When I was a little girl, I would throw super fun and thought-out birthday parties for my teddy bears. I really enjoyed making the decorations, and invitations and, of course, the paper mache cake! I love planning birthday parties; it’s basically my favorite part of being a mom. And yall know a few of my projects were crocheted!

Two weekends ago was Ava’s (my daughter) Dino4 birthday party and we had a BLAST! I decorated the whole house with tropical leaves, had colorful dinosaurs all over the place, had a couple of dino-mite activities available and, since her party was Easter weekend, we had to have a dinosaur egg hunt, of course.

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Every year I plan a super fun, themed, birthday party for Ava. Her first birthday party was kinda just thrown together (hello, new mom, breastfeeding, living out of state, it just didn’t happen).

Her second birthday was “Oh TWOdooles” which was Mickey and Minnie themed.

Her third birthday party was “Ava Grace is Three are you Kitten me?!” Complete with a kitty adoption station.

And for her fourth birthday party, we were going to do “Fancy, Fabolous, and Four” but decided to switch it to DINO4, about 2 months before the party.

I am so happy we switched it because DINO4 was a BLAST!!

I wanted to write up what I did, share any resources I created, and give you a few DIY projects for your dinosaur themed birthday party!!

Dinosaur Birthday PartyDecorations

The first thing I did, was create a mood board for the dinosaur birthday party. I did this on Canva.

This gave me a place where the main feel of the party could live, all together, and could be easily accessed.

Party colors, fonts, and graphics were chosen, and placed on the mood board, to best represent her party. I also included a graphic I made (and had plans for) on her mood board.

I’ve provided a blank mood board, Canva template, for you to use, to help plan your next party! Just click here to open the template in Canva.

The “DINOFOUR” graphic was designed using a few different programs. I created it specifically for the dinosaur egg hunt baskets.

I cut it out from black vinyl, using my Cricut, then transferred it over to each plastic basket. I got the plastic baskets from the Dollar Tree by the way, if you were curious.

This graphic is available for use in the Cricut Design Space. You can click here to go to the graphic’s pin on Pinterest and use it for your next dinosaur birthday party!

These “A-V-A” letters have been used for Ava’s last 3 parties! They’re so versatile. I bought them at Hobby Lobby in the paper mache section, for $4.79 each. They’re normally 7.99 but they go on sale just about every month.

To paint them this year, I used paint I purchased from Lowes (1 quart each, so I could paint all the things), and painted the “A’s” just a solid color and went a little crazy with the “V”.

I traced one of the leaves I cut out all over the “V” and painted them green while the background was painted pink.

I also bought “D-I-N-O” letters and the number “4” to put on my wall in the dining room.

I drew and cut out a ton of tropical green leaves from construction paper I got at Hobby Lobby.

Leaves are perfect for a dinosaur birthday party, but you could use them for lots of different birthday party themes! Here are a few that came to mind.

• Safari
• Beach
• Luau
• Jungle
• Wild
• Zoo

This was pretty easy to do. Just fold a piece of green construction paper in half, draw half of a tropical leaf, then cut it out. When you open your paper back up, you have a symmetrical leaf design!

If free-handing leaves are not your cup of tea, I designed three templates you can print out, cut the leaves out, and trace around them, to create your leaves.

I love that these leaves were inexpensive and easy to make while adding flair to the dinosaur birthday party decorations!

I crocheted a wreath for the front door, I make a wreath for all of Ava’s parties. I purchased a styrofoam wreath ring from Hobby Lobby, and I crocheted a very long rectangle that would fit around the ring and inclose the ring when sewn together.

Before I attached the rectangle to the wreath, I crocheted a few circles, in different sizes, and sewed them onto the rectangle.

Then I attached the big rectangle around the wreath with the join as you go method I used in my Dinosaur Backpack crochet pattern.

I made 6 spikes (also from the dinosaur backpack pattern) and sewed them to the top of the wreath, leaving a spot in the middle to hang the wreath on the door.

The wreath hanger I used was actually from our Christmas decorations and had a huge snowflake on the top. I covered that with some strategically placed leaves.

One of the best ideas I had for the party, was the DIY party curtains! I made them from rolls of plastic table cloth that I got off Amazon.

I took down our ugly, everyday curtains and stood on a chair to feed the roll of tablecloth over the curtain rod (this was already in the room), and back down to the floor.

Then I took a second color of tablecloth roll, repeated the process, but this time I folded the ends under on both sides so this color was slightly smaller than the first.

I clinched the DIY curtains in the middle and tied them with some yarn. I added a few yarn pom poms on the tie just for good measure.

Dinosaur Birthday Party Activities

I had a couple of activities for the kids to do. I set up a little craft area by putting some sheets of left-over construction paper out, and some dinosaur foam stickers I got from Oriental Trading.

This was probably the easiest thing I did for the whole party, and it was totally a last-minute decision; the kids LOVED it!

I also purchased these Dinosaur Fossil Egg Kits from Target. Few things about these eggs…
1. They’re very messy, so prepare for that.
2. It gets loud with all the banging.
3. Read the instructions ahead of time.

I did not read the instructions, and apparently, you are supposed to soak the egg fossils in water for 5 minutes before letting the kiddos dig into them. Lesson learned.

Our last activity was the dinosaur egg hunt. Since her birthday party fell on Easter weekend this year, I thought a dino egg hunt would be something easy to put together that the kids would really enjoy.

I bought a bunch of different styles of Easter eggs from Walmart, Hobby Lobby and the dollar tree. I filled the eggs with things like dino tattoos, little dinosaurs (Dollar Tree), candy, stickers, and other egg-filler toys I found at Michaels.

We let the older kids, and the Dad’s, hide the eggs. Then each kid, with their own dino4 easter basket, lined up and waited for us to say GO!

Another good thing about the dino egg hunt was it doubled as the party favors!

Dinosaur Birthday Party Food

As for food we just kept it pretty simple. It was from 2:00-4:00 so kinda between lunch and dinner. Here is a list of the food we had at the party.

• Bugles – Raptor Claws – We found these at Walmart
• Grapes – Dinosaur Eggs
• White Chocolate Pretzels – Dinosaur Bones
• Veggie Tray – Herbivores
• Chips – Dinosaur Scales
• Cake – Made by my sister

Funny story, my mom actually went out and got 5 hot and ready pizzas from Little Caesars and they were GONE by the end of the party. In hindsight, I probably should have had more than just snack foods.

Dinosaur Birthday Party Attire

I always like for us to dress for the occasion on Ava’s birthday parties. This year Ava and I both wore matching dinosaur t-shirts we got from the little boy’s section at Carter’s.

I paired my little boy’s t-shirt with some tropical leaf leggings from Walmart ($5.98) and my beautiful new handmade earrings from Top Knotch Macrame.

My favorite part of my outfit was my crochet leaf and pom headband! This is a free crochet pattern by Lottie and Albert.

I made Ava a dino skirt to wear for the party! I totally just made this up as I went, but I did use elastic for the waist and I used the dino spikes design from the Dinosaur Backpack pattern.

Ava loved it and wore it for the whole party!

Well, that’s about everything that happened! We had a super fun time. I hope Ava has fond memories of her birthday parties when she’s all grown up. If you have any questions, ill be happy to answer them! You can post them here in the comments or send me a message on Instagram!

Happy party planning!
❤️Ashley