One of the most common questions we get here at DSC are along the lines of, “What kind of crafts can I do for *insert party theme here*?” We love themed parties and are always glad to help when it comes to brainstorming!
Today’s question comes from reader Katrena, who is planning a Toy Story themed birthday party for her soon-to-be-3-year-old stepson. She wants to go all-out with the theme without going all-out with the budget. She’s already sent out invitations she made with Toy Story pictures on them, and she also sent out invitations on Facebook using a Toy Story image.
Without spending much money, what other things can she do to flesh out the Toy Story theme?
[Image: Entrance to the Toy Story Midway, Disney’s Hollywood Studios by Simsim2009; via Wikimedia Commons]
20 Comments
heidi@thecraftmonkey
It’s not a craft, but for food, it would be so cool if she served Mr. Potato Head!! Baked potatoes decked out with other veggies, food, etc. to look like potato head. Or she could let the kids MAKE their own potato head…then it would be food & craft! What do you think?
Coleen
On the Mr. Potato Head theme, why not do a craft too? I would get some large baking potatoes, toothpicks, and some cool things to use for eyes, noses, mouths, etc. Some good things would be gummy candies like gum drops or gummy worms. Let the kids go crazy making faces on the potatoes.
If that is too much for 3 year olds, cut out brown construction paper potatoes and then make a bunch of eyes, noses, mouths, ears, etc. out of construction paper and let them glue some Mr. Potato Heads together.
I would do Pin The Tail on The Piggy Bank and make it look like the one from Toy Story.
You can get a large poster board and make a drawing of Woody with a big mouth and an opening cut in the mouth. Mount it on some foam board and attach it to a cardboard box on the back. Fill some small ziploc bags or sew some small fabric bags and fill with rice to make tossing bags. Now you have a tossing game. Even 3 year olds should be able to do this game.
Serve hot dogs and slice them a little in the middle so they look like the Slinky Dog.
Laurie @ Gallamore West
My son was REALLY into Toy Story {especially Buzz} when he turned 5. Here’s the link to his Buzz Lightyear Space Party. It was a ton of fun!
http://gallamorewest.blogspot.com/2011/06/looking-back-sams-buzz-lightyear.html
Pat
We did a Toy Story party last year for my 3 year old grandson. We found a cowboy boot pinata and put candy and gummi worms in it and named it Woody’s Boot. We also had a friend draw Woody on a poster and we played pin the badge on Woody. We did the bean bag toss we glued pictures of toys from the movie on the bags and also where the bag was tossed. We did a army men toss game. We bought a bag of army men from the dollar store and 3 big bowls and set them apart from each other and they got a prize for the most in and the furtherist bowl away from the line. I made a cake that was Woody’s bed with Toy story cake decorations. It looked like Woody’s room I did a google search and found someone who had posted how to do it. I ran out of ideas so we did a shoe kick and gave a prize for who could kick their shoe the fartherist.
Nicole
My nephew is a huge fan of Toy Story and just turned 3. \
Cake – Use your stepson’s favorite Toy Story action figures as cake toppers.
Party Favors: I usually see bags of army men at Dollar Tree. You could probably use them in some sort of decoration or centerpiece as well.
See if you can get the soundtracks from the library to use for party music.
Toy Story Coloring pages: http://www.coloring-book.info/coloring/coloring_page.php?id=70
There are also a bunch of recipes, craft ideas and printables on the Toy Story activity page:
http://disney.go.com/toystory/activities.html
Stephanie
If you want to spend some time but no money except for cardstock and printer ink, go to http://www.paper-replika.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=28&Itemid=200304 and you can print out paper models for the characters! If these are too time consuming, there are other more simple ones at family.go.disney.com under the printables section. Happy Paper Crafting!
Stephanie
Here is the really cool activity page for the move. I want to make the Hamm Pops!!! http://disney.go.com/toystory/#/activities
Chris
Hi Everyone!
I actually helped someone with one of these and it was so much fun. We went to the dollar store and bought enough little felt cowboy hats for all the kids and made a couple of each character cutouts so the kids could choose their favorite. We did a Mr. Potato Head kind of thing, but we used playdoh. Then we made slinky dogs (again, dollar store) we printed out doubles of the face and tail and glued them onto both sides of the cardboard we used. And we used bandannas from the dollar store … we found regular red ones and we found bright green plain ones … the red ones we cut in half for neckerchiefs and the green ones we turned into capes. The games we played were also themed … hot potato … pin the nose on the pig … bean bag toss into cowboy hats. Needless to say, this was dental floss budgeted … but it was a huge hit and the kids went home exhausted and happy.
Tee
Gotta’ have little green army men!! You can just use them as part of the party favors OR
A local high school student created a huge American flag with them when the War first began (they spray painted the colors). You could spell out your child’s name and mount them to a board.
Uh, that’s it for me…no wait.
Use bandanas or bandana colored napkins everywhere.
