Natalie is 4

Natalie's a happy little 4 year old with all her new toys and leftover Costco cake to devour. I didn't realize it at the time, but I really did this one up big. I think I must come to this realization every year after the whole shebang is over. When I'm having a hard time ripping down the decorations that I spent literally HOURS coloring, cutting and pasting together, it dawns on me that maybe I went a little overboard. Maybe these big birthday bashes will make some amazing memories in my little girls hearts and the other stuff that I keep messing up on won't glare so bright and loud in their minds ten or twenty years from now. :-) We can only hope.

So, this year Natalie had her heart set on having a Tarzan birthday party. I know, Tarzan? In case you're wondering, the Disney version is over ten years old. We've actually been quite relieved to have a little obsession with Tarzan at our house lately. It sure beats pink, frilly princesses. We even found out the old cartoon plays on Saturday afternoons on Toon Disney. We've DVR'ed every episode and have watched them all frequently. You should hear Natalie's attempt at the Tarzan yell. Priceless. So, we weren't surprised when she told us that was the birthday party theme she most desired. I thought it would be fun until I hit the internet and realized there is absolutely NOTHING in the way of Tarzan anymore. Even Ebay in all it's "you can find anything you want here" glory didn't do me much good. My biggest concern was the birthday cake. She didn't want just a "picture" of Tarzan on the cake (an edible cake image), she wanted actual Tarzan toys. She was very specific about this. I was excited to find that there were small McDonald's Happy Meal toys from Tarzan on Ebay. After watching a few auctions, I was able to get a full set for under $20. It was more than I wanted to spend, but they would double as toys to play with after the cake was done serving it's purpose. With that done, I turned my attention to decorations and party games. I decided to go with a more general theme for the rest, a jungle/safari type theme. I found some great ideas on this site.

The best find of all was a totally unexpected one. I was shopping at OfficeMax one morning looking to buy new printer cartridges. As I was walking past one of those bins where they sell boxes and boxes of old software piled in a heap, one of the boxes caught my eye. It had Tarzan on the cover. It wasn't just an old Tarzan game either, it was Disney Tarzan Print Studio. A whole program completely dedicated to using Tarzan graphics to make invitations, crafts, banners, cards, coloring pages, etc. And it was only $7.99! I was so excited. I bought it up and brought it home and crossed my fingers that it's old Windows 95 self would run on our XP computer. After a few warning boxes, it installed! I was able to make invitations, a banner, coloring pages that I blew up to poster size and covered the walls with, and even stickers to decorate goody bags. What a find.

So, here's some pictures to sum it all up for you...

These were so fun to do. I know a bunch of boys would have been able to appreciate it a little more than my girls could. Since we had the party right after school and half of Natalie's guests were coming straight from school, we decided to have a snack first. And only fitting for a Tarzan party is some Jungle snack foods. I played this up, but mostly I just got shrieks of dismay and disgusted ewwws from the girls. For all the convincing in the world, I couldn't get my girls to try the "mud", which was just caramel dip in disguise. Ainsley and Chloe tried to convince them that it tastes just like candy, but to no avail. Even Natalie wouldn't try it. They loved that the grapes were called Snake Eggs, the raisins were called Dried Ants and our blue Kool-aid (not in the picture) was Jungle Juice which Nate claimed Tarzan squeezed from the hind ends of lightning bugs. Yeah, lovely. I guess we needed a few more boys at our party to appreciate it.

Here's a pic of some of the decorations. The girls helped me color the posters and absolutely loved doing so. I cut out the leaf shapes from poster board and put "point values" on each one for our sticky frog toss game. Unfortunately, I bought masking tape from the dollar store to put everything up with. Yeah, if you want tape to actually stick, don't buy the cheap $1 store knock-off. We were running around trying to re-stick everything the entire afternoon. Nate finally went around with some scotch tape in order to get things to stay put.

And some more decorations. I was getting burnt out by this point and only hung a few streamers with leaves to look like vines and a banner courtesy of the print studio software.

Not a real great picture of the girl's bedroom, but you get the idea. I spent the bulk of my time decorating this room with crepe paper and over 50 leaves I cut out from poster board. I covered the window with sheets to make the room dark and the floor with a green blanket. Natie and I made a sign with Tarzan fighting a snake on it and dubbed the room, "The Snake Hunt". I gave the kids safari hats, small flashlights and bags to gather up as many snakes as they could find. I bought a couple bags of small plastic snakes at the $1 store and tossed them at random throughout the room. It was too fun to see them all trying to "catch" snakes as fast as they could. They got to keep a few snakes, the hats and flashlights as goody bag loot at the end. I was able to find a really good deal on the hats, flashlights and sticky frogs at an online party store called iParty.com. The snake hunt was by far the most favorite game of the party.

Nic, Kenzie, Chloe, Natalie and Ainsley all waiting for the last party guest. These three friends live just two houses away and are, by far, Kenzie and Natalie's best friends of all. It wouldn't be a party without all of them there. Since this made five kiddos, I told Natalie she could invite one more guest from preschool to make it an even six. With the way my girls can scream when they're excited, therefore getting all the others to scream, six was more than enough.

Here, the partygoers are decorating their goody bags with Tarzan stickers. Aren't they cute in their safari hats?

And here's Natalie taking a turn playing "Pin the Trunk on Tantor". Tantor is Tarzan's elephant friend. Since we didn't think "Pin the Loincloth on Tarzan" would be quite appropriate, we went with Tantor's trunk instead. The kids seemed to like it, although, we had a few tears over not winning the prize. Don't worry, it was all from my own children, of course.

Here they are playing "Sticky Frog Throw". I got a dozen little sticky frogs at iParty for just over a $1. I made leaves with point values on them, taped them up and the kids threw their frogs at them. This one was funny. We got a few sticky frogs stuck up on my vaulted ceilings after some very enthusiastic throws.

And here's the Tarzan cake. I ordered a blank costco cake so I'd have plenty of room for all the toys and I wouldn't have to bake something. We brought it home, shoved in the toys and wrote Happy Birthday on it. Natalie LOVED it.

She loves those Tarzan toys. Who knew?

So, all in all a good party. Now I just have to start planning Kenzie's which is the 29th of April. She can't decide if she wants a Craft Party or a Dog Party. We're leaning towards the Craft Party. I think I can manage that. Any ideas for a great cake?