The Birthday party unwrapped!

Even though it was a few months ago people are still asking me about Moses’ 1st birthday party and details of the decorations, menu, and cupcakes! Instead of replying on Facebook and e-mail to the same questions, I’ll just spell it out in a post!

Theme: I have always loved jungle theme before Moses was born so it seemed obvious. We wanted the atmosphere to feel like you were at a Post/ campsite stop during your safari. Plus there was a lot of play on words, colors, and decorations that went a long with the familiar theme.
Decorations: Large rolls of paper are the best! My wonderful mother cut leaves and rolled strings of brown paper to look like vines. We placed the vines/leaves sporadically throughout the house to make each room tropical. We also made (too many) tissue paper and clothes pin butterflies to add a pop of color on the vines. You can use the same brown and green tapped on the wall to magically create trees.

Not great picture of Mo but you can see the cake/drink station and the butterflies

In the family room we transformed the fireplace into a tent simply by tacking up a rolled up tent.

We also wrapped a large frame with burlap and created a “Missing Explorers” board. I found pictures of some of our younger party guest and used Photoshop to create flyers. Instead of using their given names we gave them names like “Ima Goner” and “Ben Eaten”. It was cute and amusing for the parents to read.

Food: Play on words was a big part of the menu. We wanted tasty food for the adults but still keeping with the theme. We printed name cards for each item with a play on words: “ants on a log” (PB and celery), “beetle wings” (potato chips), “Nile River water” (sweet tea), “Elephant tusk” (chicken salad croissants), and the list goes on.

We also had a separate area titled “Cub Grub” for the babies at the party. We served gold fish, animal crackers, cheese, pb&j sandwiches, lunch meat rolls ups, simply foods that were one year old friendly.

Activities: We knew before hand we would have a wide range of kids (ages 10 months to 6 years old) and we wanted each age to have fun. In the front room we had foam safari crafts and coloring for the older kids who wanted to sit and play. (To be honest I thought this area would be a bust but so many little girls love this stuff! The table was packed the entire day!)

Since the party took place in January it was too cold to play outside. We were able to bring in my mother in law’s Bounce House into the dining room to create hours of fun for the older kids. This was a huge hit because they could act crazy and wild, but still be warm inside.

For the babies we set up a tunnel and toys (seen in above picture) so they could have a place to crawl around and be out of the way of the older kids.
Cupcakes/Cake: Like most first time parents, you want the 1st cake to be great! I found these adorable cupcake ideas in Hello, Cupcake and knew right away this is what I wanted to do. Unfortunately cupcakes cannot be baked or decorated too far in advanced and thankfully my sister stayed up into the wee hours of the night with me creating lions, monkeys, and elephants.

They make it seem so easy but there were so many details! In the end I was very happy with them but you would have to look in that book to find step by step instructions.

The rest of the cupcakes were piped with green icing for grass and pretzel sticks with foam green leaves iced on top for trees.

The idea for his smash cake came to me literally two hours before the party. We already purchased Zoo Pal plates for the kids and I used the monkey face as my inspiration. I rolled his hair in chocolate sprinkles and colored white icing for the cake details. The plate gave me a great boarder and monkey ears.