Toy Story Birthday Party

​Yay! It is your little one's birthday and judging by the fact that you are reading this blog post, there is a Disney fan in the midst. My husband and I are self-titled Disnerds. When we were expecting our first little one, we planned on doing a Toy Story gender reveal party, but then Covid hit. We had already purchased so many decorations and supplies that we decided to hold onto them until our son's first birthday. 

I spent a lot of time brainstorming and utilizing Pinterest to think like an Imagineer. Below is a combination of ideas I found and created along the way as well as some tips and tricks to how I pulled it off. 

 For The first thing I wanted to do was create a huge set of blocks that spelled out Jack's name. I didn't want to spend a fortune on blank boxes or be stuck with purchasing the required amount of 25 boxes. At first, I was going to buy moving boxes and just wrap them in brown paper, but then it dawned on me I was creating more work for myself. I realized I could get blank boxes that I wanted by turning them inside out and reassembling them. Here is what I did to do this.

Materials Needed For Boxes:

• Moving Boxes
• 12"x18" construction paper
• Hot Glue Gun with glue sticks
• Scissors
• Paper cutter (optional, but highly recommended)
• Rubber Cement

1. Buy moving boxes that have the closest proportions to a square. The closest I found were 18" x 18 x 16".

Flip your boxes inside out and place a strip of hot glue along the seam.

2. Carefully remove the box. It is okay if some of the cardboard peels. This will be covered by construction paper.

Hold it down to let the glue dry. The box is going to want to pull away.

Cut 2-3 inch wide strips. Add rubber cement to the strip and box. IMPORTANT: Let the glue dry on both pieces. Rubber cement acts as a Velcro. Once the glue is dry, press into place. Trim any extra paper.

Grab your glue gun and plug it in. You have to work fast.

Place a few dabs of glue on the box tops to hold the lid and bottom down

---

The Cake

Unfortunately, Wegmans no longer creates the custom birthday cakes that I grew up loving. I was slightly saddened knowing Jack would never get to have the thrill of looking through the cake book with all of the characters and designs like I did growing up.

I looked up how much it would cost to have a custom cake made by a professional. I was shocked when I was quoted $80-$90 for the cake. That was too much for my budget. 

So here is what I did. I ordered a frosted round double-tiered cake from Wegmans for $20. I then purchased some extra icing, large lollipops, and candy eyes from the backing aisle to add the frosted details.  I ordered the figures off of Amazon.

The day before the party, I decorated the cake. I let the frosting sit in the fridge overnight so that the icing would be more firm and easier to work with when frosting. I looked up how to make a white chocolate ganache for the blue cake drips. I later discovered that they sell icing in the store specifically for this technique. 

Once the ganache cooled in the fridge, I added on the swirl aliens. It is crucial that the ganache has been hardened before attempting to add more frosting. I learned the hard way that if you don't wait for it to be chilled, the aliens will slide off the edge of the cake. It was a glorious disaster, to say the least.  I ran to Walmart, grabbed extra materials, scrapped the cake off, and started over.

My last bit of advice is to wait until the day of to add in the lollipops and figurines. Because my cake was so tall now, I couldn't put the cake lid back on to cover the cake overnight.

Using my Cricut, I created these huge barrel of monkey cut outs. I hung them outside the house and inside as well.

I had a blast hiding these little green army men all over the house. I had them in crazy places and the kids had a lot of fun looking for where they might spot more toy soldiers. I went to the dollar store and bought a few packs.

We tied our Woody & Buzz Lightyear themed balloons to toys and clear buckets of soldiers. They didn't stay on the tables long as you can see.

I handmade these pizza boxes. I was worried using vinyl would peel the boxes when I removed the transfer tape. I made a stencil and used a make up sponge and acrylic paint. The kids loved having their own pizza boxes.

We had our guest Disneybound and dress in their favorite character colors. My niece and nephew were Belle & Beast.

We had lots of Toy story themed foods. Unfortunately, being the host I didn't get a photo of each food item, but here was our birthday menu. Here is a link to the food cards that I created.

Printable Toy Story Food Cards

Appetizers:
Buzz's Mexican Salsa
Bullseye's Carrots
Buzz's rocket fuel (lemonade)

Main Menu:
Pizza Planet Pizza
Al's Chicken Tenders
Slinky's Spiral Mac N' Cheese
Mr. Potato's Tots

Dessert:
DIY Birthday Cake
Alien Cupcakes
Ham's Gold Coins