It’s a rootin’ tootin’ party! Yeehaw, cowboy!
For our son’s fourth birthday we had a Buzz and Woody party! He absolutely loves Toy Story, and especially Woody, Buzz and Jessie. I started planning his birthday party way back in July, and I knew that I will do some arts and crafts as part of it, so almost 95% of the decor was DIY-ed and handmade by me and my husband. I have always loved making my own party decor, it relaxes me and the planning just adds an extra excitement to it all, plus it saves us a lot of money on decor.
Our son dressed as Buzz for his birthday, I sang “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” to him every night for months before his birthday, and we got him the talking Woody and Buzz toys from Disney a few months ago as well. We even ordered a Buzz costume from Amazon, but it failed to be delivered on time, so instead we made him a custom Buzz suit from cardboard. Props to my hubby for making it.
The timing was right for this theme, and it was also really fun that it featured some of his other favorite things: rocket ships, dinosaurs, horses, and pizza. A little boy’s dream! This was also the first birthday where he knew what was going on and was truly excited about his party, especially because he had so many of his preschool friends over.
As is the case with most parties, designing the invitation helped me set the creative direction. I started with my Toy Story inspired board on my Pinterest account. I gathered a lot of the inspiration from there, and I decided to go with a Woody shaped, cowboy, invitation. I created the templates in Adobe Illustrator, printed them out and glued them together. The cow print on Woody’s vest was handpainted with a Sharpie (permanent black marker) by me, but after completing it I realized that I should have printed the cow print on a regular paper and just glue it over the yellow template. I will say that the invitations were a real challenge, as I did not expect that I will spend as much time as I did on making them, especially because I had to make 13 invitations for each of his friends. For our adult friends and family I created e-vites. But, I enjoyed the whole process anyways and would do it all over again if I had to. As my gift to you, I am sending you the templates via email for free so you can use them if you like for your own Toy Story themed party.
To get them you just need to subscribe to my newsletter, afterwards you will receive the templates on your email:
It may take a few moments for the email to arrive, so please be patient. Also, check your spam/junk folder in case the email doesn’t arrive in your inbox. You can find the link to the tutorial at the end of this post, so keep reading. 🙂
As for the tablescape, I lost my mind and decided I needed to paint a cloud scene on some bulletin board paper to use as a tablecloth – which I did not because ultimately I ran out of time so we used a plain blue tablecloth. I feel a little bit bummed, but that’s life. The party was outside, and unfortunately there was a lot of wind while we were setting up the table for the kids and their parents, so I did not have a chance to set up our Woody printed plates. But we did use them for the cake. We had Pizza Planet pizza boxes for the kids (if you’ve seen the movie, you know how important they are), and each of the boxes had a tiny pizza inside which was done by my mother-in-law.
I also knew that I wanted to incorporate an obscure quote from the movie, so for our welcome sign we used the quote from the song “You’ve got a friend in me”. The welcome board is the same one we used for our wedding, hence the flowers and the pink ribbon. I like to reuse stuff, so we kept this one and have used it before as well.
For Buzz’s spaceship I used a huge cardboard box which I got for free from a supermarket that didn’t need it anymore. I cut out the window with a box-cutter knife, and used the rest of the cardboard to create the wings and I hot-glued them to the sides. I free-handed the painting of the entire box by painting it white, my husband helped paint the wings because by that point I was exhausted. This turned out to be a fun little photo booth for the kids, but it was pretty much demolished by the end of the party, haha.
Tutorial coming soon.
Of course we had to have Bullseye! I created these stick horses myself without stitching, well except for the detail around their mouths, but that is optional. The kids loved them. We also had cowboy hats. I have a tutorial on how to make the stick horses and the hats yourself, and it’s coming soon. I’ll update this post once the tutorial is live.
For our sweet and activity tables, we had а nice backdrop for which I used Woody’s phrase: “Reach for the sky!”, but slightly modified to incoporate the word FOUR for my son’s birthday. Unfortunately right before our little guests arrived, the wind blew away our backdrop and we had to remove it – so most of our cake photos are without it. 🙁 But everything looked good anyways, and the most important thing is that our son was super happy and he and his friends had a wonderful time.
I ordered a 1m2 styrofoam cutout in the shape of Woody, Jessie and Buzz and had it placed next to the activities table which contained some crayons and coloring pages with Jessie and Bullseye and Woody and Buzz. The main table for the cake was wrapped with the cardboard in which the styrofoam figure arrived, and I had only written the word ‘Sunnyside’ on it, making it look like the box used in the third movie in which the toys are taken to Bonnie’s daycare. It was a really nice detail if you ask me, and we got to reuse the cardboard. We also had facepainting which I did myself to each of the kids. The styrofoam decor got a second use as a decor at our son’s room, along with two of the horsies.
We had a Spiderman cake in the shape of the number 4, because that’s what my son requested and we have to respect his wishes – it’s his birthday after all.
The morning, before the party, we had a little intimate party for our son at our home right after he woke up. I had set up carton boxes spelling out his name, similar to the legos used in the movie, and at the top there was Buzz greeting him along with a plate full of chocolate donuts – his favorite. He blew out the candles and had a donut for breakfast – like a true birthday boy.
While I obviously love to throw parties, I’m also happy (and exhausted) when they come to an end. My friends joke that at around the 1.5/2 hour mark, you will usually see me saying, “Thank ya’ll so much for coming!” and handing out party favors. These little pizzas were a perfect parting gift (and I may have stashed away one or two for myself!)
We had so much at our son’s birthday party, and I hope this inspires some of your own rootin’ tootin’, out-of-this-world Toy Story parties. To infinity and beyond!
Check out all of the tutorials and party materials at the links below:
Materials:
Styrofoam Woody, Jessie and Buzz Decor – @bukviifiguriodstiropor
Pizza Boxes and large boxes – Panter Mis
Woody plates and cups: AliExpress
Toy Story Balloons: AliExpress
Woody Balloons: AliExpress
Tutorials:
Tutorial: How to Create a Woody (Toy Story) Shaped Invitation
Tutorial: How to Make a Buzz Lightyear’s Spaceship Photo Booth
DIY Bullseye-Inspired Horse Sticks Tutorial
