Curious Jackson's 2nd birthday party

Theme: I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to do a Curious George themed party, the thing I couldn't figure out was how to do that with it not being too "charactery." I knew I wanted to use Curious George more as an inspiration, but I don't care to use the pre-designed stuff you can buy. So I searched online and found lots of cute ideas, and I put together the ones I liked and came up with some of my own! I loved the idea of bow ties and bananas from a party I found on here, and so that is what I went with!
Decor: I prefer to make most of my decorations, so as I was looking for ideas, I knew I needed to find some scrapbook paper in the classic Curious George colors, which are yellow, red and sky blue. I looked everywhere and could not find what I wanted. After shopping online I found an awesome vendor on Etsy who makes digital scrapbook paper, even though you have to print it out it was worth it to me! Anyway, that is where all of my scrapbook paper came from. After that, I got busy making all of the decorations. Most of my ideas I got from pinterest. I made lots of pinwheels for the centerpieces and the wreath, and then I did lots of banners. The "Happy Birthday Jackson" banner, I used my pyrex bowls for the sizes of the circles, but when I found the circle garland, I bought a circle cutter, and wished I had waited to make the happy birthday banner. Our house is a one story, and we have a very open floor plan, but I knew we didn't have enough room to have a food table. We had our party at 12:00 so we had to have enough food for lunch. I put all of the food and drinks on our counters but I wanted some type of back drop. That's when I found the circle garlands...The circle garlands were super easy to make...the hardest part was cutting out the circles. But when I look back at all of the color they provided behind the food, it was so worth it! We also had some circles left over, so we used them as confetti on all of the tables and it looked so cute! The other decor item I knew I wanted was lots of bow ties. I had Erika make me some bow tie scrap book paper and that was good, but I wanted to make some bow ties. Now, I am not a sewer in any sense of the word, so I knew it was going to have be with paper. I found a template, cut them out and used double sided tape to stick them to dowel rods. They look so cute in the pictures! We filled in areas we needed a "little something" with bananas, some Curious George board books I bought for Jackson and of course some stuffed Curious George's. I also had a graphic designer friend make the invitations and the "I CAN" poster.
Food: I knew I wanted a simple lunch that I did not have to cook a lot for. We have a local grocery store who does fabulous trays, so I ordered a chicken salad sandwich tray and large fruit and veggie trays. Along with that I made an awesome macaroni and cheese recipe (in the crock pot) using bow tie pasta of course, we had chips with several different dips and salsa. I kept things simple with the drinks too and just had lemonade and water with big lemon slices in it. Now I also knew I wanted a lot of fun desserts! I found a bakery who makes cute cookies, and got them to make some cute J's and 2's with just simple colored sugar on top so that they still tasted good. I thought it would be fun to have rice crispy treats and bought a bow tie cookie cutter to cut them out with. I also made yummy banana pudding(from scratch) and some frozen banana pops dipped in chocolate. On my sofa table I knew I wanted to use the "Keep Calm and Have a Banana" sign and my sister made monkey bread to put on there. That was a huge hit!
I had so much fun planning and decorating for this party, and I really think Jackson had a great time with our family and friends!
*Please feel free to ask me questions if you have any...would love to help you plan the party for your little one! -Jess

• Erika with Illuminare Designs - https://www.etsy.com/shop/IlluminareDesigns

  Digital Scrapbook paper

  Erika designed custom digital scrapbook paper

• Jessica with Memorable Designs - https://www.facebook.com/memorabledesignsbyJessica/?pnref=lhc

  Graphic Designer

  Jessica designed custom invitations, return address labels and the "I CAN" poster