Monkeying Around and Going Bananas!

Well, Emma's birthday party went on without a hitch!  We had a house full of our wonderful family and friends!  Looking around my very full house, I realized how blessed I am to have so many wonderful people in my life!  Emma definately has a lot of people that care about her!  Some of the ideas for decorating and favor ideas I am listing below along with some of the pictures from her party.

Centerpieces - Stuffed monkeys, mini palm trees, and bananas.  The bunches of bananas are also great for holding down helium balloons! 

Decorations - Monkey helium balloons, streamers, banner

Colors - Girls:  pink, yellow, and green;  Boys: blue, yellow, and green

Food Ideas- Monkey Mix (see previous post for recipe), banana pudding, chunky monkey ice cream or banana split ice cream, Monkey Sandwiches (bananas covered in peanut butter and placed in a hot dog bun)

At Emma's party we had pizza, chips, pasta salad, and fruit with cake and banana pudding as dessert.  However, I thought I would share some other food ideas I came across when searching for ideas on other sites.

We didn't play any games since it was mostly adults at the party but you can find a lot of games that revolve around the monkey theme just by doing a monkey game search on the internet.

Now for my goody bags:  I made the goody bags with paper sacks because the brown color looked very natural and monkeyish!  I placed a monkey sticker and each child's name on the outside of the bags.
For the adults:  a bag of monkey mix, a small monkey chocolate sucker, banana candies (which I ordered from Oriental Trading), and a package of Banana Nut Muffin mix.

For the kids: a stuffed beanie baby monkey, banana candies, a large monkey chocolate sucker, a box of animal crackers, a monkey granola bar (found at Kroger), a package of Kroger brand Curious George fruit snacks, a monkey straw cup (also ordered from Oriental Trading), a banana ink pen (also from Oriental Trading).

It was a lot of fun!  Emma got a lot of nice things!  Oddly enough, everyone kept asking, "What does she need?"  Well, since Christmas was just 4 weeks ago, it is difficult to think of anything that a child would need so I told everyone that she loved plastic food, iCarly stuff, and princess stuff.  She got 4 different baskets of plastic food.  We have filled.....and I mean FILLED her little plastic shopping cart with all the plastic fruits and veggies she got...but......she LOVES them!  My husband made the joke the other night, "Well, Missy, you won't need to go to the grocery for a while because we have plenty of fruits and veggies to eat." 

Emma's cake was made by a dear friend, a young girl studying culinary arts.  She did a wonderful job on our monkey cake!

My own little culinary kid playing with all her new plastic veggies and fruits at her princess kitchen!  Note:  The fruits and veggies in the picture are not even half of them!  There are many many more fruits and veggies that didn't make it into the picture!  :)

Have a wonderful rest of the week everyone!  I am hoping for a full remaining week at school!  Not sure what to expect though, they are talking about possible snow again later in the week!  Ugh!