We celebrated our 'February birthday kids' (Sophia and James) with a combined jungle/safari theme at our house this year. Scheduling is becoming a tad more complicated as the kids get older because we are finding that we need to work around not only our schedules but also the schedules of any friends that we would like to invite. For that reason, we settled on a friend party for three of Sophia's closest friends on a Friday night -- bonus that it was on Presidents' Day Weekend and the kids were off school that Friday -- and then had a family party on Saturday.
All four of the Lapinski kids joined in on the fun of putting together the balloon arch. Blowing up the balloons with the air compressor from the garage, assembling them together, taping others in ... they did it all. I think that its safe to safe that we have perfect this particular technique now in our household.
I love how this table turned out. The leaves are dried (fake) and the pot was on clearance at the store. It had a small dent in it and some chipped paint, but I added more gold paint and no one was the wiser. In fact, Sam loved the centerpiece so much that she "stole" it for her bedroom afterwards. The elephant was a cheap paper machete find that I painted grey and the zebra was actually a 'horse' that I painted to look like an African zebra.
I covered our usual painting in the dining room to match the theme, pulled in a fake plant from elsewhere in my house, painted some cheap "1s" in giraffe print for Sophia's friend party and put together party favors in animal print gift bags.
The party favors were the softest cheetah socks ever, a cheetah face mask (what girl doesn't love a nice face mask these days?!) and a leopard-print key chain with the first letter of each of the girl's names for their backpacks.
But the real highlight of Sophia's party was the chocolate fountain! The plastic leaf bowls were left over from Sam's 9th birthday party and I filled them with items that would be great with melted chocolate (rice krispie treats, marshmallows, Nilla wafers, pretzels, strawberries, bananas, apples and pretzels). It was a hit!
The birthday girl and her closest 5th grade friends:
I had a craft set up in the dining room where the girls (including Sam) painted a sunset picture and then we added a safari silhouette to the paper and framed them.
They turned out even better than I had imagined! Look how different they ended up being too. The girls then got to take them home to (hopefully) hang up in their bedrooms to remember the party by.
A funny picture on the couch:
The girls enjoyed pizza and breadsticks and then afterwards -- instead of cake or cupcakes -- I served 'zebra cakes' and mini cups of ice cream.
Happy 11th birthday, Sophia Marie!
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