KADE TURNS TWO TOMORROW!

My baby is now officially a toddler. We celebrated this milestone over the weekend with a train theme party. Playing on the fact that he will be two, his exact theme was: Chugga Chugga! Two, Two!

When I first started thinking about his party, I had a few ideas that I thought would be perfect. After narrowing them down to my top six, I asked you all to vote. In Two The Wild and Born Two Be Wild were tied for your favorites. At that point I was thinking we would go with Born TWO Be Wild and use a lot of the buffalo plaid party items from his Moose Camp party last year. 

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Completely caught up in the craziness of January, I realized I hadn’t sent out save-the-dates or invites yet! We had known his party date since mid December, but the truth was, I was dragging my feet. Something about the party just didn’t feel right. Buffalo plaid was an easy party to plan, which I kind of needed since our schedules are a bit hectic. But I kept thinking that buffalo plaid doesn’t excite Kade. And we love how animated and expressive he is when he really loves something! It was the last week of January and I finally forced myself to decide a party theme direction and send out invites. Well actually, I cheated and texted out the invites. 

Haha, yup I texted the invite! I whipped it up quick on evite.com. Took a screen shot, cropped the image, created a pdf and emailed it to myself. Then I saved it to my phone and started texting it out to family and friends. Certainly wasn’t my typical style but it worked and with his party three weeks away I needed to get a move on! 

If you have ever planned a theme party, you can probably relate to the feelings of doing too much, not doing enough, wanting it to be fun and unique, trying to stay within a budget and stressing on how the heck will you be able to get it all done. Trust me, I know all these feelings quite well by now. If you too have felt this way KEEP READING, because I am about to breakdown Kade’s Chugga Chugga Two, Two Train Theme Party for you (including the costs)! 

Before we dive in you will notice I am going to talk about the party broken out into a few topics. This will help when I share more about the costs and ways to save. Breakouts will be: Invitations, Event Space, Party Decor, Favors, Food, Gifts and Miscellaneous. 

INVITATIONS

Invitations are extremely important to every theme party, and an absolute must! Beyond providing all the the necessary information like date, time and location, the invite visually conveys the theme, vibe and mood for your party.  While you should never skip sending an invite, there are a variety of ways in which you could send your invite. Depending on the type of party, I usually prefer to save some cost here. There are hundreds of design programs you could use to create an invite. Typically I rely on the old tried and true PowerPoint or Keynote. Bringing the invite to life with unique fonts and clip art that can be found online or purchased from Etsy. After the invite is created, you could print and mail, email, hand deliver or even text them in a pinch! Since I chose to text Kade’s invite, our invite investment was zero dollars! 

INVITE BUDGET – $0. 

EVENT SPACE

Renting an event space is a great option for any party or event. Pros are that you don’t have to pre-clean or post-clean your house for the party, your party has a firm start/end time, and you have onsite event staff to assist. Cons are the cost, location from your guests, having to pack up and bring all your party items to the location, and bringing all the gifts home. For Kade’s party in particular we invited 20 kids, their parents and family.

A rental space would have made the most sense BUT, we decided to host everyone in our home instead. My thought process was that I 1) wanted to have access to all of my event/party items should I need them 2) I could start decorating and staging days prior 3) Kade could still nap at home 4) we would not be locked into a set time or list of venue rules (I kind of like to be in charge and do my own thing lol). 

Our biggest predicament was how the heck we would seat 20 kids in our house! Thank goodness I remembered I was introduced to Petite Seats a few months back. They are a local company that specializes in event rentals for kids! Think beautiful wedding type tables and chairs but small enough for kids. I immediately contacted them and thankfully, they had availability for the 16th. We were able to seat 20 kids with (2) 7’ tables and 20 chairs. We went with the wood because it fit our party theme and home decor best. Plus you don’t need table clothes with the wood tables…. a little extra savings there! 

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EVENT SPACE BUDGET… $0

EVENT RENTAL BUDGET… $125

PARTY DECOR

Here is where you can really get caught up in time and costs. There are endless possibilities for theme party decor, especially with Etsy, Pinterest, Amazon, Party City, Oriental Trading Company, DIY ideas and more! And… let’s not forget my personal favorite, the Dollar Tree! 

I’m sure you noticed a major creative difference between Kade’s party invitation and his party decor. In a rush, I had to send out his invite before I really flushed out my concept for the actual day. I ended up focusing more on an old time classic train theme vs. something a little more animated like Thomas. 

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It was actually the paper plates that I saw first which triggered the idea of old school train decor. Honestly, I did everything backwards from how I would normally plan a party. 

My first suggestion would be to choose your theme and decor based on some inspiration. Pinterest is a great resource for all things party related! 

