Isaac is almost FOUR years old and I can hardly believe it! I’ve been looking through old photos of him (as moms do) and realized I never shared the dinosaur-themed birthday party we threw for his third birthday.

It was my first time throwing a birthday party and boy, was it stressful, even with help! The party planning for his first birthday caught me off-guard and I ran out of time before we’d even started to plan. We ended up going to the San Francisco Zoo and had a lovely time celebrating him that way.

I also had big plans for his second birthday but 2020 had other plans. Lockdowns weren’t lifting and things weren’t looking good for large gatherings, so we canceled that party, too.

I wasn’t going to go another year without throwing my kiddo a bash, so I pulled it together and settled on a dinosaur theme since he was very into dinosaurs at the time, like most three-year-olds are!

I built the color scheme of the party around the Meri Meri dinosaur garland and places I fell in love with the illustration style of the Meri Meri decorations — they were so cute! I saved some money by only ordering the dessert-sized plates and stegosaurus platters and opted for simple, compostable brown plates for the main plates.

I went with Paperless Post for invites because I loved that they had a coordinating invite that featured the Meri Meri artwork!

We found the leaf backdrop garlands and the big 3-shaped balloon from Target. We kept it easy and simple with disposable green tablecloths from the Dollar Store.

The food menu was also simple. My dad barbecued burgers and hot dogs and we laid out the burger fixings on more of the stegosaurus platters. We also made two Costco-sized boxes of dino nuggets to have a super kid-friendly option. We couldn’t really have a dinosaur kid party without dinosaur-shaped nuggets, now could we?!

Desserts are my family’s love language, so there was plenty to go around! My sister helped me out by making the tiered cake and frosting. I wanted a semi-naked cake look to it and I think she did an amazing job! We topped the cake with some of Isaac’s dinosaur toys and three beeswax birthday candles I bought from Target.

She also made the adorable freehanded meringue dinosaurs! They were a huge hit and completely adorable.

Finally, we fashioned a volcano out of donut holes. I picked up a couple dozen donut holes from our favorite donut shop and used toothpicks and a foam cone to make the volcano, which we topped with a simple sugar glaze that we dyed red to look like lava. It came out so well, I was really proud of the idea since Izzy wasn’t really into eating cake but loved donut holes!

We of course had a piñata and some dinosaur-themed game prizes (all thanks to my mother-in-law). It was awesome to get to celebrate our boy’s birthday with our families. Planning a party takes a lot out of me, though, so we’ve settled on throwing a party every other year!