Lion King -1yr- Backyard Safari Tent

Lion King Theme for my Son's 1st Birthday  We picked Lion King Theme for my Son's 1st birthday. We had about 60 adults and 30 kids (ages 1 9) for the party.

We picked the venue for the party to be our backyard. We arranged about 20 chairs around two banquet tables. We covered the tables with Lion King Table covers and placed the lion King plates and cups for the kids. We put small bowls filled with Lion King Crackers & Lion King Fruit Snacks on the tables for the kids to munch on. We made personalized placemats for all the kids, out of a letter pad, we found in OfficeMax. It had jungle animals border. We thought it was appropriate for the party theme. We ordered a full sheet Lion King Cake from Walmart. 

Decorations:- We rented a 20 X 20 tent , chairs & tables. We made cutout jungle animals (lion, giraffe, elephant, zebra) from Poster boards. And also bought some jungle animal cutouts from a party store. We placed some of the cutout in the front yard with a PARTY HERE sign, and the rest of them in the back yard. We made a photos corner for kids. We burrowed a jeep (toy) from a friend of mine and placed it under a tree. We placed animal cutouts around the jeep. The kids loved to take pictures sitting in the jeep, wearing the foam animal masks that we purchased from Oriental Trading.

We made a cake-cutting corner. We placed two artificial trees and placed a table in front of the trees. We hung Cutout of Parrots and inflatable monkey on those trees. We put a Lion King HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner in between the trees. We purchased Jumbo animal balloons (Lion & Elephant) and No.1 sign balloon, blew up and put those around the table, with balloon weights. We burrowed a huge stuffed monkey from a friend and hung it in our doorway welcoming the guest. It was big hit!

We blew balloons and tied them in the tent. We put streamers green, red & yellow inside the home. My husband printed lion king posters of the internet and put them by the entrance and some on the patio wall.By Husband also printed out two pictures, one Raifiki holding baby Simba on the cliff where he introduces to the rest of the jungle and the other picture was of my husband holding my son in the similar pose. We put the two pics one besides the other!

As the party was in the evening, we installed Tikki Torches around the tent. The Torches protected us from the mosquitoes and looked nice. We played Lion King music all along and kids also danced on the music.

Activities: - We had Lion King coloring activity for the kids. I sketched outline of some animals and gave it to the kids. I them shape the pretzel Dough into animal of their choice. They had great fun with the dough. I bought plastic Wild animal from party store and some from the dollar store. We played Pass the parcel, lion King Style. We passed stuffed Simba around. When the music stopped we blindfolded the kid who has the Simba and asked to pick an animal out of a bag. The kid had to guess the animal feeling it, and he kept that animal.

After the sunset we had Star Gazing. This was a big hit among the kids as well as the parents. For party favors the kids got the foam animal masks, animal clapper pens, animal puff stickers, animal mini erasers, dolphin necklaces(ordered all from Oriental Trading Inc.) along with animal crackers.

Food :- We ordered pizzas and bought Caprisun drinks and Popsicles. The party was a bit blast! Everyone, including my son enjoyed it.