Crocodile Hunter -8yr- Visit with a Reptile Handler
Idea#
7211
From
Joyce in St. Louis, MO USA
Date
Sept. 2003
Award
Honorable Mention
My son wanted a Crocodile Hunter party for his 8th birthday party.
For invitations I scanned in a picture of him holding a baby alligator that we had taken on vacation. The front of the invitation had the photo and said "By Crikey Mate \*name\* is Turning Eight. The inside contained all the necessary information. I ordered tableware and decorations (and thank you notes) from www.birthdaydirect.com as they were the only place I could find that had Crocodile Hunter theme ware. They were very quick to deliver and the decorations looked great!
For goodie bags I got most of the stuff from Oriental Trading Company (plastic crocodiles, snakes, spikers, crocodile yo-yo's and crocodile pencils). We also threw in a pack of Brach's Crocodile Hunter Gummies into each bag.
When the kids arrived I took a picture of each of them in the front yard 'wrestling' a large blow-up alligator that we use at the pool. They each then got a copy in their thank-you notes. While I was busy in the front greeting guests my husband was busy in the back yard holding spider races (the kids had to place a plastic spider on their nose and race across the yard without dropping the spider). This kept the kids occupied until the main event started.
I contacted our local herpetological society (I found them on the internet) and found someone to bring a bunch of reptiles to show and talk about. He was very inexpensive as he just likes educating people about reptiles. He brought several snakes, some gecko lizards, a fringe lizard and a few other reptiles and kept the kids entranced for about an hour.
We then took pictures of each guest holding whichever reptile they wanted. These were taken on a digital camera that the reptile speaker provided and the pictures were eached saved to an individual floppy disk that we sent home in their goodie bags so they had a photo to show their family that day.
After that we had cake and ice cream. As we had a big crowd (16 kids and lots of adults) I made two cakes. The first was a snake cake that I made using a horseshoe shaped pan. I cut it in half at the center and made and S shape and frosted it to look like a snake (sorta). I used a fruit roll-up that I cut out a v out of the end to use for the snake's tongue. I then put little chocolate poison dart frogs that I made out a frog mold and melted colored chocolate pieces (Wilton) around the snake.
For the second cake I just made a sheet cake and frosted it all white. I used an icing gel tinted blue to create a little lake on top. In the middle of the lake I put a little plastic Steve Irwin wrestling with a crocodile that even spoke some of Steve's famous phrases (from birthdaydirect.com) and then put a couple more crocodiles (same as for the goodie bags) around them. The cakes carried the theme out perfectly and were very simple to make.
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