A Wild (but Simple!) Birthday

Once again, cardboard boxes were the main attraction at our daughter's 2nd birthday party.  C is a huge fan of animals and the zoo, so I decided to make that the theme of her birthday (that and the fact that she asked for a "Tigey" birthday cake - her favorite stuffed animal).

She's only two; I keep having to remind myself not to go too overboard with decorations and extras.  This is for HER, not me or the other parents coming over.  (Although, admittedly, I still had cards to identify the themed food...but I really tried to keep it simple!)  **We had cupcakes at the "friends" party and the Tigey cake for the family get-together.

For party favors, I really wanted to give out those cute little individual boxes of animal crackers, but of course, I couldn't seem to find them anywhere!  So, I settled for a goodie bag with a couple of little animal trinkets in their along with a small bag of animal crackers.

Occupying 2-year-olds isn't too hard when you've got a couple of spare cardboard boxes lying around.  I simply covered one with the packing paper that came inside a couple of our Amazon boxes, put a stuffed lion, a cub and a few balloons in there and labeled it the "Lion's Den."

I then used a brown paper bag and drew a monkey face on it using Sharpie markers (I glued white paper on top to make the eyes).  I created a background of white with a long piece of art paper, glued it to a box and used a box-cutter to cut out the mouth.  The "monkey food" was simply a basket filled with ball-pit balls.

That was it.  Seriously...and the kids had a blast!  Food, cake and cardboard boxes was all it took.  :)