21999

Noah's Jungle -1yr- Lots of Green Streamers

September 2010

Amanda in Maury City, TN United States

Honorable Mention

For my son's first birthday party, I wanted to go all out but stay on budget! Even before he was born, I fell in love with the monkey theme. His crib bedding is monkey themed and I hand painted a mural of a tree that covers 2 whole walls of his nursery. I wanted to incorporate the monkeys into his 1st birthday, so I thought the jungle theme was perfect!

INVITATIONS: I bought some really cute print your own" jungle invitations from Target for $5.99. The background was of a giraffe an elephant and a monkey hanging from a palm tree. In the center I printed of the wording that said " It's time to go bananas...For Noah's 1st birthday!" followed by the date and address of the party. From Etsy I ordered a door hanger for the front door that also said "It's time to go bananas for Noah's first birthday!" It has all of the jungle animals; lion monkey giraffe and elephant. For the goody bags (which I also ordered from Etsy) were jungle themed and each bag had a different animal on the top of the bag. I filled the bags with banana flavored taffy.

FOOD: I just cooked small finger foods. We had cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon and baked with brown sugar mini shrimp kabobs guacamole dip and tortilla chips chicken wings and a veggie tray. I also had a little mini dessert bar with chocolate covered strawberries with brightly colored sprinkles and mini cheesecake cookie cups with strawberries and chocolate on top. I wanted to keep the dessert bar very light because of the birthday cake! I also made some homemade fruit punch and called it jungle juice. I printed out cards to put in front of all of the food and gave everything a jungle name! Now onto the topic of the birthday cake I bought (from etsy) cupcake toppers that each had a different jungle animal. Noah being that he was the center of attention got his very own jungle themed smush cake!

DECORATIONS: The entire ceiling of the kitchen and dining room (party area) was covered in green craft paper streamers. I draped the streamers and had some hanging to make it take on the look of vines. I had several little bunches of green yellow orange and brown ballons in the four corners of the party room. From the local party store I bought some 8ft hanging palm trees and hung them around the dining room table. It really gave it a jungle feel! On the food and dessert bar I bought 2ft frilly palm trees as the center pieces.

I also placed framed pictures of Noah throughout his first year around the food and dessert bar. I ordered a personalized jungle banner from Etsy that said Happy 1st Birthday Noah hanging up so that when you first walked into the door it was the first thing you saw! Noah also had his very own highchair birthday banner that said "I Am One!" I made a scrapbook of Noah's first year and had it on display on the coffee table in the living room where we all sat to watch Noah open his gifts.

I made a compilation of all of the videos we had made of Noah during the first year and we all sat down and watched it while eating. The dining room table was draped in a green table cloth and I wrapped grass skirts around the edge of the table. The dining room table centerpiece was another 2ft palm tree and I placed small coconuts around the bottom of the palm tree.

BIRTHDAY HAT: I ordered the birthday hat from Etsy. It is a one of kind a personalized hat with pompoms that were all of the colors of Noah's birthday party (orange yellow green and brown) and had a number 1 on it.

BIRTHDAY OUTFIT: Noah wore a personalized JonJon from Etsy that was brown gingham and had a monkey holding a banana embroidered on the front with Noah's name embroidered underneath it. His outfit went very well with the colors of the party. Throughout the party we used a camera recorder for everyone to record a message to Noah on his birthday. We thought it would be something he could watch when he's older and listen to everyone's birthday wishes and messages to him.

GAMES: We played Jungle Scramble where I printed off scrambled jungle words and whoever unscrambled the words correctly fastest won a $25 gift card to Outback Steakhouse! Needless to say the guests were definitely motivated to win that gift card! The party was very laid back and everyone had a great time! Noah's jungle party was such a HIT and definitely memorable!"

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