Thursday, June 11, 2015

Reptile Swamp Birthday Party

So I have decided that I have been a very bad blogger, as I have not had a post in quite sometime. Oh, how I wish that there were more hours in the day, but sadly there are not.  Thankfully I was inspired recently by our youngest to create an alligator/swamp birthday party so I can end this blogging drought.  He loves alligators and all things creepy, and absolutely loves The Wild Kratts...so naturally we had to create a swamp themed birthday party.  We had a Snake Egg Hunt, made swamp slime, created a reptile garden, and let the kids play in the backyard.  It was a perfect party in my book.

For the Snake Egg Hunt I was able to find some plastic Easter eggs after the holiday and spray painted them and then speckled them with acrylic paints.  The spray paint came out with a texture on some of the eggs which was completely not expected, but worked just fine for this project.



For the egg hunt I made little brown bags for the kids to decorate with some swamp (jungle) themed stamps our son had.  I printed their names on some cardstock for the handles...I have found it is always good to have everyone's things very well labeled...less likely to have any tears over misplaced items.  Not that I know this from experience.  :)



When having a swamp party there should definitely be some swamp slime!  We made our slime using the recipe from this blog...this recipe was perfect.  When adding the 4 ounces of water to the glue we just filled up the glue bottle, which was conveniently 4 ounces, and shook it and poured that into the bowl.  Super fun craft and I would say it was quite the hit.  We just packed it up in ziploc bags and sent it home with the boys.


We also made reptile gardens using glass candle holders from the dollar store, I just love the dollar store for party supplies!!!  The bottom layer is some river rocks from the dollar store, then some potting soil, a few chia seeds and a reptile of course. A perfect little reptile garden!


The alligator cake was absolutely adorable and I found my idea here, but truth be told...I will never be a professional cake decorator.  Anything that can go wrong with frosting will go wrong for me. Despite all of this the cake came out looking as it should despite a few mistakes here and there.  :)



There were also Chocolate Frog cupcakes.  I made the chocolate frogs using a candy mold that I found on Amazon and just placed them on top of the whipping cream frosting...super easy!



One of my favorite parts of this party were the party favors.  They were super fun to make and I hope all of the kids enjoyed them.  I know our little one has been enjoying his.  The favors included an Adventure Notebook which was found at the dollar store....surprise...surprise!  They were just perfect with the alligator/snake skin look.  I printed out labels and stuck them onto the notebooks. I included a pen to write in their notebooks.



There was an alligator brownie that I made using an alligator cookie cutter that I found on Amazon.



Our little adventure loving boy really loves these wish bracelets/necklaces that we made.  I found the adorable alligator charms on Etsy through the cutest little shop.  Absolutely loved the shop owner and loved the beads.  Just used some hemp twine and printed out the wish cards.  


There was also a  fruit roll-up, a bug container which held a little plastic lizard or frog, a nature scavenger hunt game which I found here.  I loved how these turned out and her printables were absolutely adorable!  I just printed them four to a page and used both of her designs to make them double sided.  We made the little Snake Egg labels for the TicTacs using a template from here.  I was quite pleased with how these turned out.



Here they are all wrapped up and ready to go home!


If you would like more ideas feel free to check out my Wild Kratt Birthday Party board on Pinterest.

This was a fun party to plan and enjoy with the boys.  While I do not love reptiles, I love how much our little creature lover does!  This was another super easy backyard party!  Hope you enjoyed stopping by! -Robyn