Jungle Themed Birthday Party

This year for my son's 2nd birthday, I wanted to put a little effort into it and try to do a lot of creative, homemade things. It was my first attempt and believe me, it wasn't one of those parties that you see on blogs and think "Wow, I want to hire that lady to throw parties for my kids!" But for my first try, I feel like it turned out pretty cute. I thought I'd share it with you in case anyone needed any party ideas for the future.

Brody's Jungle Themed Party - 2 years old

Jungle Animal Cupcakes

YouTube How To Video

The little guy wanted to help with the baking

We made a lion, monkey, tiger and zebra. We set them up among green crinkled party paper to look like grass.

Close up on the monkey because it was my favorite.

I set up toy jungle animals among them on the table.

Because the animal cupcakes were somewhat tedious to make, we made 16 animals and decorated the remaining cupcakes normal for the adults.

Behind the cupcakes you see the treat bags for the kids. Those included animal crackers, a jungle animal finger puppet (pkg of 6 at Dollar Tree for $1), mini playdoh, and bubbles.

Activities

(Being that it was a 2 yr olds' party, these activities are low-key. I would definitely recommend other things for an older child.)

The party room was set up with 2 children's tables. I covered the top with brown paper so the kids could color and do activities on the paper without damaging the tables, and also to allow for a fun coloring space.

Target sells a balloon animal kit in the kids' party section. A friend told me about them and they were the kids' favorite thing.

I printed off monkey mask templates and cut them all out BEFORE the party. I bought bracelet/necklace stretchy string at Hobby Lobby for around $1.

Other not pictured activities were giraffe paper bag puppets, jungle coloring sheets and safari puzzles. Recommendation: If you plan to use the balloon animals, I would save those for last if you want to do any other activities. All of the kids at our party LOVED the balloon activity and were not interested in doing much else. So it would have been a great activity to save until the other things were done. However, I don't think any kid really missed not getting to do the other things.

I really had fun creating my own jungle themed party and not spending a fortune on those party kits. You definitely appreciate it more when you put forth the effort to do it yourself. And its a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to perfecting my cake/cupcake decorating skills and getting to do numerous fun parties as my children grow up.

-Larra

Maybe Next Year

You know when you have your hopes up for something...you think its going to be great...you have creative ideas flowing from everywhere..and then the big day comes...and its a total let down? Well, that's how our Roundtop trip was this fall. Well, at least for me anyways. I had a list of items I wanted to get to decorate and organize my home. I was so excited to find some great deals and have some projects to create when I got home. And it was a total bust. First of all, it was 95 degrees. We were miserable and our babies were even more miserable. Poor Carson (my 2 month old) had an episode while we were trying to eat lunch bc he was hungry and hot and just wasn't into being in the heat. So I feel like we spent more time trying to cool ourselves and our babies down than we did actually shopping. Plus, there were less vendors. Maybe that's how it always is in the fall? There seemed to be less bargains and less cool stuff. I ran across a couple of things that I was interested in but wanted to keep looking in case I found a better deal. I never did..but never went back to get the first ones either. So maybe when the antique fair comes back in the Spring I'll have better luck. I'm thinking no babies would be nice as well. I did come away with one great find....fiesta ware salt and pepper shakers to add another splash of color to my kitchen.

I'm thinking I'll add some more pieces in this pretty green if I find anything I need. So ladies...if any of you live close to us and went to Roundtop, did you find any good deals? Or if you don't live close, tell us about your experience at these type of things. Did you find any pieces to repurpose and use creatively in your home? We'd love to hear about them. If you posted about them on your blog, link to it so we can see!