Zachary's Construction Site

I am not a very organized person, as I said before. But I can throw a good party and Zachary's fourth birthday party turned out to be a great success! I have three main rules for parties: 1. It has to be age appropriate. 2. Get help when you need it! 3. There has to be a theme. If there's a theme, it all falls into place. Our themes in the past have been:
jumping (monkeys and frogs for Annalise's second)
water (Zachary's second)
cooking (Annalise's third)
racing (bike races and also "Lightning McQueen" for Zachary's third)
"Fancy Nancy" (Annalise's fifth)
cheerleading (Annalise's sixth)
All of the activities, party favors, food (when possible) and decorations fit the theme. This is the only way I can get a handle on the organization. The theme for Zachary's fourth was construction. Here's what we did:
Invitations:
I always have a picture of the birthday kid on the invitation. It makes it personal and is a good record for me. I have them pose in a way that sets the stage for the party. This year Zachary posed with his tool box, hard hat and a construction vehicle. It read "Dirt, paint, trucks and more/ Zachary is turning four." At the bottom of the invites, we said, "Come prepared to get dirty."
Decorations:
We bought caution tape at OSH and strung it all around the house, across the front door and garage and along the path to the backyard. We also used the orange cones from last years' racing party. All the table covers and utensils were yellow and black. I made a few signs that looked like construction signs, reading "Zachary's Construction Site", "Hard Hat Area" and "Party Zone." And that's it! It was very simple.
Activites:
1. The main activity was "building houses." Actually Jason had built the houses in advance using huge cardboard boxes. The kids used washable terpera paint to paint the houses and glued on construction paper shingles.
2. We made mud out of our planters and stuck Zachary's various construction toys in them for the kids to play.
3. We covered different sized boxes with construction paper and the kids took turns knocking them down with a wrecking ball (tennis ball on a string).
4. I bought from Oriental Trading some construction sticker pages. (I bought these kind of as an afterthought, but most kids ended up doing them.)
5. We set out the train table with Legos on it.
6. We spread our infamous huge pink flowered beach blanket (which was my parents' beach blanket and before that their king-sized bedspread) just inside the doors on the living room floor. We spread out construction books and puzzles. Originally I thought I'd put it outside under an umbrella, but it was so hot we put it in. It was a good decision because it was SO HOT!
Food:
The party was at 10 in the morning because it's so hot here in July. So we had bagels, watermelon and Jell-O cut into "bricks" (the effect was poorly executed by me and totally lost on the kids, but they liked the Jell-O!). We had two cakes -- a yellow construction truck cake (my first attmpt at something like that and it was not too bad!) and a "dirt" cake (yellow cupcakes frosted as one big cake with chocolate frosting, crushed up Oreos and gummy worms). I promise I'll have Jason post pictures!
Help:
Ben, one of my junior high school tutoring kids came over to help. He and a friend acted as "catchers" for the bike races last year (to catch the kids before they raced down the hill!) and were a huge success. This year he came to help us set up and helped the kids paint and re-stack blocks for the wrecking ball. Having kids help is HUGE! He's so helpful and the kids LOVE it! (We've hired girls to help paint nails, etc. for the Fancy Nancy party and had the Varsity cheerleaders come for that party.)
Favors:
The main party favor was a very small Lego kit with a constuction worker and cement mixer. But when they walked into the party, each kid got a Home Depot waste apron with their name on it and a plastic hard hat also with their name on it. To fill their pockets were a carpenter's pencil, a mini flashlight, a blow-up hammer and stickers.

The party was fun, surprisingly mellow and pretty simple. All the activites were basically free, aside from the cost of paint and paintbrushes and the sticker pages. We're already scheming for next year. (And Annalise wants a rock star party for her seventh! Yikes!)