Roman's First Birthday Party!

The day that my little baby turns one is getting closer and closer (by the time this goes live he will officially be 1!!), so today we celebrated this amazing little man with a spectacular jungle themed birthday party!  I absolutely love planning parties and since this was my first crack at a kids party I was super enthusiastic from the start!  Maybe a little too enthusiastic depending on who you talk to....

I'm quickly becoming known for my over the top decorations and outlandish ideas.  It does take a lot of time to put a party like this together but I love it, and when it's for my little guy, nothing but the best will do!  I had been collecting pieces for this party for months and to be honest I wasn't completely sure what all I had until I opened the boxes up again the day before the party.  I had a feeling we were in for a long decorating session, and to save my marriage (my decorating tends to drive John batty) I enlisted the help of my Mom and Mother-in-law.  It took the four of us a couple of hours but I think the result was well worth the effort!

Our living room has these great brown beams that lend themselves extremely well to imitating tree trunks, so I decided to use them to my advantage.  We twisted two different shades of green streamers together and then draped them along the beams.  To make it look more authentic we weren't concerned with them being symmetrical, much to the joy of John and my Mom!  I purchased a few stems of leaves from a local craft store and removed the leaves from the stems.  Then I punched a hole in each leaf and we strung them onto fishing line.  These were then taped to the beams to give us some jungle foliage.  We also used two different shades of twisting balloons to all some fullness to the beams.  John came up with the great idea of curling the darker green balloons and I absolutely love the way they turned out!  The look was completed with some paper monkeys strung on fishing line, tissue puffs around each end of the trunks and last but definitely not least, an inflatable parrot.  Unfortunately my 5 foot monkey had some inflating issues and was pretty much flat by the time the party started.  He was still an interesting addition, even if he was a little two dimensional.

I found this great mural at a local craft store as well and I knew I wanted to incorporate it somehow.  I ended up wrapping it around our entertainment centre (since wall space is at a premium in our house) and using it as a photo backdrop.  It added a little extra jungle pop and also gave us a place to hide some of those last minute clean up items that you always seem to miss!  Along the top of our entertainment centre I staggered shimmer palm trees, honeycomb palm trees, and inflatable beach ball animals.  The animals also doubled as favors for the kids attending the party.  I don't have a photo of them but the kids also took home animal tails that clip to your clothes, they were a huge hit!

To complete the living room décor, I hung an 8 foot cardboard tree palm tree from an exiting hook in the ceiling (I guess it does serve a purpose) and sat an inflatable palm tree in the corner.  As you can tell from the photo the inflatable tree didn't last very long and we ended up having to tie it to the blinds.  If I learnt anything from this party is it that you can never count on the quality of an inflatable.  Good thing I decided to get the cardboard palm tree or we wouldn't have had one for the party! *gasp*

Finally after all many months of painstakingly trying to get Roman to sit still for his monthly photo I was able to share the fruits on my labor.  It's amazing how much Roman changed from one month to the next especially when I'm with him every day and don't necessarily notice the changes.  How did such a tiny dark haired baby turn into a big blond toddler so quickly?!

Now for every one's favorite part, the food!  For birthdays I think it's a fun personal touch to have a menu consisting of the birthday boy's, or girl's, favorite foods.  After all, it is their day!  For Roman's birthday meal I made:

Baboon Burgers
Hyena Hot Dogs
Hungry Hippo Hummus
Viper Veggie Pizza
Elephants Eggs (deviled eggs with avocado mixed into the yolk)
Macaw Mac & Cheese Bites (baked mac & cheese balls)
Fruit Tray (I dropped the ball on this one and didn't have a clever name for it)

Now obviously hot dogs and hamburgers aren't one of Roman's favorite foods, but I didn't think our guests would want tuna sandwiches for lunch.  Roman devoured a lot of food at lunch, but the hands down favorite for him was the hummus.  He got a little messy but I was actually impressed by how clean he was.  I guess it helps when it's all his favorite foods, not much hits the floor that way!

I love these plastic table cloths from the dollar store.  They fit my table perfectly and I can just ball them up at the end of the day and toss it into the trash.  After a long day of partying, who wants to wash a table cloth?  The fringe I picked up at a craft store but you could also use several grass skirts attached together.  Space is always at a premium on a buffet table so I decided to pre-wrap the utensils with the napkins so they would take up less space on the table.  To hold them together I made napkin rings to match the theme the jungle theme.  I also use the same idea to make these super cute water bottle labels.  I thought they were a fun way to dress up the water bottles to make them more appealing rather than just plopping plain water bottles on the table.

 

 

I always look forward to cake at a party, and this one was no different.  I kept with the theme of making Roman's favorite foods and made Roman a lemon blueberry cake with Whipped Cream Frosting.  I took my inspiration from this cake I found on Pinterest.  Now obviously this cake was going to be a large undertaking for one person, so I decided to enlist the help of my Mom.  Between the two of us we managed to pipe this entire cake in no time flat.  We used the #67 Wilton tip for the leaves and the #233 Wilton tip to make the grass around the base of the cake.  We spread a layer of frosting onto the cupcakes and topped them with these adorable palm tree picks I found at PartyCity.

When all was said and done everyone had a great time at Roman's birthday party.  Roman particularly loved playing with all the other kids and running rampant through the house.  The food was gobbled up and much to my surprise I managed to keep the quantity at a normal level this time!  We were very blessed to get to spend this special day with our family and close friends, and had a fantastic time visiting with everyone.  Let the planning for the next party begin!