing looks really cute too. I decided to just do his name so that I could reuse the banner as decoration in his room.

Because we usually only invite a few close family members to our kids' birthdays, we don't have a lot of little kids besides our own and our nieces in attendance. For this reason, I decided to pass on traditional party favors and make each of the bigger kids something special in honor of the party theme. Dinosaur tails! I got the idea for this over at Running with Scissors (dinosaur tail post here). Can you tell I love scouring blogs for creative ideas? I saw these tails and fell instantly in love. My boys and my niece love all things dress-up so this was the perfect gift both for sporting at the party and for wearing over and over when the need to be a dinosaur arises.

Finally, we had the dessert. Nathan and Jordan helped me make dinosaur sugar cookies:

 Typically I make our boys their own smash cake for the first birthday and make something separate for everyone else. As the party grew closer I realized that the cake planning was starting to stress me out so I decided to go with cupcakes instead. I made a mix of Jumbo and mini cupcakes, decorated in green and red. With my husband's help, we used the cupcakes to create a dinosaur that was fun and easy. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out and I think Isaiah was plenty happy with his first icing experience!

 All in all we had a great time celebrating Isaiah's first birthday...dinosaur style:)

Making Bean Bags

Let the 1st birthday related posts begin! We are going pretty low key when it comes to presents, seeing as he is only turning 1 and his brothers already own 75% of the toys on this planet. I did want one of his gifts to be homemade. I have been so good about doing that for my niece and for other friends and family but not so much with my own boys. So I decided to make him some bean bags...nice and easy but lots of fun for a 1 year old!

What you need:
~ Fabric
~ Beans. I used small white beans (no really, that's the name on the bag!) and it took about 7 1/2 cups worth.
~ Something to cut with
~ Something to sew with

Let's get started:
You'll want to start by cutting squares out of the fabric(s) of your choice. I wanted 10 bean bags made from 5 different colored pieces of fabric so I cut 4 5inx5in squares out of each piece of fabric for a total of 20 squares. I used a rotary cutter just because it made cutting nice and easy but good ol' fashion scissors work just as well:

I decided to make my bean bags a different color on each side so I matched up my color combinations and begin pinning squares together (the right side of the fabrics should be touching):

Now to begin sewing. You could easily do this project by hand but it is of course much faster if you have a sewing machine. You are going to want to sew along 3 sides of your square, leaving one side open so you can fill them:

Flip your square right side out and fill it with beans. I used 3/4 a cup, you can adjust that based on how full you want your beanbags:

You ready to finish 'er up? Fold down the open side and pin it shut. Then sew across the top and voila...you have yourself a beanbag!

I love this project because it took minimal time and very few materials. I am hoping that Isaiah loves them as much as I do!

Aren't they pretty?

If you are wanting something a little more elaborate, check out these counting bean bags.

This project was featured over at The Happy Housewife, Attempting Aloha, and Play Pennies: