Paw Patrol Birthday Party Ideas and Supplies

If your children started ‘paw-ifying’ everything (paw-tatoes, paw-lease and other delightful eye-twitch generating names), speaking in rhymes (‘ready, set, let’s get wet’) and acting more interested than usual in puppies (let’s face it, children love dogs) then they probably got hooked on NickJr’s Paw Patrol. The main characters of Paw Patrol meet all criteria of the Holy Trinity of Adorable: small, fluffy, funny – it’s no wonder the seven pups have left their paw marks on your children’s hearts – and most likely in your own as well (we’re hardwired as a species to go ‘aww’ over small fluffy creatures). What this means is that you now have a full-proof, guaranteed to land you parent of the year award, birthday party idea.

Though you shouldn’t start making room on the mantelpiece for it, just yet – that award comes after all the hard work of organizing the party (and the fantastic clean-up afterwards). To get your creative juice flowing, here are some Paw Patrol birthday party ideas, from invites to party favors (the whole works).

Paw Patrol Birthday Party Invitations and Ideas

Since you need to assemble your puppy rescue team, the first thing to do is take care of the invites. The easiest way to do that, paws down, is to buy them – one happy internet stroll through Amazon or Etsy and you’re set. There is a great deal of variety in the types of Paw Patrol invitation cards available for purchase. You can even get invites with a chalkboard effect or that offer you the option of including a photo of your child – and all of that in just minutes (not bad if you’re pressed for time).

For those with crafty fingers and a bit of patience, you can make your own printable invitations. There is another template here.   Another way to go is to make Pup invites by using the characters from the show and cutting the card in the shape of the pup you want (for fun and diversity, you can make cards based on all seven rescue pups). A simple way to up their ‘wow’ factor is to add some catchphrases from the show – and Paw Patrol is rife with them. Through a great feat of difficulty, I managed to narrow it down to just two quotes per character. Here they are: Marshal – “I am all fired up” or “Ready for a ruff ruff rescue!”; Rubble – “Rubble on the double!” or “Let’s dig it!”; Chase – “These paws uphold the laws!” or “Chase is on the case!”; Rocky – “Don’t lose it, reuse it!” or “Why trash it when you can stash it!”; Zuma – “Ready, set, get wet!” or “Let’s dive in”; Skye – “This pup’s gotta fly!” or “Let’s take to the sky!”; Everest – “Ice or snow I am ready to go!” or “Off the trail, Everest won’t fail!”; Ryder: “No job is too big, no Pup is too small” or “Paw Patrol is on a roll”. By the time you’re done reading through them, you’ll even be thinking in rhymes.

You can also include a pup adoption certificate – just use the printable from NickJr. For the cherry on the cake – you can include Pup Tags in the invitations envelope – they’re the main communication device for the Paw Patrol team, and they are tailored to the individual pup. Here are the printables for most of the gang, and here’s the one for Everest (the mountain pup is the last one to join the team of adventurers). Alternatively, if you’re feeling confident in your origami skills, you can add an origami pup to the invitation envelope – here they are in progressive levels of difficulty : simple, medium and complicated (last one is starting to border the Master Origami Folder – or Super Sayian level).

Paw Patrol Birthday Party Decorations and Ideas

With your rescue pups notified, it’s time to get busy decorating the grand hall of the dog house (since all puppies should be treated like royalty). Nickelodeon Junior is your best friend for this occasion – the UK version of the site, where you can find all the printables. Fortunately, they cover just about everything from lollipop wrappers, to birthday banners , cup wrappers and place mats. In terms of color scheme, the show doesn’t have a generic theme – however, you can make Pup specific color themes. For instance, Marshall has red (with a bit of yellow), Rubble has yellow (with refectory material), Chase is blue, Rocky is green, Zuma is orange, Skye is pink and Everest has a combination of teal and yellow.

