Dinosaur Birthday Party #1

This weekend, Reagan celebrated his 5th birthday.  For 364 days since he turned 4, he has talked about having a dinosaur themed birthday party.  If you don't already know, Reagan l o v e s dinosaurs.  He wants to be a Paleontologist when he grows up and he talks about it all the time.  It was only fitting that we go ahead and go full steam and create the party for him.  He wanted it with real dinosaur bones.  As much as I love him and want to make him happy on his special day, taking a party to an actual museum that has real bones was a little out of our league (especially since they are 3 hours away).  So we compromised and had it at a Children's Museum. 

For the invites, we had to do something creative.  I can't compete with my girlfriends as they are crazy crafty and set the bar way to high (talking to you Kathy) but our little egg worked just fine and it was fun to do. 

Since we try to be crafty all the time here,  a handmade fossil invitation seemed to fit the bill.  I took the idea of Treasure Stones (from another uber creative friend) and made them into dinosaur eggs.  Lots of hand kneading seemed to really help these get super solid.  Inside was the invitation on cardstock and a little dinosaur.  We hand delivered them in paper bag nests filled with shredded paper. 

The cake was the bane of my existence for the past month.  I was nervous about making it as a large volcano and land "scene" was requested.  After a few test runs, I seemed to get it to work.  I made a yellow cake with rich chocolate frosting that got a little too hard.  Both were from Martha's Baking book.  Luckily, we are friends with some great people and they were able to help us get some dry ice for the smoke affect.  It was so cute!