Monkey Love: A Party in the Making

My baby is turning two next month which is quite bittersweet as she will no longer be a baby... You may remember the Little French Bakery 1st Birthday Party that I threw for her last year,  Well, due to the expense and time involved with throwing a very intricate and detailed themed party, my husband and I have an agreement to only do a "big" party every other year.  I guess that means that I should be packing up the girls along with their cousins and heading to Chuck E Cheese's, but I just LOVE parties too much!  In efforts to keep this year's shindig to a "small" party, we are trying to just do family and a few friends. We shall see how well I do at that...ahem.

Claire loves monkeys at the moment: from watching Curious George to reading her favorite bedtime story, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.  But with Valentine's Day so close to her birthday and my not being able to do her party the weekend of her actual birthday (the hubby and I are headed to Rome for 5 days), I thought it best to combine the two by choosing a pink & brown color scheme and incorporating both hearts and monkeys to give...Sweet Monkey Love!!!

My favorite part of throwing a party with a simple shape is the vast number of possibilities from crafts to food designs.  My four year old daughter has already begun assisting me with craft projects...pics to come.  I purchased these gorgeous fabrics to use for the dessert display backdrop, the table topper and a "photo booth" backdrop.

I was delighted to find these cute Monkey Love craft kits at Target...10 for $5.  

I plan on having a kids craft table decked out with craft supplies in cute heart-shaped containers with a few different crafts to do, ranging from the Monkey Love crafts to decorating little photo frames to cover the photos we take at the photo booth (thanks to digital cameras and modern technology which allows us to plug in the camera and print out copies of the photo booth shots in a matter of moments).  These crafts will make for wonderful party favors for the kids to give away to loved ones for Valentine's Day two days later.

I just snagged these on Amazon for the kids!  I may paint their names on them too.

Needless to say, I am already getting sucked in to this party.  I wish I had a ton more time and money (and guests) allotted to make it truly out of this world, but I will do my best to give my little girl a day of wonder.