DINOSAUR PARTY IDEAS

Dinosaurs make a great birthday theme for all ages—but remember to tailor these dinosaur party ideas to suit the age of your child. Toddlers and younger kids up to five years old will probably prefer colourful dinosaurs that are less frightening, whereas older kids will want them to be as realistic as possible. INVITATIONS PERSONALIZED DINOSAUR INVITATIONS There are lots of really nice birthday invitations available online that fit well with these dinosaur party ideas. These can be personalized to add your child's name and some even let you upload a photo. See more here. PERSONALIZED DINOSAUR POSTAGE STAMPS These personalized postage stamps are a really great way to embellish your birthday invitations. They're such as nice touch and show a real attention to detail. Note: These stamps are only available in the USA DRINKS Here are some themed drinks in keeping with the dinosaur party ideas. VOLCANO PUNCH Make Volcano Punch by combining 3 quarts of pineapple juice and 2 x 6 ounce cans of frozen limeade concentrate in a punch bowl. When the kids are gathered around the table add 2 quarts of ginger ale to the punch bowl and a scoop of fruit sherbet to each glass for some extra fizz. SWAMP JUICE I love this recipe for Swamp Juice. It was intended for Halloween but it's also perfect for dinosaur party ideas. DINOSAUR JUICE This green colored Key Lime-Banana Smoothie from Betty Crocker can easily be renamed as Dinosaur Juice. LAVA JUICE Try this recipe for Sparkling Strawberry-Lemonade Slush from Betty Crocker or use any red berry juice and call it Volcanic Lava Juice. Freeze some gummi dinosaurs into ice cubes the night before and add to each glass. When the lava melts the ice the dinosaurs will float to the top of their drink. DINOSAUR ICE CUBES Make your party drinks more interesting by using these dinosaur bone ice cube trays. Alternatively, chocolate molds can also be used to make ice cubes shaped like dinosaurs. FOOD Here are some cute recipes I came across to give you some inspiration for your dinosaur party ideas: A lot of food markets sell dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets but go the extra mile and arrange them on a platter like this dinosaur foodscape created by Michelle at Muffin Tin Mom. It's a great way to make the dish a bit more healthy by sneaking in some veggies. She used broccoli as 'low lying indigenous vegetation', string cheese and spinach for 'the tree', grapes as 'coconuts', cheddar cheese as 'the sun', and dinosaur chicken nuggets as 'nuggetus dinosaurus'. Don't forget ketchup as 'hot lava'. Another cool recipe is for these mashed potato volcanoes  which are the type of things you can get them involved in making. Have them sculpt their mash potato volcanoes and arrange their veggies while you make the lava sauce to pour over. If you want a more substantial main course along a similar line, try these potato volcanoes with meatball sauce (left, from Love Potatoes)—or swap the meatballs sauce for chilli to make it more like lava. Serve chicken wings renamed Pterodactyl Wings Coat Pretzel sticks with white chocolate and call them dinosaur bones. Alternatively, check out this recipe for Tomato Soup with Boney Grissini(below, by Susan at Diamonds for Dessert) which could easily be renamed Molten Lava Soup with Dinosaur Bones. There are various dinosaur cookie cutters available which you can use to shape sandwiches. You can also use the cookie cutters to make pizzas (see the examples below by Tonij.net). Or shape burger patties with them then add small triangles of cucumber along the back to resemble a Stegosaurus. If you've got a steady hand use the cookie cutters to make dinosaur shaped cookies, fill a parchment cone with run sugar, cut a small hole in the tip and pipe a skeleton onto each dinosaur like these (below, by Cookie Decorating). Here are a couple of recipes for creating dinosaur eggs. The first uses hard boiled eggs to create these amazing colored eggs with veins (below left, from Sara at Our Best Bites) whereas the other is for sweet dinosaur eggs using vanilla pudding and lime gelatin (below right, by Robin Werner on Taste of Home). For some more sweet treats try these fossil cookies (below left, by Martha Stewart) or for a younger kids birthday, these cute green dinosaur cookies(below right, by Robin Werner on Taste of Home. These molten lava volcano cakes are really cool. This baking sheet contains 8 dinosaur shaped baking cups which are perfect for making Dino treats. If you prefer to just decorate regular cupcakes, there are lots of different toppers available such as cake picks and mini plastic dinosaurs. There are also several different designs of dinosaur cupcake wrappers which you can use to add to the decoration. There's also lots of dinosaur candy available which is an easy way to fill out a dessert table with extra treats. These include gummy dinosaurs (below left), dinosaur suckers (below center) and edible dinosaur eggs (below right). Finally, if you haven't already got Clare Crespo's excellent book The Secret Life of Food  then I highly recommend it. It's packed with lots of kooky recipes for kids from someone who regularly plays with her food.  BIRTHDAY CAKE If you want to bake your own birthday cake, there are a couple of different dinosaur cake pans available that would work well with these dinosaur party ideas. If you're no cake decorating expert, you could just use an edible images and roll it out into your birthday cake. There are various designs including ones for Dinosaur Train and Barney. Alternatively, there are various dinosaur cake decorating kits available such as the ones below. Or just use some plastic dinosaurs as cake toppers along with some dinosaur candles. FOOD PRESENTATION Here are a few food styling and presentation tips. These veggie palm trees are a perfect fit for these dinosaur party ideas. Position them on the corner of serving dishes as tray decoration. See the video below for how to carve these. When labelling each of the dishes put them into groups such as Carnivore, Herbivore, and Candivore (ok so that last one's made up) depending on whether they are meat, vegetable, or candy. This watermelon T-Rex dinosaur head would look great on the food table, you could even use it as a centerpiece.    DECORATIONS I always think it's important to create a good entrance to a birthday party—it's the first thing your guests will see so it will set the tone for all your other dinosaur party ideas. It doesn't have to be anything too elaborate—these dinosaur footprints leading up the path to the front door should be enough to get everyone excited. Alternatively you could use a personalized yard sign . These dinosaur wall decals are another example of decorations that have a life after your party. You can peel and re-stick them easily so you can use them to decorate your child's bedroom afterwards. To decorate large areas use bunches of balloons but stick to a palette of brown, green and sandy beige (use metallic gold) to keep everything looking natural. Bunches of solid color balloons always look best when use in groups of 3 different colors. Likewise, crepe paper streamers in the same colors are a cheap and easy way to fill in larger areas and tie the whole room together with the same color palette. Hang them from a light fitting in the center of the room and then extend out to the perimeter wall working your way around the room. Again, alternate 3 colors when using these otherwise you end up with a candy stripe effect. Don't forget to mix in some dinosaur themed balloons, such as the ones below. THANK YOU NOTES Don't forget to follow up after your birthday party with thank you notes. There are plenty of ready-made fill-in style ones available which are cheap, alternatively you can have them personalized with your child's photo.