Melisa from the ultra-creative Little Apple Design and Project Nursery sent in this adorable party she created for her son’s 3rd birthday that features a Thomas the Train theme with a modern, updated twist. This is such a great example of how you can “style up” any sort of theme to fit your own personal taste!
(Added bonus: – find free printables of the candy buffet labels below!)
Read on for all the details and LOTS more pics, as told by Melisa…
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“My son Austin’s obsession with Thomas The Tank Engine is going on 2 years now and before he grows out of it, I just had to throw him a Thomas & Friends party! The decorator in me, however, couldn’t bare to use the commercial cartoon Thomas. Don’t get me wrong – he’s really cute – I just thought he could use an updated, modern twist.
With a brand new baby, I really didn’t have the energy to creatively pull together a birthday bash, so I turned to my party inspiration board guru and contributor, Kelly from WH Hostess. She took my idea, ran with it and pulled together an AMAZING Modern Train inspiration board that I could follow in just a short amount of time.
Kelly also created all the crafty party details – from logos to stickers to banners and much more.
I set the tone of the party with custom paper invites for close friends and family and saved money with free personalized online invitations by Pingg for my son’s preschool class.
The menu consisted of gourmet sandwiches, crust-less cream cheese and jelly sandwiches for the kids, mac & cheese squares, Chinese chicken salad in takeout containers, logo cups filled with baby carrots, snow peas and individual hummus disks.
Some of my favorite decorative touches included the use of 3 foot balloons for a modern statement and simple centerpieces that consisted of of eco-friendly blumebox vases, shredded tissue paper and clever signs on a stick.
A major party hiccup was the sugar cookies from the bakery. My husband picked them up the morning of the party and they looked absolutely awful! Thank goodness I took a cue from The TomKatStudio’s Blog and ordered fondant cupcake toppers from etsy shop Two Sugar Babies, which saved the day!
Charynn did an incredible job of creating monogrammed fondant toppers and even a 3D train to spruce up my inexpensive yet tasty chocolate Costco cake – as requested by the birthday boy himself!
The big hit of the party was the trackless train that rolled through the neighborhood.
We passed out engineer hats and whistles as the kids boarded Austin’s party train. The children brought them home along with Thomas tattoos, coloring paper, homemade train shaped crayons and bags FULL of candy. Heck, someone had to take the 28lbs of candy display ordered from the Sweet Factory off my hands and far, far away from my house!”
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Thanks again to Melisa for sharing this party with us – and to Kelly for offering up free printables of her candy bar labels!
You can download the exact labels (with the candy titles) or blank versions of them below:
• Click here to download labels with candy names
• Click here to download blank labels
ENJOY!
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Comments 32
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32Comments
Love the idea!!!!!!! Were can I find the cupcake tower??
Hi Melissa –
I actually don’t know of any websites that are completely DIY like you mentioned, but I do know that Kelly from WH Hostess (who did all the labels here) offers these same lables, banners, etc on her website and can personalize them with your son’s name & age – or maybe even do something completely custom if you want them to look different. Here’s a link just in case: http://whhostess.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=211_212
good luck with the party! :)
I need to get some of those big balloons. Can someone tell me where to get those please?
Great ideas, I had my son’s 2nd birthday party in March and we had a train theme. I could have really used your ideas back then! Love the bright colors!
How do you use the printables? I tried to use the blank ones, but they are pdf. so I cannot add what I want to them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Do you have more pics of the food? I am very interested to see how the mac & cheese squares and the individual hummus disks look like. :-)
Amazing stuff!! Love it all!
I love this so much. I’m having a red and light blue vintagey-themed party for my son’s third birthday in September, and this party inspires me!
woww!! these are great ideas of modern train birthday party.
am in the midst of collecting ideas for my son’s 2nd choo choo train party :)
thanks for sharing :)
muna
kuala lumpur
http://mommygoneartsy.blogspot.com
LOVE the party! Where did you order the invites and banners from?
Where can I get the printouts?
I LOVE your taste! I am planning a train birthday party for my son on September 10th. He is turning one! I don’t want to use Thomas the Train character either, I want to make it so that everyone can enjoy the decor! I love your ideas for the candy, all the colors, etc. The colors go perfect for the invitations that I already ordered from Polkadot Design.com. I have one question, where can I maybe print the train photos that you have to match your labels?? I think I can pull it off if I had a train I could print and make signs with. Thanks so much for your help!
Robin
Hi, Your beautiful train party has been featured on best of the web thomas parties & cakes To grab your button go to the bottom of the post and copy and paste the html code onto your page.
Love this!
So much inspiration from this amazing little party! Thanks for sharing.
Your thomas party has been featured on BEST OF THE WEB THOMAS PARTIES CAKES AND FOOD check it out and grab a button here http://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/best-of-the-web-thomas-the-tank-engine-parties-cakes-and-food/.