The best party ever!

Ever since my daughter turned 4, she's been obsessed about throwing a birthday party for her friends. That year we had the traditional party with grandparents and other family, but I promised that when she turns 5, we'll invite all her friends and throw a proper kids party. She was exited, and as november came closer and closer, I started panicking. How the hell was I supposed to handle a hoard of sugar crazed strange kids?? I made a cry for help at the facebook momma-page and got some useful tips.

1. Plan ahead, prepare in advance as much as you can.

2. Make a game plan and stick to it.

3. Serve the healthy and the savory foods first, then some adult supervised party games, and save the cake and other sweet stuff to the end. No kid will eat meatballs or veggie sticks if there's cake on the table. And, as a bonus, they won't be sugar crazed for the whole time.

4. Hire (or force, bribe, whatever) a third grown-up to help you. (I didn't actually do that, but some of the kids came with their parents who allso happen to be my friends...sorry guys!)

So, I started planning way ahead, in order to avoid the last minute panic. At first I was very reasonable with my plans. And we had so much fun with the birthday girl, making decorations and jungle themed crafts at our daily craft sessions. (Little brothers nap time.) But then something happened, I had too much time (I blame pinterest!!) and ended up with a huge party plan and a monster of a party. We were actually painting spoons! But that's just me, getting over enthusiastic and slightly obsessed with the things I do. (And exhausted and burn out by the time the whole thing is over.)

So here's my fift rule for planning a birthday party:

Don't start too early and whatever you do, don't look at pinterest!!!

Nonetheless, I'm very proud of what we came up with, and my girl was the happiest 5-year-old on the planet. So, here's what we did.

We had a jungle theme with the deco and pretty much everything else too. The planning was easy once we decided a theme, just lot's of green stuff and jungle themed plush toys. We actually happen to have alot of green and leafy stuff at our house anyways, so creating a rainforesty athmosphere wasn't that hard. To avoid huge costs, we made most of the decorations ourselves.

Welcome! Follow the tiger and step in to the jungle!

Pompoms as flowers, crepe paper streamers as jungle vines  and green balloons as tree tops.

Monkeys, snakes and other jungle creatures.

We had so much fun planning for the food! Pinterest (that damn pinterest!!) is full of ideas, and it all seems so easy.. well, actually it wasn't that bad, since alot of the food we made earlier (our freezer was packed full) or during the week of the party. So not that much cooking or baking was left for saturday.

After the guests had arrived and presents opened, we served:

Popcorn (Popcorn tree seeds)

Mini-burgers and fries (the expeditioners lunch)

Veggie sticks and dip (monkey food)

Pigs in a blanket (jungle beetles)

Cheese sticks (poisonous snakes)

Cracker-spiders

A fruit salad in a carved watermelon (Jungle monster aka the vomiting gorilla)

They got to pick up the food from our dinner table and then go and eat on blankets on the living room floor. It was like a picnic!

My husband carved mr. Gorillahead, it was so cool!

And after the party games it was time for cake, and with it we had:

Chocolate mini-cupcakes (elephant poo!)

Cookies dipped in white chocolate and chocolate stripes (zebra-lollipops)

Salty sticks covered with orange frosting and cholate stripes (tiger tails) 

Elephant and giraffe shaped cookies

Layered jungle-jello

Long licorice candy vines

Everything looked a bit homemade and rustic, but taste was good.

Amazingly the bottom part of the cake was still alive the next day when family and relatives came to party.

To drink we  had bug egg punch (lemonade and frozen grapes) and tiger juice.

Of course we had fun and games too. First we did the mighty balloon drop and it was a huge success. As soon as the kids stepped in our living room, they noticed a green plastic table cloth hanging from the ceiling. "What is that? Is it balloons?? Why is it there???" They just couldn't wait to find out, it was awesome. After most of them had finished eating their expeditioners lunches I gathered everyone under the green thing. First we talked a bit about what it actually is that rains in a rain forest. Water, flowers, leaves, coconuts or even monkey poo? And then, on the count of three, they pulled the strings and all the balloons and confetti fell down on their heads and plates and everyone was screaming and laughing and catching the balloons. It was priceless! Totally worth all the effort!

Balloon drop: the coolest party game ever!

The second game was a huge dice with jungle animals. They were throwing the dice and jumping like frogs, scratching like monkeys and so on. It was so much fun too. I had planned a third game with hippos and mud, but by that point everyone had noticed that the sweet stuff was coming to the table, so they had no more patience left. After the cake we went outside, they had to look for hidden reflectors (fire flies) with their flashlights (it was dark). With every reflector there was a letter and by arranging the letters they had a hint where to look for the treasure. The treasure was of course little bags for everyone with green glow sticks, jungle stickers and treats. By the time their parents came to pick them up, everyone was conviniently allready outside, with their coats on and nicely jumping all over the place in sugar high. And off they went, phew!

Oh and of course we had a jungle themed play list from you tube, so it was all hakuna matata all day long.

And that was it. What do you think? Please share your best party tips and tricks!