Noah's Ark Party 1yr

INVITATION We had a Noah's Ark theme party--I figured it was the only year I could get away with that since my son's name is Noah. I wanted everything to be themed. Of course there were Noah's Ark themed invitations with a little saying that said We're flooded with excitement and fun As Noah [last name] is turning one! The animals each came 2 by 2 Now we'd like to party with you!"  DECORATIONS When people walked up to the house there were about 10 different types of animal footprint tracks leading up to our front door as if animals were being herded onto the ark. Our front door had a "welcome to Noah's Ark" sign on it. Inside we had made a crepe streamer rainbow for people to walk under. We also had 2 other wooden Noah's Ark toys set up as displays for decorations.  PARTY SNACKS For food I didn't want to serve anything unless I could somehow tie it back to the story of Noah's ark. I created a large rainbow display that was half fruit/half vegetables. The fruit was a display of strawberries cantaloupe pineapple green grapes blueberries and purple grapes with marshmallows as the clouds. There aren't as many vegetables to choose from for all the colors of the rainbow but we had cherry tomatoes yellow bell peppers carrots and celery with the ranch and blue cheese dips acting as the clouds for the display.  I made PBJ chicken salad and pimento cheese sandwiches and used lots of animal-shaped cookie cutters to cut each sandwich and display each animal in pairs. I also created animal-shaped chips (cutting out tortilla shells and baking them with some cooking spray and salt) for the dips. We had pretzel sticks that represented the cypress logs used to build the ark. We had Skittles since their slogan is "taste the rainbow". I also had a large platter of olives with a branch on the plate since the olive branch was the signal to Noah that the flooding was receding. And or course we had animal crackers--that seemed like a no brainer. Every food item was labeled with a Scripture passage that showed how it connected to the story of Noah's Ark.  I had to get a bit more creative with the main serving dishes. We grilled out hamburgers and hotdogs and labeled them as the food for the carnivorous animals on the ark. We had baked beans for the herbivores of the ark. I also had some other chips that we labeled as food for Noah his wife and 3 sons on the ark. I also had a pasta salad that was full of animal-shaped pasta--it took my forever to find some and then I had to buy it in bulk to get a decent price so we still have bags and bags of animal shaped pasta! ;)  CAKE Then there was the gorgeous centerpiece cake that a friend of my mom made. It was such a beautiful cake that some people didn't even know that it was a cake---they just thought it was a centerpiece! It was a 3D Ark made of cake and fondant and had fondant pairs of animals all over it. Everyone was shocked to find out that all of the animals on the cake were completely edible.  ACTIVITIES & FAVORS For all of the kids I created Noah's Ark coloring books and provided crayons and markers--the kids could then take their books home. I also had the Veggie Tales Noah's Ark movie playing in the background for them. Many of the kids also liked playing with the wooden Noah's Ark decorations and with the pairs of stuffed animals that I had snuggled into a toy wooden boat in our living room."