This past weekend we celebrated my baby boys birthday at the Virginia Zoo! I had originally had a whole ‘nother theme idea to celebrate their joint party, but after we moved and chose the Zoo for the celebration location…it only seemed right to make it a “ZOOper Birthday” bash!
My uber creative super designer sister Adrienne whipped up these fun in-theme birthday party invites..I didn’t want anything too “babyish” with the animals and this worked perfect! And — the great thing about having a party at this zoo was that included in the “fee” were the room rental, private animal encounter, table clothes, plates, cups, pizza and drinks…all I really had to do was bring a cake, but…of course I decided to do a little bit more! 😉
I decided I’d do one decorated table and found a zoo animal party theme style online to get the coordinating tablecloth, centerpieces, banner, etc… Since it was Isaiah’s 1st birthday, I had a fun “Chalkboard Poster” printed up (ordered on Etsy, printed at Costco) …did one for Raef last year, a nice keepsake to hang in the bedrooms after the party. Then I found cute animal print frames to put each of the boy’s photos in.
Aside from the favor bags which I handed out as my guests were leaving, I wanted to have fun in=party distractions (need those for the little ones), and setup a “Party Animal Gear” area where they could choose from an assortment of animal clappers, animal face “masks” party blow outs and of course the classic party hat!
Apparently the “zebra” face was the most popular, but the animal faces came in monkey, elephant, tiger, lion and giraffe too!
My little Isaiah was fine rockin’ the traditional party hat with his giraffe shirt from Gymboree!
For dessert I did got a chocolate chip message cake (it was a big hit) and I had cupcakes with zoo animal picks and animal print wrappers. I also found the cutest animal print candles too!
Part of the party package was a private animal encounter for the kids. We had a rat snake, bunny rabbit, centipede and the chicken pictured. It was nice a nice educational presentation with a zoo educator and the kids could ask questions and had the opportunity to pet the animals too!
Finally the favors…I came up with these great little colorful canvas bags with animals on them, stuffed them with boxes animal crackers, zoo coloring books and crayons, animal print sunnies and an animal-themed beach ball too! All in all it was a roaring good time…Happy Birthday to my little guys!!!