For a nice welcome that sets your guests in the mood, add some chalk paw prints in front of the house. Your bathroom should not be neglected either – you can make a quick decoration with a dog shaped towel using this towel folding tutorial.

You can also make a Chase paper lantern, using this pumpkin cut out template. In order to make it, cut out the eyes, nose and mouth from the template and use them as stencil guidelines to draw on the lantern – alternatively, you can cut the shapes out and glue them on the paper lantern. You can add some ears and a police cap. For a Marshal version, you can use a white paper lantern and then paint in black spots, add doggie eyes, nose and Marshall’s ears.

For a more substantial fire hydrant – that doesn’t risk destruction at a simple prick, you can make a DIY fire hydrant . And to make Rocky happy, add some of his recycling badges on all the trashcans (you can find the badge model in the invitations section from above).

Paw Patrol Party table setup

La piece de résistance in terms of decorating is the party table – the one that just so happens to hold the tasty ‘doggie treats’. The first thing to do is make a Paw Patrol table cloth by adding some paw prints to it – here’s how you can make your own paw print rubber stamp. Alternatively, you can make a stencil and spray paint the table cloth – print a paw shape, glue it on cardboard, cut out the paw – and get crazy with the spray (action hero with a gun poses are highly encouraged). The next step is to take care of the napkins with a doggie bone napkin holder. Or you can engage in some creative napkin folding – here’s the place to exercise your origami skills. There are a lot of dog napkin folding tutorial out there – here is a simple dog face version , for the grasshopper that is still in training and for the more advanced pupil (that doesn’t mind having to do this model over and over again) here is the more complicated version.

To add more to the feel of the theme, serve your snacks out of puppy bowls, like here. You can do the same for the drinks, or you can serve them fresh out of Marshal’s fire hydrant – print, cut and glue an image of a fire hydrant on a lemonade drinks dispenser. You can accessorize even further with doggie bone cups – there are no tutorials on the internet (I have scoured all the corners looking for them), however, you can buy them in various online shops like Amazon.   Since pups are usually messy, another Paw Patrol table setup idea is to have paw prints all over your plates – no need to hide your china away in fright, you can do them using transparent plastic plates (which make the cleanup so much easier) and use the same paw stamp from above.

You can also add some utility vehicle toys – each pup has his own dog house that transforms into a vehicle. You can have a fire truck for Marshall, bulldozer for Rubble, police car for Chase, hovercraft or submarine for Zuma, helicopter for Skye, Snow plough for Everest. If you want to get creative, you can have the fire truck salvaging a mountain of fries from the fiery depths of hot sauce, the bulldozer can be digging in some “rock” candy (chocolate truffles) or the snow plough can be on an ice tray/bucket.

Paw Patrol Costume and Outfit Ideas

The decoration frenzy can and should happily extend to your child – after all, they get to play dress up and you get to play fashion designer (who says that adults are too old for games?). there are plenty of ways you can be creative with a costume – the simplest, albeit not cheapest method is to buy it from an online store – the costumes are great and you don’t need to fear for the safety of your fingers. Alternatively, there are other ways of making a costume that don’t involve sowing – like printable party hats or making doggie masks using this tutorial or this one. If you don’t mind a bit of stitching, you can make some doggie ears from felt. These ideas are great for when you want to make some simple costumes for all your guests to wear, but if you’re looking to make the birthday boy or girl feel special, then you can make a Pup costume using the templates below to which you add some doggie ears. Marshal, the fire pup, by far has the most amount of costume tutorials out there – here’s version one and version two of a simple costume . If you want to go the extra mile, why not make a ‘wearable fire truck’ – it looks almost like overalls .

There is also a Rubble costume with a bulldozer arm on the back and a Chase costume based on a police uniform tutorial (you just need to adjust a bit, changing for instance the police badge with Chases’ Pup Tag). To round off the Chase look, you can make a police hat.

