Safari Party Last year, for my daughters 6th birthday, I did a Safari theme. This was an awesome party. People still talk about it. I have a lot of family and friends with kids of all ages, and I like to appeal to them all. I planned for 24 children. I rented a bouncy house to start with. The bouncy house had a slide at the entrance with huge teeth going over the slide, which fit, into the theme. I ordered Safari hats and binoculars for each child from Oriental trading. I had a pile of builders sand dumped in the yard near the bouncy house. I bought tons of plastic bugs and snakes, etc. and buried them all over the pile. I then bought 10 kitty litter scoopers (new) for the kids to dig with. This was even a bigger hit than the bouncy house especially for the toddlers. Even the older kids loved finding the bugs. I sent out Madagascar invitations because of the jungle animals. I originally wanted to make a safari Passport for the invites, but I didn't get time, but I think that's a great idea. For decorations I ordered the jungle inflates from OTC and ordered extra monkeys. I painted a jungle mural on white wall paper and taped it to the wall on the porch. It was awesome. I also ordered the animal print foam sheets from OTC and cut out letters that spelled Happy Birthday Karli. I strung them together with fishing line. Then I strung the banner up on the porch. I used three different shades of green streamers to make vines everywhere, and I hung the monkeys like they were hanging fro the vines. This was so cute. I put the rest of the animals around the porch.  They looked so cute in front of the mural, and this was an excellent picture spot especially with the hats and binoculars. My original idea for the animals was to do a safari jungle ride through the woods with the animals in the trees and bushes. You could use a four wheeler pulling a trailer or a vehicle we have called a Gator (Kinda like an ATV). We can fit about 4 or 5 kids at a time in the back.  We've done hayrides before like this. We didn't have time for this but it was my original plan. You could also do a walk or Jungle hike! For the food I had hamburgers and hotdogs with chips and dips and fixin's. The best thing I did was ask a friend to grill for me. That was a great help. I bought zoo pals for months ahead of time and picked out the jungle animals and saved them for the party. We use paper plates a lot so they didn't go to waste. I also bought the zoo pals cups too. For the cake, I bought these adorable animal picks. I made cupcakes from my cupcake doctor book, very tasty, and I decorated them with green grass icing and the animal picks (zebras, elephants and giraffes) and also a tree pick in each one. I also made a small cake that I painted to look like a water hole and I placed the cupcakes all around the water hole. This was soooooooo cute. I had a cupcake tree that I got off of ebay (it came with the animal picks) and I put the extra cupcakes on the cupcake tree. We didn't have to play that many games because the kids had so much to keep them occupied with the bouncy house and sand pile. This was great because I had time to visit with everyone. We did play a game that I made up with the foam animal print sheets. I place them in a circle on the ground. I took pieces from the scraps I had left over from the banner I made and I put a few pieces of each print into a bowl. I then had the kids stand on a foam piece. I drew out a print from the bowl and whoever was on that print got a prize. I did this until everyone had a prize. Then we did a pinata. Everyone also got a goodie bag with jungle themed toys and prizes, and I let the kids have an animal inflate if the wanted. Between food, bouncing, digging and presents, 3 hours flew by and the party was over. It was a wild time with great fun for all ages 2-100!!!! Ive done 3 themes so far, and this was the best yet!!!