Firefighter/Dalmation -4yr- Dalmation Cookies

Firefighter/Dalmation Birthday Party 

For the invitations, I used red cardstock and ran them through the printer to creat black lines for the effect of dimension and then cut them into the shape of the front of a firehat (like you were looking straight at it) and then I ran yellow-gold cardstock through the printer to print Fire Chief and designs in the shape of a badge. I cut these out and hot glued them onto the front of the helmet for a 3D look. On the back was printed - Calling all Firefighters!!!  On (date) there will be a 4 (my son turned 4 but could change to age needed) Alarm Party in progress at (address of party).

Sound your siren and roar on over from 2 to 4. It is sure to be a blazing hot time! If you're too burned out to volunteer, contact Fire Chief Cooper's office at 222-1111 (your phone #). This set the stage and we got a lot of compliments on these. We had put them in red envelopes and on the front had printed on cardstock a firefigher with his dalmation and on the firefighters jacket we wrote in Cooper and on the badge on his hat we wrote in a 4. We made copies of these and cut them out and glued them onto the envelopes.

The day of the party guest were greeted to a sign that said Firefighter Parking Only and had balloons on it. My son was dressed in a fireman suit and boots and greeted his guest. We held it in our backyard. On your way to the backyard, a large standing garden rabbit was dressed in fireman gear and holding an inflatable fire hose and had balloons tied to one front leg.

We rented a bouncer (our local one has a firetruck one and a dalmation one) and also had the swingset and our deck decorated with balloons that were red, blue, white with dalmation spots, white with paw prints, and silver with red firehats/axes/etc.

We had a lot of balloon bouqets so that we could also let each child take one. We had a table decorated for gifts. On the food/favor table we put a cute firetruck/dalmation tablecover and had giftboxes from birthday express in the shape of firetrucks. Inside them were matchbox firetrucks, badges, flashlights, firetruck shaped whistles, small fire hydrant squirter, dalmation stickers, bubbles that were actually spiderman but the colors I needed so took off spiderman and replaced with firetruck stickers.

Also, there was a basket that held nice hard plastic firehelmets that had chin straps and a light up siren badge for the boys, and for the girls there were dalmation ears. I had found the firehelmets at a local dollar store for $1 each…what a deal!! And I ordered the dalmation ears from birthday express. I made the cake using a Wilton firetruck cake pan. I also made sugar cookies with glazed icing in dalmations (so cute with their spots and all), firetrucks, firehydrants, and firehats. They were decorated in 3D. They got rave reviews and people could not believe I had done it all myself.

I also had ordered the mold and made white chocolate fire truck suckers. These were adorable. I had those in mini red buckets that reminded you of the old fire buckets. The cookies were on a tier stand decorated with red and black&white ribbons. I had firetruck plates that also featured dalmations. I used solid red cups and really cute firetruck napkins that had a dalmation running on the reverse side. I used a big firetruck for the centerpiece with a balloon bouqet tied to the ladder. I also had another firetruck with balloons on the food/favor table.

We had a firetruck pinata that made siren noises when hit…the kids loved this surprise! I had placed all kinds of candy inside that was mostly red including atomic fireballs, redhots, etc. I also had bought big bags of red plastic firemen and put this inside as well. I was so happy at the end of the day with the childrens smiles and ohhs and ahhs but was even happier a few days later when a mom of one of the few kids who could not come said she had ran into the mom of a child who did attend and how she went on and on about how fun the party was to the other mom.

She said she was so disappointed they could not make it. I had also called for the fire dept. to bring a firetruck by and was going to take pics of each child but we are experiencing droughts here in Texas and having lots of fires so they could not end up coming but it still was a blazing good time despite that. I would probably have added making a cardboard firetruck or backdrop to use for pics if I had it to do over knowing now that the fire dept. can not always "respond" to a little birthday candle fire!!!