Benjamin's Birthday Bananza!

My son is into monkeys (especially Curious George), so I decided  M O N K E Y S would be our theme for his 2nd b-day party. I found these cute invitations (see image left) here, along with a matching t-shirt for him to wear, and these balloons (shown below). 

I truly love planning parties and was so happy everybody had such a great time monkeyin' around. I also think I did just enough with our theme without going overboard....easy to do online on some of those party sites! I also wanted to keep the decor simple (we were outdoors at a park) so I just went with yellow tablecloths, paper plates, utensils, and B A N A N A S which ended up serving as great paper weights to help keep the table cloths in place, as well as take-home gifts for each of the families (sorry, know the below pics aren't the greatest but you can click on each to enlarge)!

My favorite part of parties growing up were the ones that had fun games for everyone to take part in. After seeing ideas for outdoor games here I came up with our own monkey business.... 

MONKEY TOSS:

Kids tossed bean bags into the hula hoops, or tried to hula hoop themselves!

MONKEY CHASE:

Kids ran around while their parents chased them (my mom's awesome idea). 

I found these adorable monkey cut-outs in the teacher/school section The Book Table here in town (could probably be found at other school supply stores), then made the signs with paper and my computer, and taped to a tall plastic garden stake ($1 at Home Depot).

MONKEY WAVE:

Mini beach balls (found here) did the wave on top of large sheet as each kid held on to a corner. Kids also ran underneath the sheet as we fanned it over them like a canopy or a big air balloon. So easy to do and so fun!

Kid's prizes won at activities...

 Plastic animal containers found at DOLLAR TREE, animal stickers found at The Book Table, and Curious George fruit snacks by Kroger found at Smiths.

And just cause it's fun to see the "wow" expression on little kids' faces, we got this 6' inflatable monkey who was just hangin' around for kids to get their picture taken with.  I also had a sign that said "Monkey Says" to play a variation of Simon Says; another easy game for kids that can be played anytime - anywhere!

Thanks again to everyone who helped us put on this party, 
and to those of you who came to celebrate with us!