The Birthday Boy!!

Jake had his 1st birthday party last weekend! Seriously- where does the time go? Since Jake is our little monkey we decided to do a monkey theme. I had fun obsessing and planning for the past 4 months :o) We had it at a local community center with about 35-40 people.

I decorated with the monkey theme in mind. On the tables where people were sitting I used yellow cover, then put 3 balloons tied to a small bunch of bananas set on two small banana leaves as a centerpiece on each table (I forgot to take a picture). For the food table I put a banana print cloth over a yellow table cover for a a little something extra. We served chicken salad sandwiches, chips & pretzels, fruit kabobs on these cute little skewers, meatballs and tortilla roll ups.

The gift table was really fun to do! I made "vines" by twisting rolls of brown packaging paper and hung some monkeys on it. We also put the cake and punch here as well as a little cluster of photos- in the three pictures Jake is wearing monkey related clothes at 1 month, 6 months and nine months old. This was a hit! I borrowed monkeys from my friends to use around the table. We put the gift underneath. We had a pile for Jake and a pile for toy donations to take to the monkeys at the KC Zoo! I'm really excited about that! I think our guests liked it as well.

My Mother-In_law made the super cute cake. I was going to make a banana cake for Jake but didn't have enough time in the end so we just got him a store bought cake (actually it came free with the sheet cake we got.)

We had a bean bag toss... (idea stolen from here)

...and played Pin the Tail on the Monkey! (I found the image online and had it printed at a 24x36 size at Kinko's for $4.50, then I colored it in myself. I have the large b/w PDF if anyone wants it.)

Then I had the kids go around and count all the bananas in the room, write their guess and their name on a piece of paper and drop it into the monkey box on the gift table. I drew a name at the end of the party and whoever got it right first got a prize! Prizes for the games were little monkey banks like this:

After the games we moved on to cake. Jake had never had anything like this before so I was worried he would be really careful with it. I was wrong. He dove right in!

He got most of it in his hair, ears and up to his elbows...

...but he still somehow managed to get a little in his mouth!

He was bouncing off the walls for the rest of the day until he FINALLY went to bed at 8:30. We were exhausted trying to keep up with him! No more cake for a year!!

I know Jake had fun at the party and I think all the other kids did too! It was a little chaotic, a lot stressful and a ton of fun!!! However, next year we'll have a small party at home with the grandparents :o)


Here's Jake with the loot! The stuff on the left is his, everything on the right is for the zoo monkeys!

He also got these two awesome gifts from the grandparents!!

Awesome jogging stroller complete with 4 cup holders for beer- I mean water and a MP3 plug in and speaker....

...and a water/sand table!

Folds up nice and neat!

It was a great 1st Birthday!

If you've made it this far, give yourself a cookie :o)