CHUG A CHUG A CHOOOO CHOOO!

My friend Julie has been there and done that, as you can see above.  But her youngest wants a train party, about 5 months after his older brother's train party.  But she did trains!  She had a stellar train affair, with a train cake (pictured above), train cookies, train ticket invites, and even a train crossing sign.

What's a girl to do?  I talked about this here.  It seems to be a common problem.  My youngest always wants the same party her older sister just had.  With my girls, it's princesses.  .  With Julie's boys, it's trains.  There's nothing wrong with doing the exact same thing...but for gals like us, we like to challenge our creativity and shake it up a bit.

So...we have been brainstorming new and inventive ways to make her second train party just as exciting as the first.

With Halloween right around the corner, Julie thought up having her kiddos dress as trains.  And then we thought- "How fun would it be to let the party guests make their own train costumes at the party, using re-useable/found objects?"  I've said it a million times before, but I'll say it again- kids love to dress up.  They love to pretend.  And Julie and I love to recycle- thus the idea for making train costumes out of boxes.  Turns out, lots of people have done it and there are tons of links for how to do it.  This one seems to be the easiest.

The idea is to have the cardboard boxes ready for the kids to personalize with stickers, markers, etc. and then to let them chug a chug a choo choo around the house in their costumes.  She already has the train crossing sign and sound effects, so these costumes will fit in perfectly and make for adorable photo ops.  Also, the kiddos can take them home as their favor.

Speaking of favors, another idea I love is to use these molds to make recycled train crayons.  Julie and her boys can do this together beforehand.  All you have to do is take crayon remnants (if you don't have enough, ask your child's teacher- I guarantee she has a box in a closet of what I call crayon nibs), melt them down, and pour them into the molds.  The molds can be re-used- even to make chocolate candies!

You can also buy them here on etsy

If you want to take it one step further, I think these conductor hats are  A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!

This party is for a 3 year old, so I think one activity is enough.  But for older kids, I think using die-cuts like these to do another craft would be fun.  They could also be used to make a cute tablecloth for the cake table. Then, afterward, you could use them to decorate plain card stock for thank you notes.

If you have any other train ideas, let us know!