DIY Thomas The Tank Engine Themed Birthday Party – Frugal And Plastic Free Way!

Bobcat turned 4 in March – so I’m a *little* late writing about his birthday party, but here we go. He’ s a huge Thomas The Tank Engine Fun so when I asked him what kind of cake he’d like to have he said: chocolate cake with Thomas on the top. We held it in a local pub called The Grove (if you’re around make sure you check out the fab beer garden) and had a professional entertainer from  Mr. Marvel and the kids absolutely LOVED it! It’s always a hit and miss kind of thing with party entertaining and I thought the children might find the magic show a little boring and it would be a little old-fashioned, but that was not the case, not at all. The chap was very good with the children and really funny. (They surely cover London and Surrey, but I’m not sure about other areas.) 

Since he wanted a Thomas themed cake, I naturally wanted to design the whole party around Thomas. So I had a little browse on Pinterest but didn’t really find what I was after so I came up with a few ideas. Hopefully this post will help you if you want to organise a Thomas The Tank Engine themed birthday party.

DIY Thomas The Tank Engine Themed Birthday Party – Frugal And Eco-Friendly Way!

Basically, you need to work colour coordination if you don’t want to pay for themed party kits. So buy all the balloons, party bags, table covers, etc in three basic colour: red, light blue and blue. I’ve found a little online shop specialised in eco-friendly party ware, called Little Cherry  and I’ve ordered quite a few bits from them. I googled for biodegradable balloons and that’s how I found them.

Cakes, biscuits and cupcakes

I had a local cake maker who made the cake and the biscuits for the party. whenever it’s possible, I shop local. It’s great to have local people you can count on and it’s important for me to support my local community.  

I made the cupcakes and decorated them with vanilla and chocolate flavoured icing. I bought some ready to roll icing in baby blue colour and used a star shape cookie cutter. With baby blue cup cake holders they looked quite cute I think:

And this is what the cake and the cookies looked like:

Party bags:

It is still quite challenging to build a decent party bag without crappy plastic toys, but it’s possible. I bought a big box of small Thomas The Tank Engine books and memory game cards as fillers as well as paper bags in all three theme colours: red, blue and light blue. The big box of books only costs around £18 and had 35 little books – which isn’t expensive at all. They were a big hit with the children!

Other party decoration bits

• stripy paper straws (in theme colours)
• mini, stripy, vintage looking, cinema-stye popcorn boxes
• light blue paper table covers
• light blue paper Happy Birthday banner (reusable)
• card board cake stand for the cup cakes (reusable)
• light blue paper napkins

If you want to check out my other frugal and DIY party designs, start here: DIY Hey Duggee Theme Birthday Party