Monkey Birthday Party

     We like to celebrate at our house.  Especially the blessing of children!  For my children's birthday parties, I try to choose a theme that shows what they are in to at that point in their life, so that it will be special for them.  For Weston's 2nd birthday party we had a monkey themed party.  Or, as the birthday boy likes to describe it, he had an "Oo, oo, ah, ah" party. :)  I found the banner pictured above at the Dollar Tree for, yes, $1.  I made the 3-D letters of his name above the banner using lime green card stock and got the idea at dafont.com.  Warning:  This task took a long time!

     We purchased this Jump-o-lene Transparent Ring Bounce for my daughter's 2nd birthday, and now we blow it up for all birthday's and leave it up the entire month for hours of entertainment.

     The centerpieces were made from monkeys we had on hand and lots of bananas.  Note:  You can freeze bananas and use them later to make Chocolate Banana Bread.  I bought a yellow and lime green helium balloon set to tie on the small monkey.  The larger monkey sat on a lime green ball we already had and inside a lime green bucket we received from our realtor (packed with goodies) when we moved in our home.  I put some newspaper stuffing under the bananas.  Using some scraps of card stock left over from the 3-D name project, I hole punched some confetti to add on top of the yellow plastic table cover.  While shopping at Walmart for the Barrel of Monkeys game, they just happened to have a lime green game the day I was there and that just made this momma's day!  I hung a few from the bucket and the rest from the chandelier.

     Also hanging from light fixtures around the house were these monkeys found at the Dollar Tree for, you guessed it, $1.

     This monkey was given to Weston before he was born and hung by a plastic hanger on the column by the front door to welcome everyone as they entered.

     I made a balloon wreath for the front door that I plan on using for all of my kids' birthdays and just change out the number.  I found the tutorial here.  The wreath was attached using purple yarn and tape.

     I purchased a wreath on sale at JoAnn's for $3, balloons at Dollar Tree, and found the cheapest greenery picks at Walmart.  I wanted to make the "2" hanging in the middle, so at the last minute I went in my closet and grabbed a wire clothes hanger, cut it, put beads on it, bent it, and curled the sharp ends around the last beads on the end and under some of the others.  It's also attached to the wreath with purple yarn.

     We, of course, had a monkey cake.  So far I've made the birthday cakes for my children's five birthday parties because it is way cheaper and I'm sentimental that way.  This one was by far the easiest and quickest.  Instead of buying a pretty cardboard cake mat somewhere, I use a piece of cardboard cut to size and cover it with foil.  For this cake, I used two round cake pans - one for the face and used the other one to cut out the ear shapes and add height to the mouth area.  Chocolate cake mix seemed the best plan since the icing was also chocolate.  I chose not to use food dyes for the icing, but instead used chocolate fudge for the dark brown and a mixture of chocolate fudge and cream cheese icing for the tan color.  The easiest way to add the details on the ears, mouth, and eyes (if you don't have tips) is to cut a small edge off of a plastic sandwich bag and squeeze the icing through as you decorate.  I added chocolate chips to the eyes.  Inspiration for this design was found at coolest birthday cakes and the monkey hanging from the column pictured above.

The cake was eaten on these cute plates found here

     We played "monkey in the middle" and enjoyed using these finger puppets to do the finger play about monkeys swinging in the tree and teasing Mr. Alligator.

     Some other resources I would recommend would be plastic monkeys found at the Dollar Tree in the summer to put on the mailbox.  Unfortunately, they weren't available when we had the party in March.  I printed off some coloring pages, but we didn't have time to color them during the party.  If you aren't working with a budget, banana split dippin dots would be all the rage and kids love them!  Banana scratch and sniff stickers seemed so fun, but you've got to draw the line somewhere, you know!?!  We've been able to forego the invitations so far, but these were pretty cute.

     I spent a lot of time leading up to the party choosing pictures and video clips from Weston's first two years of life.  With a little help from the hubby, we made a "Celebrating The Life of John Weston Gaines" video that lasted about fifteen minutes for all of the guests to enjoy.  Weston kept pointing to the screen with a big smile on his face saying, "Bubby."  I hope to add the video soon - as soon as I figure out how.  Whenever someone asks Weston how old he is he tells them "2," and that he had an "Oo, oo, ah, ah" party.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Little Monkey!