Fernanda
We had this party last November for my 3 yr old. I bought 2 toy horses on a stick at Dollar Tree and made them have a race, I had a rope with two bandanas tied to each end as the finish line, this game was called Woody’s Round-up. We had a search for the little green armymen game, scattered them all over the grass, it was so much fun to see even the grown-up going crazy searching for them. We also had Mr. & Mrs. Potatoe Heads, I placed all their accessories in separate boxes and blindfolded the kids with bandanas, the first one to finish putting them together won a prize. I had a dinosaur decorating station, they had a set of 6 wooden dinos at The Dollar Tree, just got 2 caddies, glue, glitter, paint, markers, googly eyes, etc. I decorated that center with a banner named Buzz Lightyear’s craft space center and hung from the ceiling along with space stickers (found in at Dollar Tree where they have the wallpaper decals), made a moon and hung 3 space alien party hats too( these I found at Walmart for about $2.50).I think that the most expensive thing at the party was the piñata. For food, of course hotdogs, and if you go online to Disney Family website, there they have fun recipes, I made the cookie Jessie hats, the Woody star badge cookies, the alien cupcakes. I bake my own cakes, so I decorated it as they had it on the Playhouse Disney website (now called Disney Junior). My loot bags were the Toy Story lunchbags from again Dollar Tree, filled them with sheriff badges, cowboy theme candy & confetti found at Oriental Trading, tied them with a bandana and placed them inside a plastic cowboy hat ( a pack of 12 is $8 at O.T). Dollar Tree is your best friend for a Toy Story Theme party, they have it all !! The kids had a blast and so did the parents. I hope you have as much fun as we did!
Dawn
Walmart has some cute things in their party dept. I would get some butcher paper and draw a BIG army man silhouette and take each child’s picture with him and use those for thank you notes!
Lynn
This was the theme of my daughter’s fourth birthday last year. I made a rectangular cake with a cardboard headboard and used little toy story characters as the toys on Andy’s bed. I made alien and Hamm cupcakes – super easy and super cute (wish I could upload pics -email me for them I guess)and made star shaped cookies to look like sheriff’s badges. We played pin the tail on bull’s eye, hot potato (with mr. potato head, of course) and a stuffed toy toss where they tossed my daughter’s stuffed animals into boxes marked ‘Attic’, ‘trash’, and ‘sunnyside’. We decorated with Toy Story type toys that we had at home, streamers, balloons, and a posterboard sign that read ‘Happy Birthday Jordan 4’ written like the Toy Story 3 logo. Hope that helps!
BB
We did this theme for my daughter’s third birthday! We were SO strapped for cash, so I did it on the cheap! Let’s see what I remember… We went with the cowboy side of things, so I bought lots of red and blue bandanas to use. I made them into pennants, small bandanas for the kids to wear, used them as table linens, and wrapped strips around napkins and silverware. For favors, I bought dollar stick horses from Dollar Tree! I dressed them up with rope from Dollar Tree and a bandana around their necks and a hot glue gun. We bought a Crayola package of large Toy Story coloring pages and had my daughter color some for the walls. We used one outside as a welcome sign, and one of Bullseye as pin the tail on the horse. We used the stick horses for several races and games, and I made bandana beanbags for a game. For the food table, we put Army men, a piggy bank, a Mr. Potatohead, etch-a-sketch, Barbie, etc. between the food. We did pizza and fruit, and I made the cake. Like I said, we kept it cheap and simple! Hope this helps!
kath
Disney Family has a website: http://www.family.go.com
Go to the website and in the search box type in Toy Story theme party and it will take you to a results page with craft ideas and an actual Toy Story Party page.
Also, if you sign up for the Family Fun magazine newsletter (Family Fun is owned by Disney) they will send you a weekly newsletter with craft ideas, printouts, recipes for all types of parties, as well as Disney theme parties.
Hope this helps
kath
Here’s another link:
http://family.go.com/disney/pkg-disney-parties/
MammaDucky
I just did a cake for a Toy Story themed birthday! It was more focused on the Jessie/Woody characters, but it was super cute! She made a sign that said “Chuck Wagon Grill” and served burgers and hot dogs. She hand sketched Woody and Jessie on butcher paper and attached it to cardboard, cutting out the faces for a photo prop (the kids stood behind it with their little faces sticking through for photos, which were sent to the kids with a thank you). She bought small bales of hay and wrapped a paisley ribbon around it and stuck pictures of Toy Story characters she had printed out and attached to sucker sticks. She boughts die cut stars (I’ve seen them at the Dollar Store right now in the 4th of July section), printed out a 4 and glued it to the center. She attached that to the front of the hay. Those were centerpieces. She decorated with cow print plastic tableclothes and cow print balloons. She also hand painted a banner that read, “Welcome to the ________ corral!” Her whole party looked really fabulous and I KNOW she got most of her purchases at various dollar stores.
Maggie
I made up a pattern for little green men hats
http://pearlschell.blogspot.com/2011/05/little-green-man.html
Laura
We just did a Toy Story themed party last month for my now 4 year old– and we did it on the CHEAP. Check it out (and I have tutorials for alot of the details is you’re interested in learning more).
http://serialcheapskate.blogspot.com/2011/05/i-love-to-plan-parties.html
Liz
Target practice with silly string from the dollar store would be just like the ride@ Disney land. Make your own targets.
Have a contest who can “fall with style”if you have a trampoline -but it’s really Follow the leader or simon says.
Pin the hat on Woody or the tail on Bullseye or the eye patch on Stinky Pete. (didn’t he have one??)
Have the kids learn to lasso or ride a saw horse & take their picture all gussied-up & give it to them as a favor to take home in sepia.
Have fun; your kid won’t remember the time you spent on the party but they will remember the time you spent with them.
Liz
Lyndsay
We had a Toy Story party for my son’s 2nd birthday last year and I made an awesome cake…it looked like Andy’s bed. His present were the Buzz & Woody that I set on the cake. You can see the cake at my blog here…
http://handsomelittleman.blogspot.com/2010/06/let-them-eat-cake.html