Little Boys Jungle Theme Party

For my 5 year old son's birthday he wants to have a jungle theme for his party.

Decorations:
Blue plastic tablecloth coming down the stairs to look like a waterfall.
Stuffed animals placed around the house.
Plastic figurines to decorate the table with the food.
Sound machine with jungle sounds.
Animal pictures. Calendars are on sale right now, so I got a Safari calendar with beautiful pictures of jungle animals.
Jungle leaves cut out with my Cricut

Activities:
Jungle Safari story- As the kids come in we're going to tell a story about jungle animals and they will all earn their own zebra print bandanna. I got zebra print material from Joann, and cut out 18" squares with my pinking edge. When these are on we'll take a head shot of each of them for a passport picture. These will be the thank you cards. Paint plaster of Paris jungle animals. I found them in the craft section of my local Wal-Mart. They were pretty inexpensive ($2.49 for 6).

Jungle search. Wal-Mart had their plastic animal toys on sale so I got plastic snakes really cheap. Everyone will search for their own snake. We might also search for alligator eggs (Easter eggs filled with various goodies.) Pin the nose on the lion- I found a cheap lion puzzle that I put together with puzzle glue. When I was done I cut out noses. Pinata- we went to our local party store, and they had lion pinatas. We may have the Jungle Book DVD or the Tarzan CD playing for those who arrive early or leave late.

Animal memory game- I used my cricut Animal Kingdom cartridge and cut out several different animals. I glued them to cardstock (and that was backed with giraffe print paper) and laminated them. The kids LOVED this.

For older children you could paint their faces to look like zebras or tigers. Make your own memory game where the kids have to match the animal picture to the animal sound or the footprint.

Food:
Funky monkey banana splits
Sandwiches- trying to come up with a fun name... any suggestions?
Jungle juice- apple cranberry juice mixed with Sprite

Tiger cake- I found the directions here.

Easy Layered Bean Dip Recipe

Here's a quick, relatively low fat recipe for bean dip. It's also yummy so enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 cans low fat refried beans

1 16 oz. tub of low fat sour cream

2 c. shredded cheese (I use regular cheese, but you can sub low fat cheese)

1 pkg taco seasoning (approximately 2 T.)

2 bunches green onions, diced

3-4 roma tomatoes, diced

2 avocados (optional)

juice from 2 limes (use with avocados)

1 can sliced olives (optional)

Directions:

Open your cans of refried beans and spread at the bottom of a 9" x 13" pan.

Cut open and mash the avocados. Mix with lime juice to prevent browning. Can add salt if you desire. Spread on top of the beans.

Mix the package of taco seasoning with the sour cream until completely blended. Spread on top of avocado mixture.

Dice tomatoes and put on top of sour cream mixture.

Dice green onions and put on top of tomatoes.

Put shredded cheese on top, making sure you get good coverage.

Put sliced olives on top of everything. (I can't eat olives so I put it on half and left the other half alone.)

Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. This tastes great with tortilla chips and feeds a ton of people. Enjoy!