Wild Animal Adventure

We celebrated Jack's 7th birthday this weekend safari style.  My little adventurer in the making requested an "animal adventure" party.  

I was torn with which way to take this.  He was very specific in his requests.  Odd ones too.  Like "I want the table to look like a habitat", "I want wild animals", and I want to "adventure and explore".  

So after many brainstorming sessions, lots of proofs from my dear paper gal at Sweet Peach Paperie, and a little help from the monkey himself, this is what we came up with.

With what has become customary for me, I am going to do this birthday celebration in two posts.  I can only inundate you with so many pictures.

So here we go...

Our friends were greeted at the top of the walkway with this sign.  I wanted them to head right on into the backyard for the wild adventure that awaited them.

The food spread looked like this.  I tried to go for that whole "habitat" look that Jack requested.  I found some artificial ivy, large leaves and moss at the dollar store.  I shudder to think what people might actually buy that stuff for, but it worked out beautifully for this purpose.

I found the copper pots there too.  And the lantern at Tuesday Morning.  The wood plates were all part of a set that Clay and I received as a wedding gift ages ago.  We love them for outdoor entertaining {although those days are few and far between}.  I also used a lot of burlap which I easily found at Michaels.

I debated adding animals to the table, but once I got this much set up, I figured we were good.  I wanted to avoid a cluttered look.

I found the most jungle"esque" corner in my backyard and set the table up there.  It made for a nice backdrop.

I wrapped some boxes with craft paper and tied them up with twine.  This I had to explain to Jack.  He originally wanted to know what exactly "paper bag boxes" had to do with animals.

Tracy at Sweet Peach Paperie made all the paper products for me.  I truly adore her.  This was a labor of love.  We went back and forth trying to make this animal/adventure like and keep it age appropriate. I was over the moon with the final result.  And most importantly, Jack was too!

I attached the sign to a branch I lovingly scavenged for.  It took a fair amount of sticks before I found just the right one.  I added it to the pot and topped it with some of that dollar store moss.

Since this was a 3:00 party {our first ever}, I took it easy on the food.  But I could not resist these Wild Jungle Animal Crackers I found at Oriental Trading.

Nor could I resist using my lion and elephant cookie cutters to make safari sandwiches.

I'm a stickler for a healthy snack too.  So I skewered green grapes for the Gorilla Grapes.  The sun was beaming for this photo so it's difficult to read the menu tent.  And clearly there was no time to take another picture of the grapes once the party started and the sun simultaneously hid behind the clouds.

But, my most favorite of all {and I'm pretty sure the kid's too} was the watering hole.  I used blue jello cups and topped them with small jungle animals.

Similarly, I topped the cupcakes with more animals and these precious cupcake toppers.  Jack's favorite read "Jack of the Jungle".  He specifically picked out a gorilla for his.

This little safari cutie was my right hand lady.  She helped to place all those animals just so and claimed the zebra as hers.

And somehow in one of those brainstorming sessions, this idea popped in my head and I just could't let it go.  I searched high and low for this exact shaped bottle and found them at Shop Sweet Lulu.  I used the twine to tie on the "Jungle Juice" tag and filled it with green juice that under normal circumstances I would never serve my kids.

The main activity of the party was the wild animal show {which you will see in the following post}.  But, I knew I had to find something to keep those wild adventurers under control while that was being set up.  So I found these cute animal masks at Oriental Trading.  I added a box of crayons and we were good to go.

Post animal show, snacks and cupcakes, the guests participated in a wild scavenger hunt.  Jack helped me prepare the list and I smiled all the while he verbalized his ideas.  It included a variety of animals {which I hid around the yard}, items in nature {green leaves, a raging creek, ivy growing on a tree, a rock, etc.} and of course, an adventure map.

All the kids were given a safari hat, binoculars, an animal pencil and their lists.  They were off in no time and had an absolute blast doing it.

After they completed their lists they were rewarded with a burlap goody bag.

The bags were filled with an animal notebook and pen, a compass, and some Jungle Jollies taffy.  I figured that paired with the safari hat and binoculars would make a nice wild animal adventure kit.

So next post up, you are going to see some really WILD kids, a few exotic animals, and one very happy birthday boy!

Stay tuned, this adventure will continue.