Little Boy's Little Train Party

Saturday, we celebrated Little Boy's 4th birthday with a houseful of friends and family! 

The cake table

Coming off of our Lenten Carbon fast, I really wanted to keep trash and expenditure in check for this party.  And, I'm pretty sure it turned out to be the least expensive party we've ever thrown.  We love wooden trains around here, so we already had tons of track to use as decoration.  I made sure that the party colors matched the table cloth, balloons, and ribbon I already had on hand.  Of course, the easiest way to keep the cost of a party down is to schedule it at a time when a meal isn't expected.  We held ours at 3:00 in the afternoon.  A veggie tray, grapes, and cheese puffs are all that were needed to fill up the table.  Also, I purchased resuable plastic plates which are readily available as picnic supplies this time of year.  We use these plates when we eat outside, and I'm hoping that by purchasing half of them in blue and half in red (pretty common/gender neutral colors), we'll be able to reuse them frequently for future parties.

The cake --so adorable!  (Thanks, Shauna Baxter!)

The diesel fuel (sweet tea) and water tower made the drink station pretty inexpensive.

We brought the outdoor picnic table in for the kids to use.

The birthday boy was so surprised by his very own backyard train!  This was really surprisingly easy.  I used our garden cart, but you could easily use a wagon.  I purchased 2 tri-fold display boards (like you used for science fair projects :), used an Exact-o knife to cut out two train shapes, spray painted them blue, added two stripes of duck tape and a "4" printed out from the computer.  On the interior, I duck-taped some tomato stakes to the boards to keep them sturdy and attached them to the garden cart.  Our little conductor loved it, and the whole project cost me about $10.

We were blessed to have a big crowd and were very thankful that the rain let up enough for everyone to enjoy the bouncy house, swing set, soccer goal, and animals outdoors.

We moved Little Boy's train table into the common area, and it was a hit with kids young and old.

I didn't get a pic of the "baggage claim" area (goodie bags stuffed with conductor hats and train whistles) or the outside decorations.  Oh, well.  There was a pretty cute train track, though, leading up the sidewalk (once again, good 'ole black duck tape!).

We were so thankful to have guests from near and far, including JM (pictured here) and MP (pictured below), cousins from Fort Smith.  We really enjoyed our time with them and all of our guests this weekend.

Thank you to everyone who helped make Little Boy's party special.  He really had a wonderful time. 

This particular birthday is a big one for us because it marks a very special time.  He has now officially spent more of his little lifetime in our house than he spent elsewhere.  He has had a forever family for a full two years.  We may have missed the first two years of his life, but we'll get ALL the rest and in that we are so very blessed!