6 sounded like a good year to have a carnival/circus themed party! This was probably one of the easier ones to put together because items were easy to find, costumes I found early, and a dear friend had sent me … Continue reading
With my son just turning 2, it was time to recycle back the safari theme we had 2 years ago. Ahhh, I love recycling themes – one less thing to have to creatively think about. Especially since that last Superhero party was a lot of prep work! This time around, I just brought down our “safari box” and most of the decor and crafts were already to go. I even had left over goody bag/pinata toys because I had bought one of the bulk sets from Oriental Trading last time. Yeehawww. More money saved.
Well… let’s just rewind here for a moment. In 2011 – when my daughter turned 2. We had a safari themed birthday party for her. In all honesty, the theme was selected around a cute tutu outfit that I had found for her 2 year photos. Hot pink zebra animal print!? YES! Ok – safari theme it is! 😉
Here is the outfit that inspired the whole theme:
Centerpieces came mostly from the little tin buckets for $1 a piece at Target at the time, and I purchased a DIY Printable Party Pack for the paper decor items (being that I’m so photoshop-inclined… or kinda just lazy).
For the fruit display, I had my mom do an alligator head. This was her first try at it – not bad! (but for my son’s party this year, she scored a perfectly long watermelon that really suited the purpose – see further below).
For the kids crafts, we had: Design your own binoculars, Design your own safari hat, and Create a safari door hanger (foam with stickers)
For our “photo op” I found this standup jeep prop from BirthdayExpress.com
I went for just a simple pink animal print cake. We get our cakes from our favorite hidden gem: Renaissance Bakery (part of Ranch Events Catering)
I love that our family and friends like to get into the spirit of a “themed” birthday party! Makes it more fun for all!
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Fast forward to 2013 – it was time for the Safari, Round 2.
This year my mom went searching early for a long shaped watermelon for our alligator and she found one! She even added some legs this year. 🙂
I reuse my old glass vases a lot for my centerpieces (they were leftovers from my wedding and come at $2 a piece at Michaels). Why not use them? They get covered up by whatever theme we are doing anyways. Again, I got a Printable Party Pack from Etsy. Add in his birthday photo and some stickers and waaaaalaaa! 
Eeek! When I saw these safari PJ’s from Old Navy – I immediately knew it would be his perfect outfit for the party! I had put in our invitation for guests to come dressed in their best animal print. So it was just right that he had on this shirt. And he loved wearing a pair of binoculars around that day as well.
Since we started doing photobooths at our parties last year, I definitely wanted to incorporate the same Jeep standup prop. Then the photobooth template was designed to match his cake. I found some animal masks on clearance to use for props! Thank you Snapshot Moments for designing the template… it was a collabo with our Happy Endings Photography set-up. 🙂
Speaking of the cake! I didn’t want to get lazy and just go for a blue animal print cake, so I combed Pinterest looking for ideas and came up with this:
Crafts to keep the kids busy included Building your own compass, Magic Scratcher, Color your own binoculars, and Design your own Safari Hat. That hats were actually more like the ‘sailor’ hats – found them on clearance on Oriental Trading a while back for super cheap. Add some fabric markers from Walmart and we were good to go! The hats were probably the kids favorite of the crafts, along with the Magic Scratcher.
All in all, I’d day both parties were a huge success. The kids had fun, the adults had fun, but most importantly, my guest of honor always had a huge smile on their face. And that my friend, makes all the planning and hard work worth it.
Now, time to start brainstorming for next year! I’m thinking Disney for V’s 5th, and I’m just dying to do a robot theme for K’s 3rd! No recycling for him next year because we did “Fairies and Wizards” when V turned 3… and I don’t want to go the fairy route for my lil’ man. hehe.
mommyneurotic 