2Nd Bday Party Planning, Ideas, Hosting

I have a lot of small monkey finger puppets and stuffed animals that you might be interested in as prizes. How many will attend?

Also I know a caterer who will make cakes of any theme to recommend if needed.

www.birthdayinabox.com

You'll love them!!!!!

Just a couple of ideas.
You do cupcakes with monkeys on them try visiting
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/cakesbyashley/album/576460762...
I am pretty sure she can do cupcakes with a monkey on each one; I recently used for my son's 2nd bday party a week ago. You won't be disappointed with her work at all. Look on her site, I think she has done some of monkeys.
and you know you can hire someone to come out with a pet monkey who will perform tricks for the kids. I was at a party once and they hired a woman who came out with a little monkey -- this was for a older's person's bday party, but even the adults enjoyed it too. Look in the back of a Dallas child magazine for phone number for who does this.
Have fun.....its such an exciting time for you and your little one.
K.

I just went to a b-day party this weekend 'monkey' themed. They rented a live monkey that did lots of tricks. It wasn't that bad on price and a good time for everyone!!! I have the info at home, let me know if you're interested...

Good Luck!
Randa

Depending on how crafty you are feeling, Martha Stewart's website had a cute monkey cake idea along w/ some other themed stuff: www.marthastewart.com (type in "monkey" in the search box)

I did a monkey theme for my son's 1st birthday last year. I had the cake made to match the invitations. I made the normal snacks for food (veggies, fruit, cheese, etc) but also made chocolate molded monkeys (mold sold at Michaels). I bought stuffed monkeys to help decorate the house at Party Warehouse (on Camp Bowie) and gave them away as party favors. We decorated the house like a jungle (green and brown streamers hanging like vines and palm trees cut outs on the wall). Have fun and good luck!

You got some great ideas so far, I'll have to try this theme one year, it sounds fun!

You can have a Tarzan yelling contest, even some adults could do this one.

You can have a bannana eating contest, who can eat the bananna the fastest, or who can stuff the most in their mouth at once, or who can eat the most in 1 minute, any variation could be fun.

For decorations for a luau we did one year, we got gift wrapping paper rolls, and made big green leaves out of green paper and made palm trees and placed theme around. You can blow up brown ballons and those can be the coconuts. Make a couple trees and place them around. To stabilze the bottom, we just duct taped canned food inside the bottom of the paper roll. You can make mini ones for the table out of paper towel rolls.

You can also get green streamers and braid them and hang them like swinging vines and staple fake green leaves and flowers on them.

For food, you can have coconuts cut in half as a bowl for fruit (mango, strawberries, cantelope)... served in them.
You can have jello jigglers or cookies in the shape of bugs (since monkeys eat bugs too), and you can have pasta salad or chicken wings and fruit punch.

Here's a site with a lot of ideas on it:
http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/html/jungle.html

My advice has already been taken- but I will second Ashley's Cakes and Birthday in a Box. We have used both and been very satisfied. Good luck with the party planning- I'm sure it will be great!

Curious George cake. Bakeries should have one you can order,
or even just the decoration you can put on the cake you make.
Finger foods *cracker, cheese meat, grapes,carrots, cherries, celery/broccoli with dips, grape tomatoes*. You can get the
ingredients and do your on deli trays. Even finger sandwiches.
Watch a few pbs Curious George episodes to get ideas on fun things. Crafts for the older kids...Micheals has kits. From
sand in the bottle, make your own rubber balls, to jewelry.
For the birthday boy: Keep it simple. He can pin the tail on
the monkey. He can also help the older kids...rubber ball will
be first to bounce. Who can get theirs to bounce the highest?
*(go in the garage where they can hit the ceiling)*.

I would do ice cream in a bag for kids 5 and up. (It would be great for everyone if you can solicit help for the little ones.) Definately to be served up with bananas!!
http://www.kidsdomain.com/craft/icecream.html

The "Monkeies in a Barrel" game would be a cute party favor in my opinion.

I put in "monkies" on this web site and this is one that came up:

