I am going with a sock monkey theme, obviously, and am a little bit excited about this. I personally love sock monkeys and have kind of forced this on Wes. We also call him Monkey (just one of his many nicknames) and now it seems even more prophetic since he doesn't sit still: crawling, walking, climbing, rolling, tumbling all over!
I didn't feel like paying a lot for pre-made decorations, so I have been designing and crafting and making my own stuff. Here is his invitation:
Casey did pick out Wes' halloween monkey picture to use for the invitation, although I did a mostly-unsuccessful Sock Monkey photo shoot. From here I picked my colors to work with and fonts to continue using in other elements. I'm having a 16x20 photo printed up and it's going to have all of his month pictures on it, which fits our theme perfectly because one of my sisters bought a sock monkey for Wesley when he was born and we have been measuring his growth against the monkey.
I'm not going to kill myself trying to do a full lunch, this is about him and not my prowess as a homemaking goddess! (Rolls eyes to myself) Cupcakes and ice cream and monkey juice is all I'm doing, although they are not going to be lame. I've got a plan: Devil's food cake cupcakes in red polka dot liners, with a banana frosting, and both chocolate and banana ice creams. For the monkey juice, probably just a sugar free punch. I have been looking at the paper straws that are all over and they are so cute, but I can't justify spending ten dollars on fifty straws so I'm not sure if that will happen. I'm doing plain colored plates, probably red, and some brown napkins as well as some sock monkey print napkins that I may give in and get (I'll show you the print in a minute).
Decorations are going to be simple. The big picture I'm going to Mod Podge it onto a canvas so it will look awesome and I'm using his sock monkey toys as some of the decorations on the gift/cupcake table. I'm going to do a few balloons on the table as well, one in each brown, red and white as well as a really cute sock monkey mylar balloon:
This is the same print for the napkins I might get, still deciding about that one. I am also making him a banner with his name on it to hang over the table and I pretty sure I am going to make him a party hat as well. This is what I have in mind, although I may change somethings around:
Since Wes will have his own cupcake instead of a smash cake I made a little candle holder for him:
So, the monkey's arm will hold the candle when it's lit but when he's done with it I plan on using it again in the future or just keeping it for him to have.
The last thing I am working on is treat bags for guests. I was going to make bags just for kids, but then where do you draw the line on how old do kids get to be before not getting a bag and then I decided to make a bag for each family. There will be some child-friendly stuff in there as well as actual treats for adults. For the kids, I am doing silly straws, maybe a rubber ducky since Wes loves his so much, and a four-pack of crayons to go with the matchbook-size coloring books I am going to make. I have this cute sock monkey paper that I am going to use on his banner but I also want to use it for the cover. Here are the pictures I am going to use in the coloring book.
I'm hoping that this will turn out as well as I want it to, but I will soon find out. As for the treats for the adults and bigger kids, these are my ideas. I am ordering some candy bananas to make something like this:
I am also planning on making these covered Oreos, but while the chocolate is still warm I am going to stamp a sock monkey face into it and then use food markers to color it in. This is where I got the idea, though:
Thank goodness for Pinterest for a lot of the ideas! I'm thinking this is probably all I am going to do; is it enough?? I don't want to be ungrateful but I don't want to kill myself trying to put this party together either. Ahh, a mother's guilt. Oh well, my boogie only has one first birthday and I hope that after all is said and done, that he enjoys it!
