welcome to the jungle

I had a great time planning and hosting Owen's jungle theme first birthday!

Seriously, I love to do this party stuff... especially the dessert table!!!

 

I made this bunting banner with scrapbook paper and then displayed in on a large picture that I wrapped with a neutral gift wrap.

 

 

 

 

Gahhh, I couldn't wait any longer to show you this super cute snake!

I just sliced sub sandwhiches into small appetizer size pieces and laid out the pices with a litte curve to them on the food table to look like a snake. I used toothpics to put on the olive eyes and cut a red pepper to look like a tongue. So easy and so cute!

 

 

 

 

Here's an over-view of the food. Main table is snacks and drinks and the buffet to the left is desserts

 

 

 

I hung some streemers from the ceiling and cut a few jungle leaves from scrapbook paper to jungle the place up a bit :)

 

 

 

 

A closer look at the food table. Mostly veggies and fruit so guests were able to justify splurges at the dessert table - haha!

 

 

 

 

I attached zebra scrapbook stickers to one of my punch jars and simply poured in green hawaiin punch and pepple ice (I buy pebble ice at Sonics) for this fun colored "jungle juice"

 

 

 

 

For the water bottles I removed the labels and then wrapped the bottle in zebra packing tape. This was also really simple to do and I love the impact it makes!

 

 

 

Finally a shot of the desserts!!!

 

 

 

 

The cake pops were pretty darn cute!

At least it was pretty easy to tell what they were supposed to be :)

 

 

 

tigers

 

 

 

 

lions

 

 

 

and monkeys!

 

 

 

I have the bakerella cake pop book and used that for my directions with just a few tweeks.

 

 

 

Of course you can't have a party without cupcakes

(at least not in this household!)

 

 

 

 

The cupcakes were vanilla or chocolate with a marshmallow creme filling and green-vanilla buttercream - YUM!

 

 

 

The cupcake toppers were actually dollar store stickers that I stuck on scrapbooking paper and cut around. I hot glued the cut outs to toothpics to finish them up.

 

 

 

Animal crackers were a must for this jungle party!

 

 

 

THE CAKE: This adorable monkey cake is a very yummy banana cake with chocolate buttercream. I found the directions for decorating it here and just made a few changes... for instance I made mine a double layer... cause doesn't that sound soooo much better than just one layer of delicious banana cakes?? I found the banana cake recipe here and I would highly recommend trying it out for yourself!

 

 

 

 

Owen also had a little chocolate smash cake to enjoy.

 

He started out nice and slow

 

 

 

 

but then mommy got involved and things went crazy!

 

 

 

 

must eat more cake

 

 

 

 

 

 

A very happy sugar-high birthday boy: love him!

 

 

 

Just can't believe how fast a year has gone by, I remember when this little dude was born as if it were just a few weeks ago... sniff sniff. Yay for happy memories!