How to Train Your Birthday Party

Choo choo Logan's two..

My youngest grandson turned two on Christmas Day and had a train birthday party last Saturday.  My daughter and I had so much fun getting every thing ready.  She's very creative and of course Pinterest provided some great ideas.  Most of the decorations were made with items bought from the dollar store.  Here's what she came up with:

*White table plastic table cloths with black duct tape railroad tracks

*Bright green metal pails with yellow railroad crossing signs hot-glued to sticks (paint stir sticks work well) and filled with rocks that were "borrowed" from along side the railroad tracks.  The rocks keep the signs up and were returned after the party.

* Duct tape railroad tracks on the sidewalk leading up to the house
* White railroad crossing signs on stakes for the entrance to the party and next to the food table

* "Train" cars made out of green and blue plastic containers with wheels glued on for the chips and carrots with clear containers, again with glue on wheels for the dip. At the front of each train there was a wood locomotive wood cut-out ($1) painted gray. This completed the train.

* Goodie bags were green plastic containers with wheels glued on. They contained a wooden train whistle, one of the wood train cut-outs to paint, a balloon punch ball and a locomotive made with candy.

* On the food table she used a toy wooden train as a centerpiece
* Pictures of Logan from the prior year were blown-up into 5x7 size, hole-punched an strung on the ribbons attached to the helium balloons.  Some of the borrowed rocks were tied to the ribbons so the balloons did not float away.  She put these on all of the tables.

* A train made from cardboard boxes that were spray painted and taped together - this was for the kids to crawl through (little kids)
* Cake that Grandma made - that's me.  It's included in the pictures below.

I baked the cake in a 16x16 square pan that takes 3 cake mixes.  Then I baked another regular size sheet cake and cut the "2" out of this cake.  I put the "2" on top of the square cake. Each cake was frosted with colored vanilla flavored frosting.  The green color was changed by adding one can of white and a lot of yellow food coloring to make it a bright lime green (it's kind of a Christmas green in the can), The sprinkles came with the green frosting.  I piped white around the edges and embedded green, yellow, blue and brown m&m's along the edge.  The railroad track is hershey's candy bar pieces and the "rails" are black frosting that you can buy in a tube. We printed the birthday sign, glued it to foam board and used paper straws for the posts.  The final touch was one of Logan's wood engines set on top of the tracks. Total cost was about $20 with lots of candy left.  And - it tasted good!