When my son turned two, I had just given birth a couple months prior so it was a little tricky to plan with a newborn on our hands. The planning for this one needed fo strike a balance of being super easy yet still special, age-appropriate, and unique for him! Thank goodness for Etsy that makes this process so much easier! 😉
The theme was a no-brainer for us. For the most part of that past year, our little guy had been obsessed with trains, even when he didn’t have any!
To make setup a little easier, we knew we wanted to try to host this one at home. We had just moved into a small house in Culver City in Los Angeles at the time. The space wasn’t huge but it would have to do. As I brainstormed activities, I drew inspiration from thinking about age-appropriate art activities that they were doing at school, to give me a sense of what little ones at this age could handle.
For the main event, we drew inspiration from the fun little mini train at our local mall and started investigating whether it’d be possible to bring that kind of experience to our local neighborhood, as our little guy LOVED riding on those and it could be a way to extend our space beyond our little home.
We had also only recently started school, so we didn’t have his classmates’ email addresses (or their parents I should say). So for the first time in forever, we opted for hard copy invitations. I will say there is something still so fun and unique about hard copy invites, and it was a way to present our theme right off the bat!
So here is how it all turned out!
Again, to make decor easier this time around, I purchased a downloadable kit off of Etsy that we merely had to get printed at our local Fedexkinkos. I did have the designer add a custom welcome sign up front, since so much can all be about how you set up and introduce the theme.
Given my son’s multiple severe food allergies, I tried my best to tie the refreshments to the theme as well as I could while making everything at the party safe for him to eat. I had a local gluten-free bakery custom make some allergy-free sugar cookies, wrapped some popcorn in paper that matched other aspects of the theme, a vegetable train, and the rest were just safe foods that he’d just simply enjoy.
For the cake (which unfortunately wasn’t allergen-free, but I figured since his party was held on my husband’s actual birthday, it could be for my husband instead), I found these adorable little train decorations on Amazon and had a local bakery incorporate them into a design.
I worked on getting it all set up while both kids were napping. When my son woke up, he walked in and was just totally captivated by the little train wonderland!
The kids had a couple different activity stations they could get hands-on and explore. Since most of the kids attending were two-year-olds, I had to keep the activities pretty simple. So the first one was just simply using train stickers to “build” their own train. The second activity was a little more involved, but the parents all loved it since the kids got to paint their own wooden train cars that were compatible with the Thomas the Train style tracks and rail sets.
About 45 minutes into the party though is when the main event happened. Everyone was surprised and delighted when they heard a train whistle, and walked out the yard to see this train pull up!
For the rest of the party, parents and kids got to enjoy free train rides throughout the neighborhood. Even some of the older kids loved it, and we also let some other neighborhood kids join in the fun as well.
We capped off the party with the birthday song and cake. This was the first year my son was more aware of what was going on, and after this, was obsessed with blowing out candles (even at other people’s birthdays 😆)
As the party concluded, the kids could take a goody bag that included a little wind-up train, Thomas stickers, a bandanna, and a train whistle. (I always forget to take photos of what’s inside but I’ve at least linked the individual items!) Infants for to take home a train-shaped teething toy.
That Celebration Life 