DIY Dr. Seuss Party

Thanks for sharing!

A fun DIY Dr. Seuss themed birthday party loaded with fun themed food for Little Dude’s birthday.

It was finally time for Little Dude’s birthday party! I am not even slightly exaggerating when I say the planning for this party started the day after his party last year.  He has been looking forward to this for soooooo long and the day finally arrived.

For the longest time it was going to be a train party.  He started drawing plans for his next cake. First it was a just some random drawings.

Then he started coming home from daycare with multiple pages of train cake plans, taped together. Each page was a car on the train cake. Often times there were candles involved, color schemes picked out and sometimes even specific candies for the train cars to be hauling.

It was so. darn. cute.

The problem is that last year’s birthday party was train themed! While it was super cute with the handmade signs from his daddy and a train full of Oreos and Pez was a big hit, I really didn’t want to do the same theme again. 

What could we possibly do to make it better? I suppose following the conductor’s expertly drawn train plans would have been a start.

So for the last year I have been going down two paths.  The first was trying to come up with other themes that Little Dude would like just as much for his party.  The other was trying to talk myself into being ok with another train party.

I was pretty much resigned to the fact that we were going to board the train again this year, when Little Dude found a new love, memory match.  We started with a small game with just a handful of trucks and tractors to match up.  He quickly needed something more challenging, so we graduated to Dr. Seuss Memory.

In the beginning we would take it easy on him and make sure the game was close.  Within a week or two we were all fighting for our lives. 

We played a couple of games almost every night and it would be a toss-up as to who might win between Little Dude, my husband and I.  We got pretty competitive too and we all had a blast!

My husband looked up all of the characters, so we would know all of their names and we got excited when we spotted one in the book we were reading at bedtime.  That’s when it hit me, a Dr. Suess party! Luckily Little Dude easily climbed on board and the train quickly left the station before we could look back!

So I sent out the invitations with a picture of him dressed as the Grinch last Halloween and this little poem:

You could not, would not want to miss
A birthday celebration quite like this!
Haven’t you heard, didn’t you hear
Little Dude is celebrating turning 5 this year!
There will be food and cake, a deliciously good sight
We hope to see you can make it, it would be a delight!
This is one thing for certain, you’re in for a treat.
There will be green eggs and ham, all you can eat!
That or roast beast is for you to decide,
Get here by boat, or bus or take a train ride.
You can come on skates, you can come on skis,
You can come in a hat, but please come please.

Then I went to planning.  I will try to add recipes and links in the coming days, but here is a peek at what we had:

We had not one fish nor two fish, no red fish nor blue fish on the table with silverware and plates. But we did have plenty of fish! 

Of course there had to be green eggs and ham sliders!  These were fun to make and could be made the night ahead and just baked off for the party. I made a triple batch and they were a hit!

In case anyone had qualms with green eggs, I also made some hot turkey, ham and cheese sliders. Another triple batch was almost demolished! 

We needed some roast beast at our feast. After the popularity of the zesty beef rollups, I decided to go for a horseradish cheddar pinwheel variation this time. 

Poodles eating noodles played out as some slow cooker macaroni and cheese with corn.  We hadn’t made that in quite some time, but I knew that would be a hit with the kiddos and it’s so easy to make.

What would a Dr. Seuss party be without the cat in the hat?

Oh the places you’ll go, the cheeses you’ll eat.  At first I was just going to slice some cheese and have crackers, but then I saw some cute Cat in the Hats drawn on string cheese on Pinterest and I just knew we’d have to mimic that!

We needed some fruit in the mix, so for our Truffula fruit spread we had strawberries, apples and pretzels with our favorite peanut butter and yogurt fruit dip! 

For our hop on popcorn, we made some strawberries and cream popcorn. 

We had plenty of pink ink for all of the yinks to drink.  I think I even noticed a few of them wink! 

The dessert table was all Mr. Grinch.  We had sour cream cookies with big hearts on them for after his heart grew three sizes. 

And of course a Mr. Grinch cupcake cake.  I’ve been experimenting with a buttercream that isn’t quite so sweet, but still forms a light crust.  I’ll have to share the results with you. 

I had a lot going on, so I doctored some cake mixes for the cupcakes.  I got the chocolate where I want it, but the vanilla are still a work in progress. 

We had a blast with plenty of yard games, water balloons, food and fun.  The fun menu cards I ordered from Etsy really took the buffet table to the next level! This might have been our favorite party yet. 

Today we are bringing cupcakes to his friends at daycare. We always do a different theme for the daycare treats.

Last year it was minions and the year before it was monkeys. This year Little Dude has taken a shining to a frog toy my grandma gave him at Easter, so froggy cupcakes it is!  

I hope you enjoyed your little look at the party.  Have you ever thrown themed parties? What are your favorite themes?

Thanks for sharing!