Toddler Birthday Parties: Which "themes" worked for you?

[NewParent.com]

These days, there's a ton of birthday party themes to choose from.

Dora the Explorer, Pirate, Princess, and Tropical Lua are all popular themes. But which ones do kids get most excited about?

Sound off on which ones worked for you (and which ones didn't!) and share your party-planning tips with other moms on the forum. :)

[Vicky]

Well...I try to keep my child's party's simple. I mean, I don't remember my 2nd birthday at all...yet parents spend oodles of money on them..it's crazy!

One year for my son's 4th birthday I hired a clown, and gave red "bozo" noses out to all the kids. That's as crazy as I've ever gotten!

[Alex Willis]

The bigger question is how can you create a themed birthday party and maintain a reasonable budget. We always celebrate our kids birthdays with relevant and current themes that they typically pick out. However, if they are too young to pick, it's normally just pink (I have girls). I have gone to the extent of renting costumes and dressing as Dorothy the Dinosaur and Lala... the girls are now into Pony's and Princesses which is much easier. I do a lot of shopping at the dollar store for decorations and I recycle and reuse many things like streamers, banners and confetti to help cut down on costs. Therefore my only real costs are hats, the cake, plates and cups which are themed and coordinate with the other decorations.

This year my 5 year old had a party at the hair dresser's who put on a hairdo and makeup party for little girls. They get tiaras and play make up and the clean up is someone else's problem!

Alex - Resident Dad

[Cyndi]

Our son turned two in October, and we didn't want to spend a lot of money on a theme. We knew we were getting him an aquarium and fish - one of his big loves! So I made a simple sheet cake, decorated it with blue icing, and put some fish and other sea creatures on it, along with colored sugar! He loved it, especially since I added some characters from Finding Nemo. He didn't care that there were no themed plates and napkins, but went absolutely bonkers over the cake, and his older cousins liked it, too!

Cyndi
Resident Mom

[Cookiethief_2-Resident Mom]

Both of my girls have birthday's in the summer(may and June) so I usually try to do something outside. I try to keep it simple, a cookout, a few friends/family, bubbles, a play pool, and lots of icecream. I spoil the heck out of them all day long and by the end of the day they've had so much fun that they are begging for bedtime. lol I try to stay away from the "themed" parties, but will spring for a decorated cake from Wally World!

Kendall
Resident Mom.

[Misty Harper "Resident Mom"]

For my daughter's first birthday last year, we went with a Tinkerbell theme, as we call her our little Tinkerbell - Emily is sweet, stubborn, sassy, and very headstrong just like Tink! This year, I had a catalog with all kinds of different themes, and Emily chose Curious George. I ordered the plates and napkins, and then the PBS website had lots of downloads, including some for invites, thank you cards, place cards, bookmarks, coloring pages, certificates for the birthday child and their guests, and even little Curious George masks! Her party is next Saturday, so hopefully it will be great!! :-)

[Becky]

When my son turned 5, we had a pirate party! The kids absolutely LOVED it! I built a pirate ship cake, we went on a treasure hunt (their goody bags were inside the treasure chest!), played X Marks the Spot (a twist on Pin the Tail on the Donkey), did a puzzle piece hunt to fill in our treasure maps and more! We served all finger foods (because pirates don't use utensils!) so we had pizza, bananas, pretzels and we served 100% juice. The children were all encourages to dress as pirates or princesses that the pirates captured! The kids talked about the party for weeks afterward!


The year he turned 2, we did a Bob the Builder party. We had paper construction cones for centerpieces, searched for hidden tools, played Pin the Tool Belt on Bob (Like pin the tail on the donkey), ate Bob the Builder fruit snacks with our cake, did a relay race using dump trucks and more.

The year he turned 3, we had a Spongebob party. We did a spin off of pin the tail on the donkey by trying to put stickers of Spongebob on his house (I drew a large pineapple in an ocean). We had a pull string pinata of Spongebob and I made a Spongebob cake using pieces of a toy he had that was like a Mr. Potato Head but of Spongebob.

The year he turned 4 was a Blue's Clues party. We made our own Blue's Clues headbands with floppy blue ears, had a Shovel and Pail relay race, read a Blue's Clues book and more!

Becky
Resident Mom

[Web Mom]

My older son, now 8, was never really into characters, so his parties were kind of low-key... he was obsessed with bicycles when he was around 2, so we had a party in the park and invited his little friends to bring their tricycles or whatever they liked to ride, and made him a bicycle cake. We went miniature golfing when he turned 3, with just his 2 best buddies. Their various individual "putting styles" were hilarious. :-)

My younger son, now 4, is a totally different story. When he was 2, he loved Thomas the Train so we bought just a few of the Thomas-themed party things - conductor hats, paper plates, table cloths, goodie bags - the Thomas cake came from the super-market. (They did a great job!) A friend of ours is a teacher at a toddler music class so she came wearing a conductor cap and brought her guitar, and did circle-time with train-themed songs.

When he was 3, he was into Star Wars. He was still into Star Wars when he turned 4, so we even had another Star Wars party. The stuff they make for the Star Wars theme parties are pretty amazing but of course it's really easy to get carried away and spend too much money. Our favorite were the inflatable red light-sabers. Have you seen them? About a foot and a half long, inflatable vinyl so they don't hurt anyone and they light up when you squeeze the handle! I think they are $1.99 each, but we HAD to get them so this was our major expense. We got these, the paper Darth Vader masks, the table cloth and cake plates/napkins, but then made our own cake (stuck all his own Star Wars guys on top of the cake, which he thought was funny). We made a "Death Star Pinata" (just a big round balloon with newspaper over it! After the paper mache is dry cut out a 3-inch diameter circle, invert, and tape back into the hole to make that scary laser-disc thing!) and then a few special lunch food items inspired by this amazing book series, "The Star Wars Party Book". Simple recipes (or just buy the food and call it whatever you want) for Wookie Cookies, Darth Malt, and Boba Fettucine, just to name a few! My husband is also a huge Star Wars fan, so going to the trouble of all this was just as much for him as for our son. :-) The other dads also had a great time battling the kids with the light sabers.

[Susan Kramer]

For my son (who is now 8 years old) we did a lot of themes - first birthday was Blue's Clues, second birthday was Bear in the Big Blue House, third birthday was Scooby Doo, fourth, fifth, and sixth birthdays were dinosaurs.

Now that my daughters are both 2, we have a different dilemma. One has a March birthday and the other has a September birthday. So whatever theme we choose for our March birthday girl, usually we try to do the same for our September birthday girl so they can share. Of course I'm sure that will change as they grow older and are able to pick their own theme. Right now it's looking like Hee Awws (My Little Pony) will be the theme for this year. The good news is...for now anyway....I can use the same decorations twice!! :-)

Susan
Resident Mom from Ohio