Luke’s 1st Birthday {Food and Jungle/Summer Decor}

I figured I would break this up into two posts so it didn’t become visual overload! For Luke’s first birthday I did a jungle theme which kinda morphed into a summer/jungle theme because I had such a hard time finding jungle items that I liked. Here’s a glimpse into some of the food and decorations I did for the party:

I took a basic $1 yard-sale photo board and hot-glued ribbon in the party colors on top of the existing white ribbon. I popped the “buttons” off to glue the ribbon and then hot-glued them right back. Desserts were cupcakes, animal crackers in a cookie jar, m&ms, nuts, watermelon, s’mores and monkey bread (which turned out amazing thanks to Sarah’s recipe – thanks!).

I couldn’t find a cupcake stand I liked, so I just wrapped two boxes in birthday paper and made my own! The cupcakes were topped with brown sprinkles and some of them had animals on top. I took jungle animal stickers from Michaels, stuck them to cardstock, then hot-glued it to a toothpick and stuck them in.

I made a separate “smash cake” for Luke – my first foray into cake-decorating! I am no professional but it was fun and easy to make this monkey cake, thanks to Parenting.com.

Some food pictures – we had sweet and sour meatballs, pasta salad, buffalo chicken wing dip, chips and salsa, seven-layer Mexican dip, hotdogs for the kids, Italian pinwheels, and veggies and dip.

Gotta love a party in the garage! :)

On the tables, I placed an orange placemat topped with a mason jar and pinwheels. I wanted to put sand in the jars, but that was too expensive so I just poured in sugar! I made the pinwheels using a tutorial from Amanda’s site and I really like how them came out. I also put my baby food jars around the base of the mason jars.

(One of the candles had blown out but you get the idea!)

Of course I had to personalize my chalkboard in honor of the birthday boy:

I also made this easy banner (I got the original idea here – super cute!). I just cut out a dollar-store banner, used the letters as templates, and mod-podged fun scrapbook paper over the top. I used tiny clothespins to affix it to the twine. I am keeping this from year to year and plan on hanging it up each birthday that he has (I figure I can get maybe 8 years out of it before he thinks it’s way too lame. :)

Last but not least, here are the kids’ goodie bags. I used wooden animals from Michael’s, hot-glued them to treat bags, and personalized them with each kid’s name.

There you have it! I’ll probably do one more quick post actually showing the birthday boy :), but I figured some of you are like me and would enjoy seeing how someone else did a party. :)

Oh, and I forgot to add that my budget for the entire party was originally $100, but it ended up being $150 - still not too bad for food and drinks and decor for 35 people!

To see how I did the invites and tea lights, click here.

Linked to:

Transformation Thursday @ The Shabby Chic Cottage
Sunday Showcase @ Under the Table and Dreaming
Tot Tuesday @ My Delicious Ambiguity