When my son told us he wanted a dinousaur birthday party for his 3rd birthday, I never imagined that it would turn out to be as fun to plan as it was. We started with the invitations featuring a picture of our son "riding" on a dinosaur. I had taken a picture of him pretending to ride a dinosaur, used Microsoft Picture It to cut the background out of the picture, and put in a clip art of a realistic looking dinosaur. I added a border around the whole thing and the wording to the invitation and then had them printed at a local print shop. Our son loved them, and they were a hit among the invitees. And very reasonable- just $12.00 for 20 invitations. Several people asked where we had found that big dinosaur for him to ride for the picture. They thought the picture was real!  On the party day, we had several activities set up for while the children were arriving. On a kid's table, we put down a dinsaur play mat and two sets of dinos we got from the 88 cent section of Walmart. At our kitchen table we had bowls of water and capsules of growing dinosaurs that grow in the water. And in our den we had built a huge cave out of two big screen TV boxes and drawn lots of large dinosaurs inside the cave for the kids to color. After everyone arrived, we gave each child a bag decorated with his/her name and dinsaur stickers to collect prizes from the games. Our first game was an "Extinction Walk." The children walked around in a circle on cards we had made with different dinosaurs on them, and when the music stopped, we drew a dinosaur from a hat to see who became extinct. As each child became extinct, they won a prize. Then we had a dinosaur egg dig on our back porch. We hid eggs with dinosaurs inside that we got from Oriental Trading Co., and we hid them in pea gravel in one of those large two-sided children's sand tables. The pea gravel kept the kids from getting as dirty as they would have with sand. Our last activity was a pull-string dinosaur pinata filled with candy and dinosaur stickers.  For our menu, we had dinosaur chicken nuggets, dinosaur fruit snacks, chips, fruit, and dinosaur drinks from Wal-greens. And for the cake, my husband made a fantastic Triceratops cake. We cut cake pieces to form the body, head, and tail, and then piped green icing all over to make it look like dinsaour skin. We used MM's for the eyes, we cut large pretzel rods to the right size and iced them in chocolate icing to make the three horns. We cut a paper plate into the right shape to form the frill, and then iced it with chocolate icing. We used Hershey's Kisses pushed down into the icing to form the small spikes down the back and the tail. It ended up looking jsut like some of his play dinsaurs and he was thrilled. With the cake, we served foil cupcake holders that we had filled with ice cream and dinosaur sprinkles before the party. It made serving the ice-cream so much easier. At the end of the party, each child got a dinosaur favor pack from BirthdayExpress.com. Many of the children ending up staying and playing long after the party had ended. We were thrilled with how everything turned out and appreciate this site so much. Several of the ideas we had originally found on birthdaypartyideas.com and then modified to fit our party.