Welcome to our Dora and Diego Birthday Party! My kids have birthdays less than 3 weeks apart. I get a little crazy with their parties, but because they share the party I can get away with doing more. For this birthday, my daughter, Hailey, will turned 3 and my son, Alec, turned 1.
DORA DECOR: We decorated the interior of our house with Dora decor everywhere. The outside of the house and patio was decorated with Diego jungle decor. We served the kids some snacks as they arrived and used the Dora patterned tableware with centerpieces. We also decorated the inside with tissue paper garlands, helium balloon bouquets, regular crepe paper streamers, 100 tissue paper flowers and 80 stars. DORA STARS: In the background of the above pictures you can see the Dora stars I made. I cut out a bunch of different size stars from colored copy paper. I glued two colors together added some googly eyes and drew in the mouths. TISSUE PAPER FLOWERS: Tissue flowers are super easy to do (tons of instructions available everywhere online) and really looked nice all over the house. I made them with pipe cleaner stems so they could be attached to practically anything. Some were arranged in vases, some were attached to the anchor spots of the streamers and the rest were placed everywhere in the house including the bathrooms. I wish we would have gotten more pictures of the inside, but things were a little crazy in the beginning and then after the first half hour the entire party took place outside. I actually held back quite a bit on the decorating inside because the majority of the party took place outside.
CRAFT TABLE: My daughter at the craft table we set up to keep the kids entertained as as we waited for all the guests to arrive. They had the option of making foam door hangers or frames. All of the children were held inside the house until it was time for the Dora and Diego adventure to begin in our backyard.
CAKE TABLE: Our cake table was outside so the cupcakes took on the Diego Jungle theme. With everything planned, I never have time to make and decorate the cake and/or cupcakes. This year we had cupcakes for all of the guests and a small individual cake for my son and daughter. I did this mainly because my son was turning one and needed the traditional smash cake. The cakes I had the Target bakery decorate to look like a jungle (the did better than I expected). I added the Dora and Diego figurines and some little toothpicks signs that said Feliz Compleanos and Happy 1st Birthday Alec or Happy 3rd Birthday Hailey. The cupcakes were done at Sams Club and were actually the Backyardigans icing design, but I had them leave off the charachters. Sams Club cupcakes are delicious and only $12 for 30 of them. We usually have 90+ people at the kid's parties so I have to be thrifty with things. Some of the cupcakes are decorated with the Diego cupcake toppers and some are decorated with the jungle finger puppets from Oriental Trading. They came out really cute! DIEGO CENTERPIECES: Our Diego Centerpiece is in the backround of the above picture. I had these on all the tables and the food buffet. They were made with 2 dessert plates from the Diego partyware line. In between the 2 plates I wrapped a small cereal box with aqua tissue paper. I filled the bottom of the cereal box with glass beads to weigh it down and then in the top I cut a piece of florist foam to fit inside. I taped the 2 plates to the outside of the cereal box and then stuck fern leaves into the floral foam. You can't see in the picture, but there were little plastic lizards and insects sitting on top of the ferns. They looked cute, were really easy to make and very inexpesive.
CRAFT PAPER VINES: All around our patio and under the green tent we hung craft paper vines, stuffed monkeys and snakes. The craft paper vines were very easy to make. I bought a large roll of brown craft paper. I cut the paper into 6 small rolls by making the cuts down the long way of the paper. I then just twisted the craft paper and every 18" to 24" I stapled 1-3 leaves on the vine. The stapling helps to keep the vine from untwisting. The leaves I made by cutting long thin leaves out of green copy paper. Family Fun has a similar version of this craft using brown paper bags. I neeed ALOT of vines so I bought the rolls. Worked out great because I ended up lots of really long vines.
