4th Birthday Train Party

CHOO! CHOO! Birthday train coming through! The next feature goes to this adorable 4TH BIRTHDAY TRAIN PARTY submitted by Jennifer Carver of Banner Events. Jennifer is SO talented. Her parties are always so fun to look at.

No one says it better than Jennifer, so here are all the party details from her-

"When my son Landon begged us for a train-themed party to celebrate his 4th Birthday in December, I immediately contacted Maureen of Anders Ruff, knowing she would design the perfect choo choo train themed printable package to tie the various elements of our event together. I was right! Maureen delivered in a big way! I am thrilled to share with you the resulting party, photographed by my friend and talented photographer, Rebecca Pierce of Mi Vida Photography.

Another talented friend, Karina Rigtrup, of A Fresh Take Photography offered to take pictures of my little train-loving boy to use on the invitations and as part of the party décor.  I knew the stars had aligned when we showed up to the photo shoot and the old vintage train matched the colors in the printable package Maureen was customizing for us!  It was such a special day for him getting to board a REAL train.

All Aboard/The Invitation:  The darling invitation choo choo'd it's way to each guest's home inviting them to join us at Carver Station and hop aboard the Carver Express for an unbelievable party.

Guest Arrival/Train Departure:  When each of our little 'train engineers-in-the-making' arrived at Platform 4 of Carver Station, they were whisked away on a little make-shift train car and taken for a ride on our life-sized train track.  (My husband is a miracle worker with black electrical tape!)

Engineer Outfits:  The kids loved the train ride that dropped them off at the dining car, where the Chief Engineer (me!) helped get them outfitted to properly ride the rail.  A striped engineer hat & red bandana were adjusted to fit each little guest. 

Landon had a special shirt designed for him by Lisa of Bella Bean Gifts.  Her custom appliqué work was fabulous, and she is so great to work with. Lots of fun designs can be found in her Etsy store.

Party Activities:  After being properly outfitted, party guests had a number of fun activities to choose from. 

They could put together oversized train puzzles on the floor. (Thank you Anders Ruff for creating these upon my request!)  I made the puzzles by printing them out on glossy 11x17" sized paper at Staples, cutting them into puzzle pieces and then running them through my laminator.  There were several puzzles so that many children could do this activity at the same time.

Other little engineers got busy coloring custom designed Carver Express coloring pages with crayons from their coordinating crayon boxes.  (I absolutely LOVE how cute these turned out from Anders Ruff!  It was a custom request, and once again, they delivered!  You can find them as part of the printable package here.) 

The Dining Car/Snack Time:  Who knew little engineers could work up such an appetite?  It's a good thing the Carver Express was serving snacks in the dining car. 

Guests enjoyed sitting down to refreshing Chugga Chugga water.  I love how a simple beverage wrap can add so much pizzazz to a basic place setting.  Of course, it's way more fun drinking out of stripey straws.  Polka Dot Market contributed the darling engineer blue (navy) striped straws which I adorned with cute little printable party flags from the AR collection.  Knowing I needed a creative container to house fruit snacks and crackers, I had Maureen custom design a fry container for each child.  Aren't they adorable?  With a little tissue paper fringe attached, the festive look was easily achieved. 

I kept the dining car simple with a red/white striped runner, more DIY train cars that acted as balloon weights and framed pictures of our birthday boy riding the train.  The chairs were dressed up with the red bandanas that each child claimed upon arrival.  Place settings consisted of a conductor hat, train whistle, fry box filled with snacks, party straw and flavored water.

Dessert Table Highlights:  Of course, the focal point of a birthday party (besides the guest of honor) is the dessert table!  The color scheme of our event was navy blue, red & light blue.  Red tissue paper fans & red & blue polka dot balloons from Polka Dot Market combined with the colorful striped & polka dot banner included in Anders Ruff's printable package provided an eye-catching backdrop for the table.  An inexpensive red & white striped tablerunner was created from wrapping paper!  (I continually remind myself that parties don't have to be expensive! Reduce, reuse, recycle!)  And, the table was literally littered with almost a dozen scrumptious desserts.

The cake & cupcakes:  Brittany, of Edible Details always does such beautiful fondant work.  She customized the adorable 3-D fondant train topper and cupcake toppers to match the cute train designed by Anders Ruff on the coordinating printables.  If it's possible for something to be 'too cute to eat', her fondant masterpieces would definitely qualify!

