Polar Express Birthday Party

Polar Express Birthday Party for our little man who turned 3.  I’m not one of those moms who feels sad when their child has their first day of school or when they have a toddler birthday but I must say I felt teary eyed looking at my little guy knowing he was soon going to be too big to hold in my arms.  I’m not sure where those emotions erupted from but the whole day I kept looking at him remembering all of our precious moments when he was a baby.  Maybe it’s because he’s the last of our children unless we have a miracle baby and I’m praying for no such thing.

Here’s my little man when he was 2 and had his adorable curls and super chubby cheeks and this years picture of him all grown up!

My little man’s birthday was the day before Thanksgiving so we postponed his party til this week since I couldn’t manage to squeeze in more cooking and baking to my week.  But it worked out perfectly because we were able to go with a Christmas theme birthday party.

For months now, all he requested was a train cake.  Like most boys his age he’s enamored with trains.  He even makes train noises in his sleep.  I knew we had to incorporate trains into his birthday theme along with Christmas.  So that’s how we came up with a Polar Express Birthday Party.

I didn’t want the dark gloomy colors that go with the Polar Express Movie so we went with more merry and bright colors: red and turquoise.  Those are the colors we used for the cake and décor.

Here’s the amazing and delicious cake my neighbor made!  We are so lucky to have her shower us with her fabulous cakes.

Party favors are always hard for me to decide on. I don’t like trinkets or candy for party favors but anything else either cost a lot of money or takes a lot of time to make.

My husband and I stayed up last night working on these.  I thought they were pretty cool, they are practical, inexpensive and fun for the kids.  I found some great Polar Express printables over 3 Dinosaurs that are educational and free!  I printed the clip & count activity and glued it onto cardboard.  I also decorated a clip for the kids to use.  It’s a great activity for kids and it even helps them with their fine motor skills. They count the Polar Express characters and then they clip it to the correct number.

You can also use some of these printables for a fun activity at the party.

Here’s the dessert table.  I will share the details and shortcuts on how to make some of these later.

Here’s an aerial view of the dessert table.

We did a few activities. Since they are little I thought it would be best to lay low on the activities.  Ethan my older son was the conductor and he gave each kid train tickets before they came down to the party.  Then he punched their tickets and they followed the tracks down to the train.  We used this train to take pictures and also to play follow the train game.

We also used this train to take pictures and play follow the train game. The kids made choo, choo noises and rode the train around the play area.

Here’s the whole dessert table. I must say this party was pretty easy to put together, it was inexpensive and the kids had fun. I think I’ll call it a winner!