ZOO PARTY  For my daughter's 3rd birthday we decided to have it at the zoo. We celebrated her first two birthday parties at our home which were fun but we were so busy we didn't get to enjoy them as much as we would have liked.  With the zoo staff doing all of the work at the party we were able to enjoy the party and most importantly our daughter. It also allowed me to have time to get creative with making the invitations and the favor bags.  INVITATIONS: I used a dry embossing stencil from Lasting Impresstions called "zoo"  It had a monkey, a giraffe and an elephant on it.  I embossed them in different colors for the front of the invitation and it read "Get ready party animals! On the inside it read  I'm growing up so fast that it's hard to believe  but I'm not LION  I'm turning 3!   I'm having a party and I'm very excited so come and MONKEY around with me cause your invited!    (Date) (location),  Party Ssssstarts at (time)  I hope you'll join me for my wild adventure.    Please respond A.S.A.P. or mommy will go bananas   PARTY: The zoo served pizza, fruit punch, cake and ice cream to all of our guests.  It was held in a beautiful lodge on a river (Jacksonville Florida Zoo). They had the room decorated with a zoo theme of course, zoo coloring sheets for kids to color when arriving and zoo anmal foam masks that the kids loved (some of the adults too1) They had music from the Lion King playing as well. A hostess took care of everything. It was wonderful!    FAVORS: After the party we distributed a favor bag.  I called it a "survival sack" It was a simple brown paper bag.  On the front I stenciled each child's name and stapled it closed. To hide the staple, I embossed one of the animals from the invitation and glued it to 2 square shaped pieces of paper using scrapbooking scissors. On the back side of the bag I used a ribbon called "paper yarn" (by making memories scrapbooking supplies) and I stapled it to the bag.  I then used white business cards and punched a hole in the corner to tie the "paper yarn" to it.  The favor bags contained  a boxed apple juice, a banana, animal crackers and a wet wipe. The business cards attached to the bag read:  SURVIVAL SACK /Jungle juice \*A banana for little monkeys \*A snack for growling tummies \*Something to clean dirty paws I chose to include items that could be used that day at the zoo so the kids didn't end up with a bunch of little trinkets that are usually a waste of money and take up space.    We then gave all of our guests their tickets to enjoy a day at the zoo.  It was so much fun!  My daughter had a great time.