The Cake:  Don't you just love the train chugging across the cake?  If you aren't a master cake decorator and hiring a bakery to make a custom cake isn't in your budget, a less expensive alternative is ordering a plain white cake from Costco or a local grocery store and adding custom fondant designs, like those seen here from Edible Details. 

The Cupcakes:  One of my favorite party details is the cupcakes!  I asked Anders Ruff to add a custom designed cupcake wrapper with my printable package.  Paired with the darling fondant train toppers, they added so much color to the dessert table.

Custom Train Cookies:  Becoming acquainted with talented dessert artists from all over the country is one of my favorite parts about styling parties.  Liz, better known as" Arty McGoo", does stunning work!  Her attention to detail was amazing.  Not only were the train cookie favors precious, they were equally delicious (I snuck a few nibbles!) and came individually packaged to ensure freshness & easy distributing.  The little engineers had so much fun moving their cookies around, chugging them along imaginary tracks before taking their first mouth-watering bite!

 Popcorn Cones:  My son is a self-proclaimed popcorn addict, so it was only fitting to request that Anders Ruff design popcorn cones for this event!  I just love the striped and polka dot patterned paper.  Simply print the template & cut!  They were so easy to assemble.  Tissue paper fringe, from Polka Dot Market was added to the top for extra cuteness!

Party Favors:  A custom luggage tag was attached to gift bags embellished with tissue paper rosettes, a ribbon sash and Anders Ruff party labels.  The bags sat atop our 'Luggage' table.  Each attendee took home the bag full of their train whistle, conductor hat & bandana.

In addition, goodie bags (clear white window bags from Nashville Wraps), decorated with more coordinating printables from Anders Ruff were lined up on the train track-covered table.  Guests filled up their bags with sweets from the dessert table for their journey home."

Vintage Train Station Birthday Party

And next up...this amazing VINTAGE TRAIN STATION 3RD BIRTHDAY PARTY submitted by Belinda Ramanauskas of Styled By Belle. What a party. I am in awe. So many darling details. I had to stare at each picture just to soak it all in. Love the box cars holding all the treats and desserts. And the burlap everywhere couldn't be more perfect. I'm just lovin' burlap these days! This party is definitely a heart stopper. You'll want to scroll through all the lovely photos slowly.

Here is what Belinda said about the party- "For my son Aidan’s 3rd birthday party I wanted to create a train party, but keeping away from the commercial Thomas that he absolutely loves. I decided to create Aidan his very own train station called “Aidansville” and used the colour palette of sky blue and red.

I created a super long (4.5 metre) dessert table and covered it with hessian to give it a rustic feel. I spent many late nights painting and building props including – a custom train station backdrop that I drew and hand painted myself. The station was of course called “Aidansville”, the clock was pointing to “3 o’clock” (being Aidan’s age) and I had 2 windows representing “Tickets” and “Luggage”. I got my little man dressed up as a train driver and took photos of him before the party to stick in the windows (you might notice one is of him holding tickets for the ticket booth window and the second photo of him holding mini suitcases for the luggage window)

I built a wooden train track to line the front of the table and bought plastic tubs that I painted red & blue and put wheels on to create “train carriages” to hold the food platters. Aidan already had a cute vintage red ride-on wooden train that headed the table and “pulled” the carriages along the tracks!

The menu consisted of: caramel popcorn, chocolate bars in custom wrappers, train sugar cookies, cupcakes, jelly jars, oreo cookie pops, wild berry yogurt push pops, chocolate ripple cake and fruit skewers (of which I used a train shape cookie cutter to cut the watermelon pieces). I also had lolly jars filled with red & blue candy: jaffas, bon bons, jelly beans, raspberries, sour straps and clouds.

I had a wonderful train & carriage birthday cake made by my friend Kylie Bourban and she did an amazing job! The train and carriage were each a different flavour: chocolate mud, white chocolate mud, jaffa mud & banana mud. Yum!

To set the scene, I had a relative dress as the “Fat Controller” and he greeted guests as they arrived. I made train boom gates and had them positioned along a train track we stuck on the ground using black tape. I also made a “Railway Crossing” traffic sign and had a STOP sign along the tracks.

The kids received lots of little train paraphernalia to take home – train shaped crayons, train whistles, train driver hats and train drink bottles. I also had wooden train toys that the children were able to paint themselves and take home.

A really great party that was “choo-choo” fun!!

Vendor credits: 

Photography – Lee Bird Photography 
Birthday cake – Kylie Bourban 
Train Collection Stationary Printables – Parties by Hardie