Based on the classic train theme, I started searching the internet for party goodies! I ordered plates, a table runner (that I didn’t use), a graphic suite, cups, bandanas and plastic flatware. 

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FAVORS

The purpose of a favor is to thank your guests for coming to your special event, and possibly be a memento to remember what a lovely time they had while in attendance. Typically it’s an inexpensive gift given to each guest as they leave your event. For Kade’s party we did have a thank you favor to take when departing. It was a cute blue and white striped bag with a pack of fruit snacks, pencil, eraser and a few Hershey kisses inside. Additionally, as part of the table decor I created the customized water cups and train animals crackers that each friend was able to take home with them. 

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• Pack of 25 striped bags: $8
• Pencils, Erasers, Kisses: $8
• Animal Cracker Boxes: $30
• Trains to adhere to Animal Cracker Boxes: $11
• Fruit Snacks: $8
• Cups + Label Printing were accounted for in party decor budget. 
• : $65

TOTAL FAVOR BUDGET: $65

FOOD + DRINKS

Providing yummy snacks or a meal for your guests can be a little stressful. Especially with kids! Besides being picky, allergies seem to be pretty prevalent with kids these days. It is certainly something to take into consideration. So far, Kade eats what we eat but I know most kids are chicken nugget lovers. So I thought I would order Chick Fil-A nuggets for the kids and have chili and apps for the adults. Just a few days before Kade’s party I decided to call an audible and just go with pizza for all! We ordered Little Caesars $6 pizzas, tons of chips, fruit pouches, cake and cupcakes. My Mom used to be a professional cake decorator so we enlisted her help to create Kade’s cakes and cupcake treats! Pizza was definitely a good call! Easy to clean up, crowd pleaser and affordable. 

• Pizzas: $ 90
• Drinks: $ 45
• Pouches: $10
• Cake + Cupcakes: $0
• Ribbon for Cake: $5
• Popcorn Boxes: $5

TOTAL FOOD + DRINK BUDGET: $155

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GIFTS

When hosting a party for someone it is pretty easy to consider that a gift in itself. Especially when you consider all the costs going into the party! But most people find that they still prefer to give the party recipient a little something. For Kade our plan was to give him a wonderful party and then one gift tomorrow on his real birthday. But then the birthday excitement kind of got away from me. I had been looking for larger play items for Kade for sometime now. He currently has a basket of trucks, balls, coloring books, books, hand held sound toys, lego, two hammer toys, a handful of push cars, a trike, a rideable four wheeler and a teepee that I made for him. The little Camo four wheeler has been the most expensive toy bought him which was about $50.

We have been talking about a basketball hoop, indoor slide, kitchen set, toy grill, and a workbench. Only when visiting a neighbors house did we decide that we should get him an activity table and train set. Spencer set it up Friday night so he could play with it all morning before his friends came over. He was in heaven and so ecstatic to have his very own train set! His joy brought tears to my eyes. just like Christmas. Additionally, he received so many wonderful items from all of his friends and family. Now we need to purge a bunch of the old toys that are a bit too babyish for him.

• Hess Truck: $35
• Activity Table: $95
• Train Set + Extra Trains: $125 

TOTAL GIFTS BUDGET: $255

MISCELLANEOUS

This is a catch all for any other planning items party items… like a new outfit! I did order Kade the cutest birthday t-shirt to wear from Etsy. It’s so cute he will definitely continue to get wear out of the shirt for as long as it fits him. I may or may not have bought him new shoes too but wouldn’t count those in the party budget because hey they are shoes and the kid need shoes right?! 

Kade is Two, Two Train Party Shirt: $20

Kade’s train theme party was adorable and he loved it! The house was crazy for sure but all in all the kids were extremely well behaved. I would definitely do it again! BUT…. I would try to stick a little closer to my original budget. (Side note: Spencer’s proof reads all of my blog posts and I thought he might say something about the costs after reading this one. So far he hasn’t! Fingers crossed I might be in the clear.)

TOTAL PARTY COSTS: $742. 

As you can see party items as simple as they might be can really add up! What is great is that there are tons of ideas and not everything is necessary. You can pick and choose what is most important to make your next party a huge success!

Would love to hear what you think about Kade’s Chugga, Chugga Two, Two party! Please leave a message below and share your thoughts! My hope is that some of his information will come in handy the next time you’re planning an event or theme party! Hope you enjoyed seeing all of Kade’s party fun as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you! 

A million Thank You’s to Megan from Maewood Photography for these adorable Kade the Train Conductor photos! These might be my favorites to date and ones we will cherish for years to come!

CHOO CHOO TRAIN PARTY ITEMS