To make sure that the girls don’t feel neglected, you can make a Skye costume by pairing a brown fleece or sweater with a pink vest and pink goggles. For that extra bit of show authenticity, add a pair of wings (made based on the Buzz Lightyear costume model).

There’s also Everest, the seventh pup and newest addition to the rescue team – her costume consists of a teal vest, a teal jacket, purple felt dog ears, purple pants and long sleeved shirt (to complete the effect, you can add white boots and gloves – perfect for winter)

Paw Patrol Party Food and drinks

Puppies need a lot of nourishment since they are still growing up – so serve them some mini hot dogs (or hot dog pups). Some other Paw Patrol party food ideas include making bone or dog shaped sandwiches – here’s a tutorial (you’ll just need a bone shaped cookie cutter, and a butterfly one – puzzled about the connection between the dog and butterfly? The tutorial shows a clever way of using it to cut and assemble the tasty treat).

Why not serve some Paw-sta (because there weren’t enough paw jokes) – add pasta, vegetables and cheese that is cut in a doggie bone shape. Since we’re on the subject of paws, there are also Paw-tato chips or Paw-berries (any types of berries qualify). For more pun-erific points, make Puppy kisses – from Hershey Kisses and let’s not forget about pup-corn (served in a doggie bowl, of course).

If you don’t mind baking, you can make some great bone shaped breadsticks – and serve them with Marshal’s fiery sauce (some spicy red sauce). Speaking of flaming, why not make Marshal’s flaming marshmallows – which are, in essence, marshmallows with red sprinkles. There are also Zuma, the retriever pup’s fetch sticks – or pretzel rods, as us non-canines tend to call them. For Rubble treats, you can serve chocolate truffles as “boulders’. Red candy strips are also great as a party food since you can present them as Marshal’s hose or doggie chew sticks.

Since we’re talking about treats, you can make some doggie treats by using chocolate puffs, bone shaped cookies, crackers dipped in chocolate and so on. Here’s a site with links to 25 different types of “dog chow” party snacks recipes – from caramel apples, to red velvet (yummy yummy yummy – I have food in my tummy).

Lastly, you can make Paw Patrol badge cookies using cookie cutters sets (there are sets available for all of the character badges).  

Paw Patrol Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

The royal breed of the canine party is the birthday cake – all good puppies deserve a giant special treat on their birthday. The easy option, time wise is to order the cake at a local cake decorations shop – you can find cakes of all levels of complexity and (almost) all pockets. Why almost? Because the custom cakes, even the simple ones, still cost quite a bit of money – and unless you’re talking about some of the well know cake decoration companies, you might never know what you get (a tired old lizard instead of a proper Yoda cake). If you don’t mind baking, you can make a simple doggie bone shaped cake – it’s a rectangle with four small round cakes at the corners, like here. Once you’re done, cover the cake with fondant like in the tutorial.

The next cake ideas are a bit more complex and require a bit more fondant work. You can make Marshal, Rubble, Chase Rocky, Zuma, Skype, Everest fondant cakes – first you print the characters, then you place them on the fondant and trace them using knitting needles (so they can leave soft imprints). Then comes the fun part with wielding a fondant knife – it looks a little bit like a scalpel, so you can consider yourself a cake doctor. Lastly, it’s puzzle assembly time – fit all the parts together, eyes, noses, head shapes and glue them on the cake top. Here is a mini tutorial on how to cut out fondant.

Another Paw Patrol birthday cake idea is to make utility vehicle cakes – all the pups have their own specific vehicle (that turns into a dog house as a bonus). You can make a fire truck cake – it doesn’t require world class decorating skills, just a steady hand at icing and a bit of skills when it comes to cake carving. To make the image complete, add a tiny toy Marshal next to it (just make sure the children don’t try to eat him). For Rubble, you can make a bulldozer cake. This one requires more fondant skills, but the results are amazing – and you can fill the bulldozer cup with other treats (like truffles).

