How To Make a Dr. Seuss Costume: The Lorax Truffula Tree

This is an easy, inexpensive costume idea to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday and Read Across America Week, or you know, a normal Tuesday is totally fine, too.

What you'll need:

• 8 sheets of bright-colored tissue paper
• Scissors
• Floral wire
• Hot glue gun
• Plastic headband
• Colored duct tape
• White cardstock paper (optional)

The headdress:

1. Fold the 8 sheet stack of tissue paper back-and-forth into a 1 and 1/2 inch accordion.

2. Tie the middle with a 6-inch piece of floral wire.

3. Cut each end with scissors. Normally on tissue flowers, the ends are rounded, but I think for truffula trees, it looks better if the ends are pointed.

4. Fan out the accordion on both ends and then pull each piece of tissue paper one-by-one until you have a pretty, fluffy ball.

Photo Source: Beehives and Birdsnest

(I also found a nice YouTube tutorial HERE.)

6. Use the excess wire to attach the tissue pom to the headband. Add hot glue to secure in place.

And... ta-da! A truffula tree headdress is born. Whassup, Once-ler?

The trunk:

1) Choose dark clothing: black, brown or gray.

2) Cut strips of duct tape and place them on clothes to create the stripes. Yellow would be best since that's the color on truffula trees, but we couldn't find any, so we went with bright green instead.

Helpful Hints for the trunk: 

* Originally, I put tape all the way around her clothes, but that made them have absolutely zero give, and you don't think about how much your clothes need to stretch to actually put them on. Ahem. For take two, I put no tape across the back.

* After much trail and error, I found that it was better to tape the shirt before she put it on, but better to tape the pants while she was wearing them.


The sign:

We decided to add a sign with a quote from the movie. I whipped up one using PicMonkey and then printed it out on white cardstock paper in a 5x7 photo size.

I folded a strip of duct tape in half so that all the stinky part stayed inside to create the necklace. I taped each end to the back of the sign. Bonus Gift: exact color match to the rest of the costume.

And hey, if you don't feel like making a sign, feel free to snag mine.

Race Car Birthday Party

My three-year-old is totally into race cars right now.  This is awesome for two reasons:

1) Race cars are everywhere and they are cheap.  I can pick up a Matchbox car for about a buck, which I do every single time that I attempt to take him to Target.  I'm not above bribery.

2) Race car is a Palindrome.  You know, words or phrases that are spelled the same forward and backward like level, civic, madam - and Drew's personal favorite - toot.  

I love grammar almost as much as I love buying his good behavior for a dollar.   

The party room

The Pit Stop: "dipsticks", strawberries, race car lollipops, "traffic lights", "Indy Cars", popcorn, Cars cookies, "tires", birthday cake and ice cream, Gatorade, Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero.  Bailey asked if we could get orange Gatorade instead and I was all like, "uh... sorry... doesn't match the party theme."

I made Indy Cars out of Swiss Cake Rolls, pretzel sticks and mini-marshmallows

Dipsticks were chocolate-dipped pretzels.  They probably taste much better than actual dipsticks.

I made checkered flag cones to fill with popcorn.

Tires were chocolate covered donuts.

I made traffic lights out of Rice Krispie treats and M&Ms.

I designed a pit pass for each child to wear at the party.  The birthday boy was the Crew Chief. 

Crafts, favors and pit passes 

We made race car door hangers.

We painted white matchbox cars with permanent markers.  I loved seeing all the kids' creations. 

Each child got to pose in the race car driver poster.

Opening gifts.  Do you think he's excited?  I can't tell. 

Happy 3rd Birthday, handsome!

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Email me if you would like pricing for custom printables for your race car party!  Or, I can do custom designs for any party theme.

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Train Birthday Party

After my Camp Bailey post, I realized that I never posted anything about Drew's birthday party.  So this is a little late (7 months late to be exact).  Better late than never?

My little guy is a big fan of trains.  And cars.  And motorcycles.  And planes.  And helicopters.  And basically anything that makes a loud noise or can travel very fast.  And if they do both... all the better!  So we turned our house into Andrew Liam Station.

The train ticket invitation

The travel itinerary 

The Hohenbery Express - designed and made my the train engineer's Mama! :)

First stop  was the Museum of Art.  

Each child made their own artwork for the station wall

Tattoos were next on the itinerary 

Drew picked a snake.  

The kids' favorite stop - the Toy Store

Each child received Drew Bucks to spend in the store

It was like Black Friday up in there. :)

Finally back to Andrew Liam station where each child had their own parcel package of goodies waiting for them at baggage claim.

The birthday boy!

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EMAIL ME if you are interested in pricing for your custom printables for your child's train party!  Or, please contact me regarding any other party theme as well. 

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Camping Birthday Party

Bailey mentioned that she would like to have a camping party to celebrate her 10th birthday.  Of course, what she meant by "a camping party" was inviting a couple of friends to go into the woods to fish, roast hot dogs and actually sleep in a tent...  and what I meant by "a camping party" was custom wrapped Hersey bars and hand crafted tent centerpieces.  So, we put our heads together to create CAMP BAILEY!

Each camper received a backpack, compass and flashlight to begin their camping adventure 

The food table: s'mores, trail mix, granola bark, chocolate covered donuts, cookies, hot dogs, chips, cake pops and s'mores cupcakes.  A perfect camping meal. 

Hungry campers 

I made custom Hersey wrappers.  One lucky camper got the candy bar with the Camp Bailey logo on the inside and won $5! 

Picnic style dinner 

"Gone Fishin'" Game where campers used real poles to catch plastic fish (magnets on bobbers).  And "Duck Hunt" where campers picked a duck out of the 'pond'.  The number on the bottom of the duck had a number which represented a prize bucket.  All the ducks were wearing camping gear.  Too cute! 

No camping party is complete without shooting games!

Campers tried to shoot the cups off the shelves.  Each camper won a prize every time they played a game.  We gave away over 350 prizes at Camp Bailey. :)  The campers kept their prizes in their backpacks. 

Injured Camper Relay Race.  Two teams of campers, each with an injured camper.  One by one, campers run to the injured camper to help them with ace bandages, ice packs or band-aids for mosquito bites (red stickers) and then ran back to tag the next person in line.  The last camper helps the injured camper hop on one foot back to the campsite.  The first team back to Camp Bailey wins!

The Camp Bailey welcome tent that I made for the front step - complete with campfire

The party ended with s'mores by the campfire 

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