This was for our sons 2nd birthday.  He likes animals so we chose a jungle theme. The jungle theme colors were primary bright colors.  The invitations were from the theme and inside I enclosed a recent picture of him. I love to take pictures so our families are constantly receiving them. Since it was outside or suppose to be but since the weather was the hottest day of the year so far it ended up being inside, but we still had hambergers and hotdogs on the grill. I made some green fruit punch that was labeled jungle juice, also some pastachio salad was made and that was named jungle salad.  Mom made and I decorated 4 cakes which were a monkey, brown bear, panda bear, and giraffe. They were all made out of the cake mold animal cracker from wilton company. They all were different flavors of cake and icing. I also had labels printed out so the guests knew which animal was what kind of cake and icing.  But the giraffe was the biggest hit which was chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. We taped 2 poster boards horizontally together.  On the board we took construction paper and cut out grass (for the bottom), and a tree trunk. I punched out leaves from my die cut machine to finish the tree. Leaves are pretty popular at any craft store that carries diecuts such as Michaels.  WE wrote Happy 2nd Birthday Brady down the trunk of the tree. And then we put the cakes on the tree with the giraffe at the top and the monkey in the tree and then the panda and brown bear were on either side of the tree down next too the trunk.  The favors we gave out I made were different colored chocolate monkeys.  I found chocolate molds at A.C. Moore to make the monkeys. I put 3 monkeys in a little bag, tied a ribbon around them with a banana diecut that read "Thank you for sharing my special day with me." I also made a 12 minute video where I took LOTS of pictures of my son from birth till now and added music to it.  So when we watched the video we saw the pictures and heard the music at the same time. This was a HUGE hit. So another favor we did was give each family that was interested a copy of the video. And every family took one.  Since I'm into scrapbooking I punched out leaf diecuts for everyone to sign and I'll add them to my sons scrapbook that way he'll know 20 years or so down the road who was at his 2nd birthday party. We had an elephant pinata made which looked exactly like the elephant on the invitations.  The kids loved it and we only had 4 kids playing, which were ages 2, 4, 5, and 10. We all enjoyed watching them too.  We also had an elephant (standee) is what some places call them. It's a big elephant (from the side view) was drawn and painted on a presentation board I bought at walmart, and were the eye was is were we cut a big whole that way the kids could stick their heads through and get their picture taken. We added handles on the back of the board with rope and hot glue gun so the kids had something to hold onto. In the thank you's I'll send the pictures of the kids who had their picture taken in the elephant.  The thank you's will be a post card size card with my sons picture on it and it'll read look how much I've grown with a giraffe through the writing. Then I can write below in the space provided.  I bought these when I had his picture taken at Walmart. Even though it was terribly hot we all had a great time. I also have a 4 year old son and we've been having parties for him ever since his 1 st birthday but I really think this one was the most fun.  My goal was to do a lot of it myself and I try to be creative as much as possible.  I find too that making stuff cuts costs in the end.