Steadily climbing up the ladder towards the “next great baker” fondant skills, you can try your hand at making an Everest fondant topper based on this husky tutorial – all you need to do is replace the color with purple. For the supreme cake masters out there, or if you just like a challenge, you can try to make a Marshal fondant topper or a Ryder fondant topper – apart from the increase in complexity, there are also fewer (almost none) verbal instructions in the tutorial (albeit the videos are pretty self explanatory, if you’ve done this sort of thing before). Either way, be prepared to spend quite a bit of time on them.

For the cupcake lovers, there are printable cupcake toppers and cupcake wrappers. You can make paw print cupcakes (using Oreos). There are also cupcake puppy tutorials – you can make them resemble the Paw Patrol cast by using the character’s coloring. And for those that want the best of both worlds, there is a cupcake cake tutorial for a dog with a bone.

Paw Patrol Games and activities

While puppies are adorable when resting, they can cause quite the mayhem if you don’t properly redirect their energies with a few games. For the little ones, there are printable coloring books from the NickJR site (just press print on the app without coloring anything. In fact, NickJr offers a whole host of game possibilities like more printables, mazes, connect the dots and finger puppets. You can also make your own Paw Patrol piñata or set up a puppy make up table – here’s a – puppy make up tutorial.

For something a bit more active, you can stage a Paw Patrol rescue – children divide in terms of two where one is the victim and the other is the rescue pup. The ‘victim’ will be blindfolded and will be at the other side of a minefield (full with water balloons). The winner is the pup that manages to bring his rescue to safety in the fastest time without setting off any of the ‘mines’.

You can also play Marshal’s ‘put out the fire’ contest – this is in essence a super soaker game. Children will have to hit 5 targets – whoever does it fastest wins.

You can also put a spin on the classics by playing Chases’ chase – one child is Chase, the police dog, and the other children are the robbers. They are only allowed to run in a small zone and Chase has to catch them. Once all robbers have been caught, a different child can play Chase. As an alternative version, Chase can bring some friends to help (Marshal and Skye, for instance) – in this case, when robbers go to jail they can break free with the aid of another comrade. When all robbers are caught, the children can switch roles.

Another fun Paw Patrol party game idea is to play Zuma’s fetch scavenger hunt – children will each get a list with dog related items that are scattered across the yard (toy bones, collars, leashes, slippers etc.) – whoever gets one of each item on the list first, wins.

Since Rubble is feeling left out, why not help him uncover some buried bones? You can hide a whole bunch of item in a sand box (or a children’s pool filled with crinkle paper) and have children dig for them.

There’s even a variant on Simon says – namely, Ryder says. You can dub it as the pup training school, where pups have to do dog tricks (sit, growl, wag tail, roll over, bark, stay, give paw etc.).

Paw Patrol Birthday Party Favors and Ideas

When the night brows dark, all pups need to return to their dog houses – so give them something for on the road.

You can give them doggie bags filled with bright colored candy and with doggie bag toppers.

You can even give them one of Everest’s gadgets – a pocket sized grapple gun (just make the grappling hook out of something less prone to cause accidents, like paper or plastic).

There are also plenty of Paw Patrol stickers, tattoos to share. And just in case the pups get hungry, they can get some dog bone shaped cookies to tide them over till they reach the lands of far far a-home. You can always add some Paw Patrol key chains or magnets, and, in case you didn’t use them for the invites, you can give them an origami dog (see links in the invitations section).

Paw Patrol Gift ideas

If you’re wondering what to get for your own pup, you can check out the toy shops – there are plenty of Paw Patrol toys, from characters and their vehicle (like Zuma and his hovercraft) to series inspired games like Paw Patrol toss across. There are also watches available, t-shirts, slumber bags, soccer balls, bicycles and even flip open couches and upholstered chairs. If your child loves soft cuddly toys, then all characters are available in plushy form. For the children that love playing in the bath, you can find the whole cast of characters as bath squirters. In essence, if you can think about it, there probably already is a Paw Patrol version of it out in the shops.