The Doc McZach is in! The boys' favorite show is Doc McStuffins, so it was a natural choice for their 4th birthday theme. I'll be honest - I was pretty excited myself, but for different reasons. After doing a farm theme (aka the last time I EVER make cakes from scratch), a lame version of Max and Ruby, and two parties with diggers and dump trucks, I was ready to ride the Disney merchandizing train all the way into the party station.
I waltzed into the nearest Wal-Mart, wallet in hand, ready to buy a party. I saw Mickey, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and a ton of princess stuff. Guess what? No Doc. Target and a random sampling of craft stores didn't turn up anything, either. Are you kidding me??? Amazon tried with some latex balloons, but ugh...
To top things off, my kids had discovered Pinterest. Not a big deal, you say? They spent HOURS looking through kids' birthday cakes - the ultra fancy ones, mind you. Plus every person they met, from the guy bagging our groceries, to the random person innocently pushing their kid on a swing at the park, heard all about how they were turning 4 on June 4th and they were having a Doc McStuffins party. Expectations? They had them.
So with the cake booked two months in advance, because I dumbly decided to have kids during the peak of wedding season, I began preparations for a Doc McStuffins party. I hit up Pinterest and you can check out my board here if you like. I decided that blue, pink, and purple were the colors. Lambie is their favorite character. I have a Silhouette Cameo, ink jet printer, glue gun, and random smattering of craft supplies at my disposal. Click on the pictures for a MUCH bigger version if things are tough to make out.
I'm going to start with the party décor and see how far I get. In the picture at the top, you can see our "The Doc is In" sign. You can download it here from Disney. The link also includes instructions to make it, which I apparently didn't follow at all.
Instead I combined 8 large craft sticks, some hot glue, and the signs (In//Out) printed out on card stock. I drilled holes in two sticks and threaded some Dollar Tree clothesline through. A couple of knots and a 3M hook later and we had a sign on the front door. What I didn't think about at the time was how much fun the boys would have with the sign. It hangs on their bedroom door now, and I must hear "The Doc is Out!" one hundred times a day. Well worth the 30min and scrap supplies I put into it.
The white shirt was $4 at WalMart and I had the ink jet heat transfer material left over from another project. I imported the Lambie art from WondersofDisney.com and built the rest in the Silhouette software. You can download my Silhouette file here, and the font you'll probably need to go with it here. If your kids aren't named Alex and Zach and they aren't turning four, you'll probably need to ungroup the items and tweak the text (purple/pink and the white offset). You can mirror image it so you don't go insane trying to get things to look right, but don't forget to flip it back around before printing!
Party City had the overpriced tissue paper pompoms, curly streamers and purple streamers, but I needed to pick my battles. The Dollar Tree and Walmart took my money and handed me the table cloths and blue/pink streamer material. You'll need to check the baby sections for the pink and blue, though. I ordered two packs of Doc McStuffins removable wall decals from Amazon. They were on the small side for our giant, bare walls, but we made due. (Once the party was over, some of them moved to the boys' bathroom to decorate in there.) The table was for guests to write their name on their badges and pick up their doctor kits. I'll cover those more once I get there.
The balloons are from the Dollar Tree and are still inflated and floating around 3 weeks later. They were out of the pink stars so I called an audible and bought pink "Happy Birthday" ones instead.
I saw a pin for some awesome centerpieces but couldn't figure out how to order them from the website. Instead I grabbed Doc art from WondersofDisney.com again and made my own. The only downside is I couldn't find art of anyone except the 5 main characters. That company got it somewhere, but I couldn't figure it out.
What you'll need:
- ~30 sheets of cardstock
- 5 Large craft sticks
- 3 Floral foam blocks in the 5in range
- Hacksaw, knife, or something that cuts foam blocks
- Hot glue and gun
- Silhouette and printer
- Art from WondersofDisney.com
- Tissue paper, purple in my case
1. I cut the foam blocks in half with a hacksaw. It was crazy messy, so I went all horror movie on them outside.
2. Slap a Doc character into your Silhouette program and add a significant offset. Print and cut it.
3. Do a mirror image of the whole thing, delete the original, and print/cut it.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each character.
5. Open my CenterSquare.studio file and modify the text and offset as needed. Print and cut.
6. Hot glue the squares directly to the foam. Let the edges stick out as needed. Kids do not care if things line up. Honest!
7. Hot glue both sides of each character to a craft stick and jam the whole thing into the craft foam.
8. Fluff up little pieces of the tissue paper and put them inside of the faux boxes you made.
Our basement is terrible for pictures, but I think you can get the idea of our clinic. I took our existing IKEA kid's table and covered it with a chunk of egg carton foam ($10 at Walmart). Over top of everything I put some fleece in a lovely lime green I had laying around. If I wasn't cheap, or could not face yet another trip to the store, it would have been better being blue or purple. This made our exam table. Scattered across the surface are the pieces of Melissa & Doug doctor's kits, and items from the medical bags we handed out.
In the background is my poor recreation of the growth chart Doc has in her clinic, plus our family scale. You can find the Silhouette flower here, although I'll be the first to admit that it was too small. The stem and leaf are green construction paper.
I figured the kids would spend 10 seconds giving their toy a checkup then move on to something more fun, but that wasn't the case. One of my friends (seen patching up a doll) helped the kids and they spent quite a bit of time working on their diagnoses. You can see one of my kids in the white shirt attempting to weigh his toy on the scale.
Next time I'll go over what's in that mysterious purple doctor's bag, our invites, plus how we did the food (without grossing out anyone!).
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