Monkey in the Jungle Party

I'm down to only a week before the little one's party, and still have barely anything ready to go. I'm tired, exhausted really, and feel like I should just talk him into going to McD's or the park. If only I hadn't told everyone when it was, I just might do it.

But since ya'll don't want to hear me whine. Here's a little from Little Man's 2nd birthday in 2006.

He was obsessed with monkeys for some reason. So we decided to have a "Monkey in the Jungle" party.

I created invites using a template from Parents magazine. Basically, I cut felt and cardstock in the shape of a banana, glued the bottoms together, and cut the top felt into strips. The details for the party were written on the cardstock, so when the invitee "peeled" the banana they discovered the info.

We went very simple with the food that year, since I knew the majority of my day would be spent chasing kids (and I was a very tired momma from college classes on top of every day life.) So we had pizza, chips, pretzels, and fresh fruit.

For dessert, we had frozen bananas dipped in chocolate (delicious). Plus our two monkey cakes:
Because all the kids there were so young, we didn't have a lot set up for them. We threw a ton of balls into the yard, put out bubbles and ride ons, and created a gorilla bean bag toss. (Hubby painted a huge gorilla and cut out a circle on it's belly and I made bean bags for the kids to throw into it.)
For favors, each child reveived a plush monkey, a barrel of monkeys, some stickers, and a mini box of animal crackers.

It was every monkey-loving, 2 year old's dream come true!