The Bubbly Hostess: Choo-Choo Train Birthday Party

I recently threw a party for my little one's 3rd birthday - at his request, it was a "Choo-Choo Train" Birthday Party! I had a lot of fun planning and executing this one! I experienced some "scope creep" in the last few days of the party preparations, but that's to be expected! Maybe I should just plan for that next time!

I designed the train ticket invitation in MS Publisher, I usually use Photoshop, but decided to give Publisher a try. It was quite easy! I found several ideas from the internet and then built it from there! I used a small hole punch for the month and day to make it even more authentic!

For the cake, I had this design in my head - but wasn't really sure how it was going to come together until I started to decorate it! My son wanted a white cake with white frosting!   I used Wilton Sugar Sheets to make the tunnel and the black on the railroad crossing signs, a simple black decorating gel for the train tracks, I made fondant from scratch and added some yellow food coloring for the signs, and grabbed a few items from my boys' train table to complete the look! I also added a train ribbon around the bottom of the cake stand as a finishing touch.

I got the idea for the little round signs from Phoenix Event Planning, I did make those in Photoshop, printed 2 copies onto heavy paper, inserted a wooden skewer in between the two pieces of paper, and glued them together.

The blue gingham plates and napkins were from Oriental Trading Company, I bought red forks from Party City and found the red bandana ribbon from Michael's.

For the buffet, I made a train track using tan felt and cut rails out of black felt. I used small tins to which I attached paper wheels as "snack cars" and lined up a couple of other rectangular plates behind them for serving.   On the menu I served many of my little one's favorites! We had chicken nuggets, tortellini, mixed berries, watermelon, "train" cheese and crackers, and I made wraps for the adults as well. The wraps were a big hit, I found the idea from On My Side Of The Room.

For the favors, I bought red and navy bandanas as well as the engineer caps from Oriental Trading. I was leery of the whistles from Oriental Trading based upon the reviews, so I ended up buying them from Aero1Toys on Etsy. We had three babies, under the age of one, at the party, I thought it was a little much to give them the same favors as the older children, so I found some cute, soft, jingle balls with trains on the fabric at the LittleLadybugz store on Etsy. I wrapped a red bandana around them and they were ready to go!   Lastly, I found these cute tags from Hello, Good Gravy! that were ready to download, print, and cut out!

Overall, the party was a big success! Both the kids and the parents had a great time! Thanks to everyone who helped me pull this together! Enjoy the photos below - special thanks to Gretchen Wakeman Photography who took most of the photos and I added a couple of my own!