http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/html/party_ideas.html

"For our son's first birthday we already knew we wanted to do a monkey theme since he always has acted like a little monkey the way he clings on with his hands and feet and the way he uses his feet to touch and hold things. It was hard to find monkey things separate from a safari or jungle theme. We knew we wanted South and Central American monkeys vs. the African apes so at least we had somewhere to start. INVITATIONS: We typed out invitation details and formatted them in a banana shape, printed them out, then cut out yellow cardstock to go on top and then cut the cardstock in half so the recipients could peel back to reveal the invitation details. We said Our monkey is turning 1! We'd go bananas if you'd join us! DECORATIONS: I couldn't get enough free brown paper grocery bags so I bought a roll of the brown craft paper and cut it into thin strips which I then rolled and twisted into long brown vines and then cut out and taped on green construction paper leaves. In retrospect, brown streamers could have easily replaced the twisted vines. I found some good palm tree decor at our local party store a 6 tall joined palm tree we nailed to the wall and a few inflatable palm trees and monkeys for very inexpensive. I also got a handful of brown balloons which I made into monkeys balloon heads with brown circle eyes, light brown oval mouths with red lips, long thin rectangular nostrils and then brown ears all glued or taped onto the balloon. I left the balloon end as the top so it could be like a tuft of hair. I then simply cut out a body, arms, legs, and tail from thick brown construction paper. The monkeys turned out very cute. I hung vines from the ceiling, the doorframe between the kitchen table and the kitchen and then hung the monkeys from the vines and then also from our table ceiling lamp above the kitchen table and also from the jointed palm tree on the wall. GAMES: Since just our family was over, games were geared towards the grown-ups. The first was that everyone had to find the orange fruit slices (grows in the jungle, right?) in a Cool Whip container (one per person) and the first to get all out won. The second game was that everyone had to make up a creative way to get a banana from one end of the room to the other without using hands to hold or feet to kick. One person picked it up with their mouth and walked it to the other end, another pretended it was a hacky-sack and sort of swooshed it to the end of the room, another hopped it across, another got it somehow onto their shirt and took it across on their shoulder. The third game was that everyone teamed up and one sat down while the other stood behind them and had to sight unseen put on a marshmallow creme beard and then stick on a cup of coconut to create the beard. The winner was the best judged by us. I had created a tall stick of bamboo on the wall with green construction paper leaves taped on. This was the prize wall. The bamboo were actually sticks of Charleston Chew stacked high and the winners took one to take home. FOOD: This was a challenge to come up with South American cuisine everyone would like. I made black bean banana empanadas, coconut rice, chicken skewered with a pineapple dipping sauce, a tropical fruit pasta salad, a bean and corn salad, and chips and pineapple salsa. I had a sign in each of the food to explain why it was jungle-related. The drink was orange-pineapple blend juice. CAKE: I made a simple 9 round cake, two layesrs, put banana pudding in the middle and frosted it with chocolate frosting. I had used some batter to bake two cupcakes and cut off the bulbous top and used the rest to stick in as ears. I used Junior Mints as eyes, licorice as a mouth, yellow frosting as the fur around the mouth and as the ear fur, and then cut out tiny strips of dark fruit leather as the nostrils. It turned out pretty cute. We also had ice cream to go with it wanted Chunky Monkey Ben & Jerry's ice cream but couldn't find it! Has it been discontinued? I also put banana chips around the cake. I should mention that as part of the eating decoration, the tablecloth was green and we took Curious George napkins and painstakingly found a similar font and typed out our son's name and colored it in blue like the napkins had George colored in, the taped each XXXXX name on over George. I also made the brown paper cups into little monkeys but adding on construction paper faces and ears. FAVORS: When everyone left, they also took home a favor in addition to the monkey hanging from the jointed palm tree, I had found some banana flavored gum in monkey packages at a party store. So I bought some yellow and brown felt and made little felt bananas and put the gum packages inside. I then hung the bunches of bananas from nails behind the tree. It really looked like they were hanging from the tree. Everyone got one before they left. It was fun and definitely ALL monkey!"

Hello! OrientalTrading.com has a huge selection of monkey themed favors, activities, and goodies. They are sold in bulk and are pretty cheap too. Shipping is usually 3-5 days so if you still have time to spare, check them out.

For the cake, visit www.marthastewart.com and search on "monkey cake" she has one that you can make. We did our son's first birthday last year and also had a range of ages attending. We put out some toys for the kids to play with and had food and appropriate drinks for all ages. The party went on for hours and everyone seemed to have a good time. This time of year you can do something outside. We once rented a giant slip and slide that kids of all ages had a great time. You can find places in the back of Dallas Child magazine. All ages of kids (even me!) loved the slip and side. Not very monkey-like, but loads of fun. For favors, you can make chocolate dipped banana chips, put in a cellophane bag and tie up with a ribbon. Or you could go to Celebrity Bakery and have cookies made (they can be pricey at $2-3 each) with monkeys on them, put in cellophane bag and hand out. Probably the most important thing is for you to have a good time. If you do, your son will, and his friends will too.

My daughters 1st bday was monkeys. I got SO many cute monkey things from Oriental Trading. They even have pin the bannana on the monkey game and monkey craft ideas and a TON of great party favors and plates and so on. I ordered a great party pack from them. They also have a monkey pinata. One of the favors I was glad I ordered was a plastic cup with a monkey on it and its tail came off and made the handle on it. Super cute! I couldnt find a moneky cake so I did a bannana cake with Boots from Dora on it. :) Good luck. This is such a fun one! :)

Hi A.,Have you thought about a monkey diaper cake for your table centerpiece. I could do one with different size monkeys climbing up the cake. I do 1,2,3 and 4 tier and they look like wedding cakes. I haven't made one using monkeys but right now I am getting all kinds of ideas about now to do a really cute one for you. Just give me a call ###-###-#### I can e-mail you some pictures. sunshine16064$@cscom
B.
I'm sending again my phone # did have the ( ) right
B. ###-###-####