Picture of decorations, activities, and food for a garbage truck birthday party. There is a trash balloon garland, paper garbage truck favor boxes, a garbage truck cake, a trash truck pinata, and food themed around a garbage truck road

DIY Garbage Truck Birthday Party for a Three Year Old

Friday morning is our trash day. My kids will jump up on the couch when they hear the trash truck coming to watch it out the window. Or if we are in the backyard, they go running to the front yard to watch. We have even ran around the neighborhood keeping up with the garbage truck to see it over and over again. There is just something so cool about trash trucks to kids. So, when it came time for my son to decide on a theme for his 3rd birthday, he wanted a garbage truck birthday party.

My son can be shy when there are a lot of people around. So, I knew there was a chance he wouldn’t want to play with any of his friends or enjoy his party much. But, thankfully, he ended up being so excited about his party. He told everyone about his trash truck party for a couple weeks leading up to it. And during the party he was so happy the entire time (minus one bonk that needed a quick mommy check in). For his party I made invitations, food, decorations, activities, and favor boxes.

Looking for Specific Instructions?

This post is an overview on everything I made for his party, but I will make more in depth posts as well. My goal is to get everything posted soon, but getting everything written always takes longer than I expect. So, if there is a specific thing you want more details on, please comment at the bottom of this post. I will prioritize it and try to get you better instructions ASAP.

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How to Throw a DIY Garbage Truck Birthday Party

Invitations:

After deciding our theme, we always start with invitations. I found this cute trash truck invite from poster my wall and edited it with the details of my son’s trash truck birthday party. I printed it out to see what my son thought. He said he liked it and carried it around the rest of the day proudly saying it was his. I took this as his approval and printed the rest out on white cardstock to mail out.

Garbage Truck Birthday Party Food:

Pizza is our go to meal for parties. It is easy and my kids love it. To go with our pizza, I made a garbage truck themed cake and had several sides.

Trash Truck Themed Cake

My son made deciding on a garbage truck birthday party cake complicated. My son tends to like the idea of cake, but never eats more than a bite or two of it. So, when I started asking him what kind he wanted, he wouldn’t give me an answer. He seemed to kind of like the idea of an ice cream cake, but didn’t have any flavor ideas. So, I made an ice cream cake I knew I would like and hoped he would too. And thankfully, he did and ate his whole piece. I smashed together about four recipes and I will post my new recipe once I polish it a bit more. 

The design of the cake was much easier. When I start planning a party I always start by getting inspiration from Pinterest. On there I saw a cake with a toy garbage truck that looked like trash (crunched up candy) was spilling out of it. I also saw a three shaped cake that looked like a road with a trash truck driving on it. I showed them to my son and he liked them too. So, I combined these ideas and made a cake with a paper trash truck (SVG coming soon) driving down the road with trash spilling out the back. To make this cake, I used my number and letter cake pan. More instructions coming soon.

Three shaped birthday cake. There is a frosting road on top with a paper trash truck and crunched up candies pouring out

Garbage Truck Food Road

Next, came the main food spread. In past years I have spent a lot of time making specific foods fit the theme. But this year, I took the easier route and made a trash truck road themed tablecloth that I could put whatever foods I wanted on. I made it from a black plastic tablecloth. My son loves berries and chips so I put those in front and added a few other normal party type foods in the back.

To add to the garbage truck birthday party theme, my husband 3d printed a trash truck for the road and pretend flies for the food. You can also find fake plastic flies here. Fake ants would be funny too. They got a lot of comments and I thought they were hilarious. My son picked out the plates and napkins from Amazon and I placed the forks in a green trash pencil holder. More instructions on how I made this simple setup are coming soon.

Picture of fruit, veggies, chips, and cheese and crackers on a tablecloth painted with a road. A 3d printed garbage truck is on the road along with a few mini plastic trash cans

Decorations for a Trash Truck Birthday Party:

My son’s favorite color is green, so we made all his decorations green. About a month beforehand I started collecting “clean trash” to use for decorations. It drove my husband crazy, but it worked well.

Trash Balloon Garland

Last year, I made a balloon garland for my son’s ball birthday party and really liked it. I did the same thing this year, but with green balloons and balloon garland tape. Since it had been a year, I pulled up my old instructions to follow and make this one. Now that I knew I liked making them, I invested in a balloon pump and saved my lungs a lot of effort. Then, I used the glue dots that came with the balloons to attach some of the trash I had collected to the garland.

Trash Truck Birthday Banner

A few months ago, I bought a Brother’s ScanNCut and am still experimenting with what all I can use it for. My son’s birthday was a great excuse to play with it and figure it out even better. One of the things I made with it was this trash truck birthday banner. I used a trash bag image from Vecteezy and made my own trash truck image (svg coming soon). They work great for a ScanNCut, Cricut, or Silhouette or you can print them out and cut by hand. I cut the shapes from green cardstock and black cardstock.

