Yes, it happened. Somehow my baby turned one! We celebrated with a fun jungle safari birthday party. Growing up my mom was the best at making themed parties and we had so much fun coming up with ideas for decor and food and costumes. It’s been fun to do a bit of that myself lately!

Jungle Safari Themed Decorations

In December my friend Mia asked for my help with her party decor business, Crate a Celebration. She comes up with the designs and prints them and I assemble and coordinate pickup. It’s really fun getting to be a bit creative and also to help her out so she can continue using her creative talents even while she’s also working full time. She designed the cake topper, favour boxes, and banner for Juniper’s party and they turned out amazing!

I have been wanting to do a jungle safari birthday party for so long and Juniper’s birthday was the perfect opportunity. She really is a wild one, and she’s young enough to not care what her party theme is, whereas Abel’s last birthday was car-themed because he is obsessed with cars.

After the party I hung the ‘Juniper’ part of the banner in her bedroom. You can buy cheap jungle/safari party decor online but is it this cute, durable, trendy, fashionable, and customisable? Sure isn’t 😉

I also purchased a variety of balloons to make a balloon arch. It’s pretty easy but I also hated making it. I blow up the balloons, use a tapestry needle and yarn to tie them in bunches of four, and then connect all the bunches with yarn and move them around until it looks right. It’s hard getting them all to face the right way so that you don’t see the tied ends though, and my one zebra balloon ended up on the back side so you couldn’t see it. The gold balloons are from Spotlight and the others from a variety of places.

Juniper doesn’t look impressed because she just woke up from a nap!

I grabbed whatever I had around the house that would fit in with the theme as well, to use as decor. Some wooden animals, Juniper’s giraffe teether, wooden beads, etc. It’s a fun way to add more variety to your decor without spending a ton on things you’ll throw away later.

Favour Boxes

I don’t usually do favour boxes, we’re kinda chill about parties and I hate little junk that will just be thrown away, so we filled these ones with some themed lollies which was really fun! Bananas, snakes, and crocodiles were perfect!

Food For a Jungle Safari Birthday Party

Of course one of the most fun parts is the food! Pinterest is a great place to look for ideas for themed food but it is very easy to customise desserts and sweets, and can be difficult to find fun ideas for healthier snacks. I know birthday parties don’t come often and I don’t mind if my kids eat lots of lollies a few times a year, but it’s nice to have something more filling and nutritious as well because I’m an adult now and know that just eating sugar doesn’t make you feel very good. Sparkling water and juice are a good alternative to soda too!

Food table: Watering Hole

Carrots and hummus: Lion

Sultanas: Ants

Chickpeas: Snake Eggs

Cheese and crackers board: Snakes

Sausage Rolls: Snakes

Chips: Beetle Wings

Veggie straws: Grubs

Sliced apples: Crocodile Teeth

Drinks: Jungle Juice

Easy Personalised Decor Using Canva

I used the website Canva to create the labels for the food and this fun poster with photos from Juniper’s first year. After the party I put this poster on Juniper’s closet door and she loves looking at it! I tried turning my designs into templates to share but that’s not possible with a free account so I can’t. However the website is really user-friendly and if you know your way around a computer I think it’s pretty simple to figure out.

Plates/Napkins/Cups

A few ideas for diposables – get all white which is cheap and goes with anything, get solid colours that match the colours used in your theme, patterns that coordinate, or themed patterns. I found these party animal cups at Kmart, and the leaf plates and napkins were on sale at Countdown so I grabbed those! The leaves on the table were also from Kmart for cheap so I just used those for decor.

Games

I came up with some fun personalised games for us to play! For the first game, I wrote some trivia questions about Juniper. I couldn’t think of many to be honest, but included questions like what was her due date, what’s her birthday, was she early/on time/late, how far apart are Abel and Juniper, etc. For the second game I found some baby photos and everyone had to guess who was in each photo. I included myself, Jared, Abel, Juniper, and just to confuse everyone, my nephew Monty. Everyone enjoyed the games!

Abel was so excited because of course I started prepping things the week of her party and it was very hard for him to be patient about the balloons, decor, and cake. He may have eaten the chips, lollies, and frosting and left everything else on his plate, but again, birthday don’t come very often and I wasn’t going to spend the party making sure Abel ate a balanced meal. 😉

Happy first birthday Juniper!