"Spared no expense."
This year, our son turned 10, the age we stop large birthday parties. The theme had to be a good one, but what could live up to the parties of previous years? We decided on a Jurassic Park party. First thing I had to come up with was a creative invitation. I decided on a "dinosaur egg" in a box. I went on eBay and found someone who sells ostrich eggs. I bought 12. I bought these boxes. I also bought basket filling shredded paper, "nesting material" for the egg here. A little of this paper goes a long way, so not much is needed.
I printed out the invitation with DNA letters in the background. I wanted to use as much from the first Jurassic Park movie as possible. In the movie, Malcom raises concern that the dinosaurs will breed even though he is told that all the dinosaurs are girls. He said the line, "Life finds a way." Later, as Dr. Grant is trekking through the park with Hammond's grandchildren, he finds dinosaur eggs and repeats Malcom's words.
Near the end of the movie when Ellie, Dr. Grant, Lex and Tim have to climb into the ceiling to elude a velociraptor, the raptor raised her head and appears to smell through the tiny holes of the metal ceiling tiles. It shone light onto the raptor's face through those ceiling tiles, but instead of the holes passing light through in little circles, the light shows up as the letters ATCG, the letters of the DNA strand. This detail always fascinated me and had to incorporate it into the party. I added the letters as the background of the invitation below. These invite printouts were 5x7. I tightly rolled them up and slid them through the hole at the bottom of the egg. I left a small piece hanging out, so the guests did not have to break the egg.
The eggs I bought had a hole in the ends to clean out the contents. I had to make the holes bigger for the invites to fit. I used a pair of scissors to gently carve a larger hole.
I placed the invitation in the egg. I placed the egg into the nesting box. I printed out Jurassic Park logos onto sticker paper, cut each one out and put the sticker on the underside of the lid. I wanted the theme to be revealed at the same time our guests saw the egg. We hand delivered each invitation.
If you have seen my other party posts, you know that decorating the front porch is a big deal to me. I want our guests to be greeted with the theme, surprised and excited. I looked to rent a large dinosaur, but I found nothing in our area. I knew we would have to make something. I decided I wanted to make a velociraptor cage.
My husband went to the local hardware store and asked for some pallets. We used 8 pallets total for this project, 2 for each side. We screwed three sides together and filled the "cage" with palm fronds and bamboo stalks from our yard. I did not want anyone to see through the cage. Mystery breeds curiosity and wonder. I bought a raptor hand puppet and dinosaur claw gloves for this cage.
In the first Jurassic Park movie, Muldoon has his rifle pointed at a raptor in the jungle while Ellie runs to turn the power back on. A raptor he did not know was there bursts through the trees to his immediate left. He says, "Clever girl," just as he is about to be attacked. As he is being attacked, the camera captures the first raptor with her eye peeking out through the jungle leaves. I wanted to depict this raptor in the cage. I used the above hand puppet as that raptor. I put the puppet on a piece of bamboo at the proper height. No one could see the rest of what would be her body because of the palm fronds and bamboo stalks. I placed the claw gloves in various places to elude there was over one dinosaur in the crate. We added the back portion of the gate to close everything in. Not that wide, but the plants made it so you could not see the inside or through to the other side.
On the day of the party, we placed signs on the crate. More signs here. We added red tape as an homage to the last Jurasic world movie in which a little girl crosses the red line and nearly gets eaten by a what I believe was a hybrid dinosaur called a Scorpius Rex.
Here is the result.
On the day of the party, I found an hour-long video on YouTube of nothing but velociraptor sounds. We placed a bluetooth speaker inside the crate and played the video sounds as our guests arrived. We have great doorbell video footage of our guests' reactions.
Check out the video of what our guests experienced as they arrived. Watch for that dinosaur eye.
I held the entire party on my back porch and yard. We rented a Volcano water slide, but it had a hole in it. We ended up with a 20' wave slide. That is where the kids spent most of their time. I believe the decorations were for me :)
For the cake and food table, we used the table that was already in the space. I covered it with a disposable table cloth. The backdrop has a wooden frame my husband built to hold the hedge display. He added a cross bar to hang the T-Rex head. My favorite thing in this picture is the banner.
My husband made the cake with seven layers of round cakes which he shaved down to look like a volcano. He then decorated it with various colors of icing. The paper buckets on the left side, which hold bags of chips, were bought at Party City.
A friend of mine made cookies to "walk" across the table. She used this cookie cutter. She placed each cookie in individual bags.
I purchased dinosaur eye lollipops here.
There were a couple more must haves for this party. The mosquito in amber which adorned the top of Dr. Hammond's cane and the Barbisol contraption Nedry used to sneak dinosaur embryos out of the lab. I found the latter, which was 3-D printed, on E-bay.
I used red and green Hawaiian Punch and added sprite. One was Jurassic Juice and other labeled Swamp Water.
While the kids ate and played outside, I made a space for adults to congregate inside. I made this charcuterie board for adults only.
The party was a big hit. I think the water slide did it but I would like to think we will remember the details for years to come.
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