Once I had all the pieces cut out, I used a cotton swab and a paint palette filled with school glue to glue them together. Then, I taped a piece of ribbon that came with my balloons to the back. I pinned both the balloons and the ribbon to the wall with push pins.

DIY garbage truck banner. There are trash trucks made of paper alternating with garbage bags with 3s on them. On both ends there is a green balloon

Trash Covered Number 3 Decoration

Another decoration I made for my son’s garbage truck birthday party was a large cardboard box number three with trash all over it. It wasn’t my favorite decoration (and a bad picture of it), but it turned out OK. Instructions coming soon.

Picture of large number 3 made of carboard boxes and covered in trash

Garbage Truck Themed Tablecloth

A tablecloth is always an easy way to add the theme into a room. There are a bunch of fun trash truck themed tablecloths out there, but my son liked my below idea better. We started with a green plastic tablecloth and a black plastic tablecloth. The standard size of tablecloth is always a bit longer than my dining room table. So, I trim it and use the excess on the card table I set up as another place for people to eat.

Then, I cut a strip of the black tablecloth and painted white strips on it with acrylic paint to make it look like a road. Lastly, I placed a toy trash truck that we already had on the road.

Picture of a dining table covered in a green tablecloth with a black road down the middle and a trash truck toy on the road

Other Paper Trash Trucks

When I made the garbage truck birthday party banner, I also made smaller versions of the trash trucks. My plan was to put them on the balloon garland with the trash, but I didn’t like how they looked. So, I just sticky tacked them to the staircase wall instead.

Picture of little paper garbage trucks on the wall leading up a flight of stairs

Garbage Truck Birthday Party Activities:

This garbage truck birthday party is the 6th birthday party I have thrown for my kids. I have learned that I tend to overthink and overdo things. To help avoid this, I planned no games or activities for the chunk of time that some people have shown up but not all. I normally try to do something and my kids are always so excited for the activity. And then one of their friends show up and they completely forget about it and go play with their normal toys downstairs. So, I just planned on the kids playing downstairs until everyone showed up.

Then, once everyone was there we did two trash truck themed activities.

Trash Truck Pinata

First, we had a pinata. I always have fun making pinatas for my kids’ parties. It is a fun challenge to make different shapes and come up with something that fits the theme that they like. In the past I have always made the body from a balloon. But, a trash truck is all corners and flat sides, so I had to try something new. Instead, I used cardboard squares to make the shape. Then, I used paper mache and paint to turn it the rest of the way into a trash truck. Instructions on how I made it coming soon.

I filled the garbage truck pinata with both candy and trash. The kids dug through the trash (newspaper, cardboard, washed out yogurt containers, nothing gross) to find the candy. I had the kids gather their goodies in mini trash bags (really dog poop bags).

Trash Claw Game

Before picking up the trash from the pinata, I poured out three bags of trash (again, nothing gross) all over the ground in the garage. My husband’s grandpa thought I was crazy, but then I handed each kid a grabber tool to pick it up with. It was all recycling, so I just rolled our recycling bin into the garage and they placed it directly in there. They had a blast and there was no cleanup afterwards, since the game was literally picking up the mess. The kids had a blast and would have been happy doing it all over again.

Trash Truck Birthday Party Favors:

Trash Truck Party Favor Boxes

As I mentioned before, I used this trash truck birthday party as an excuse to play with my new ScanNCut “toy”. The main way I used it was to cut out a trash truck shaped party favor box for each kid that came. The SVG is coming soon and will work for any cutting machine or can be printed out and cut by hand.

I used white, light green, dark green, and black cardstock to make them. The backs open and shut using Velcro and I placed a bouncy ball and trash can Play-Doh in each one. Other ideas I had for favors were garbage truck stickers, make your own garbage truck stickers, scratch art trucks, and road tape. More instructions coming soon.

Picture of a row of 3d paper boxes shaped like trash trucks for favors at a garbage truck birthday party

Trash Can Play-Doh

When coming up with favors, I noticed that the modeling dough I had leftover from handing out at Halloween was trash can shaped. It was something the Dollar Tree used to sell, but bulk Play-Doh would work too. I painted them to look more like trash cans. More instructions coming soon.

Picture of several containers of modeling dough painted to look like trash cans

Conclusion of My Son’s 3rd Garbage Truck Birthday Party

The best gauge for how a party went is your child’s reaction. And my son absolutely loved his garbage truck birthday party. He had a blast hitting his pinata and picking up trash with a grabber tool. He was very excited about his cake and happily chowed down on pizza and a ton of fruit. And he was excited about all the trash truck decorations. He proudly told everyone at church the next day about his trash truck party. All the other kids seemed to have a good time as well. The adults enjoyed it too. Which pieces do you plan on using at your child’s party?

Does this sound like the kind of party you would throw your kid? Check out the other birthday parties I have thrown my kids as well.

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