After everyone had eaten, we started the party off by having the book "The Little Engine That Could" read. We moved on to coloring pages of trains that I had downloaded from Google. Next was blowing bubbles time (a favorite activity of our son), and finally all the kids got a chance to hit the train pinata. I think I'll wait till the kids are older in age to do the pinata again.
We gave each child a recorder (after the party we found wooden train whistles at the Dollar Tree which would have been perfect), a bottle of bubbles, and a Conductor's hat that I had ordered off of Birthday Express.
Plates and napkins were purchased from Target. We tried not to create too much of a train theme, and opted for plates that carried a similar color scheme as opposed to plates with a blatant train design on them. A wooden "Melissa and Doug" train was borrowed from a friend and used as decoration on the food table. For party food, we served our guests:
I had made a railroad crossing sign out of yellow poster board. It was to be hung on the gate of the park with balloons on either side. Instead it was above the cake table. I used the "Celebrate" cloth and the flags from his first party again. I made the cake using the Wilton cake pan. We placed wooden "Melissa & Doug" trains on the tables as decoration.
For our son's second birthday party we chose a train theme. The original idea was to hold it at a park that has a big train as the jungle gym. Due to unpredictable weather conditions in the month of April (rain) we ended up switching the location to our house at the last minute because of mud. Can you just picture toddlers bogging around? It was challenging finding places in our house for decorations that I had envisioned for a totally different location.
The birthday boy wore a train shirt that we purchased from Gymboree. I rehung the birthday banner from his first birthday. In our kitchen we have a chalkboard on the side of our counter, so I drew a birthday message on it. I had meticulously cut out train silhouettes that were originally to be the center pieces for picnic tables at the train park. Instead I lined them up on our counter near the food.
