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I’m no Pinterest-mom, I promise. But I really wanted to make my son’s birthday party extra special for turning 3! Yesterday we threw a construction-themed birthday party for our now three-year-old, and I managed to take the dessert table and party decorations to the next level with just a few simple items!

A Construction-Themed Birthday Cake

I’m really not an amazing baker and I don’t spend tons of time in the kitchen… but I do know how to follow instructions and bake a cake from a box! I found a bunch of similar cakes on Pinterest and decided to try my hand at making my son a fun construction-themed cake with just a few simple ingredients and toppings. I could have made this cake even easier by picking up a pre-made cake from the bakery department, but I decided to save money and make and decorate my own cake using a box mix and 2 cans of icing.

I baked the chocolate cake in two 9-inch round cake pans and once they were out of the oven and cooled off, I stacked them together on top of a plastic round cake board so that it would be easy to transport to the inside of a cake box and travel easily to the party. The two cakes were loaded up with chocolate icing in the middle and then I coated the entire cake with chocolate icing after they were fully cooled. I then put the cake into a cake box and waited to finish the decorations until the day of the party. Once we were ready to get the cake out for the dessert table, I placed it on my cake stand (it was super easy to transfer because of the cake board!) and added the most adorable construction-themed cake topper from Avalon Sunshine that I got personalized for Oliver, then a few mini construction vehicles. Then I crushed up some of the dark chocolate oreo cookies in a plastic bag and sprinkled those cookie crumbs around the construction vehicles on the cake to look like dirt and rocks. This cake actually turned out way better than I could have ever imagined!

Shopping List for Cake & Toppings

- 1 box Chocolate Cake Mix
- 2 cans of chocolate fudge icing
- Dark Chocolate Oreo Cookies
- Personalized Construction-Themed Cake Topper by Avalon Sunshine
- Mini Construction Vehicles
- Plastic 10-inch Round Cake Board
- Cake Box

The only thing that I didn’t add to the cake was candles, but that was for good reason…

I seriously can’t get enough of this adorable personalized cake topper! When I came across Avalon Sunshine and had the chance to try out her cake topper, I was so excited to see these construction themed topper! I already knew we were doing a construction-theme for Oliver’s party and this was the perfect fit! The whole mission of Avalon Sunshine is to provide an element of fun and beauty to your cakes without all of the fuss, and I am all about that fuss-free party life! And this cake topper was such high quality, that I could seriously use it over and over for years to come (as long as I clean the base of the legs well enough after each use).

There’s no doubt that I will be purchasing one for our baby girl’s first birthday this upcoming spring!

Shop Avalon Sunshine on Etsy

A Construction-Themed Dessert Table

To go along with the birthday cake, I also made a bunch of fun construction-themed cupcakes, set out some donut holes to look like boulders falling out of the dump truck, plus some jello cups as a gluten-free option (but really, who doesn’t love some jello?!).

With lots of respiratory viruses going around this time of year, I really didn’t want to have candles on the main cake and have my son blow (slash spit) all over the cake, so I added a fun number 3 candle to the top of a cupcake for us to use when we sang Happy Birthday to my son.

The cupcakes were a funfetti box mix and I used a can of white icing that I whipped in the stand mixer and divided into two sections and colored the icing yellow and orange. I used a disposable piping bag to icing all of the cupcakes and mixed up some black and white and orange sprinkles for the tops of the cupcakes. They actually turned out so good and I think they looked store-bought, which I considered a major win! The box mix made 24 cupcakes, so I used two boxes to make 48 cupcakes. I then stored them in a disposable cupcake tray that made it super easy to transport to the party the next day!

Shopping List for Cupcakes

- 2 boxes of Funfetti cake mix
- 1 can of white icing (plus leftover chocolate icing)
- food coloring (yellow and orange)
- Black and White Sprinkles
- Orange Sprinkles
- Cupcake Liners
- Cupcake Toppers (these were a part of the decoration set that I got from Amazon)
- 2 Cupcake Trays

The jello cups were really easy to make - I found some snack cups with lids and picked up some jello colors and flavors that I knew would be popular and made sense with the theme. I made the jello according to the instructions on the box and then poured them into cups and placed them in the fridge to cool. Once they were set and chilled, I added the lids so that I could stack them for transport to the event (and to keep them fresh for each guest!).

The donut holes were also super easy and I just picked up a mix of munchkins from Dunkin Donuts. To display them, I propped up the dump truck and added a plate with a small lip to it under the dump truck, and stacked the donut holes to look like they. were falling out of the dump truck. I only lost a few donut holes to gravity as they landed on the floor, but overall this was a simple and fun way to display the donut hold “boulders”!

All in all, this party theme really was quite simple and I didn’t feel like I had to spend hours and hours making food or creating decorations for the party itself. All of the signs and caution tape was from a party set that I found on Amazon, and I added some construction vehicles that we already owned and a few new ones from Amazon that I could use for display.

When we were leaving the party and taking my son to the car, my husband said that he commented right away that he already “misses his party and really loved his decorations.” So go ahead and melt my mama heart! I promise we didn’t even prompt him to say that, but I for sure felt like it was all worth it to hear how much he loved his party and spending time with his friends and family!