Recently we celebrated by son's 1st birthday party.  I am not much for traditional themes- (barney etc..) so I decided to throw an Animal Party.  It was so much fun! First, I made up custom animal party invitations.- The Call of the Wild- to celebrate Vaughn's 1st birthday.- Inside: Swing on by (monkey's on vines. Then, I started by ordering inflatable monkeys from oriental trading. My husband and I put two small eyelet hooks in the wall with fish wire. We then wrapped green streamer around the fish wire so it was not visible.  Then we hung the monkeys from the wire. This set the party off right when you walked in the door.  I found plastic tablecloths with zebra print and animals. (oriental trading) and I went to the dollar store and got bags of jungle/farm animals and placed them on the tables as decorations. I found leopard print ballons at Birthday Express and had them blown up and paired with orange and black balloons.  We used wooden giraffes as balloon weights. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the Zoo Pals plates and slide sandwich baggies, but they sell at grocery stores. I used these to serve main dish and ordered green bowls, napkins, "Welcome Mate", and cutlery from Birthday Express.  I hung a lion marionette from the chandelier in another room. We had a custom cake done with a jungle theme and the individual cake had a little palm tree on it.  There was a large inflatable giraffe in the background area for pictures.  We played pin the monkey on the palm tree (oriental trading) and had a table for kids to get animal tattoos.  I also ordered foam animal masks, 24 different animals and had them on the tables.  The kids picked out what animal they wanted to be and they all sat on the stairs with their masks on for a picture. The adults did this too! We had an animal unscramble for the adults for lotto tickets. There were kids of all ages from one to ten and they all seemed to enjoy themselves.  The gift bags were the zipper animal zoo pals.  They were filled with bubbles with an animals on top, (oriental trading) animal crackers, animal suckers, and some candy.  Everyone loved the party and talked about it for weeks after. I can't wait until Vaughn grows up and sees the pictures! We have a huge family 30+ and everyone had fun.