Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Ella and Aidan's 2nd Birthday Party!

For Ella and Aidan's party this year I decided to go with a zoo theme.  The invitations were cute pictures of zoo animals - all in pairs, like Ella & Aidan!

(I edited out our contact info for privacy reasons)

We began the "zoo" experience with animal footprints leading the way to the front door:




Inside, the kid's snack table was adorned with cream cheese & jelly sandwiches cut into animal shapes, banana cookies for the "monkeys", nutter butter (peanuts) for the "elephants", and goldfish for the "penguins":





There were zoo animals everywhere - lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes and monkeys hanging from the ceiling:



We did cupcakes this year rather than a cake.  Ella enjoyed her bee while Aidan enjoyed his turtle.  The rest of the party guests had mini versions of Ella and Aidan's cupcakes:





The favors were personalized little bags containing all sorts of zoo animal items - stickers, a bouncy ball, a little bendable animal, crayons and a mini coloring book, and a wild animal whistle.  My favorite part of the favor was a CD that I made complete with animal kids songs:



The weather was amazing and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time!  We are so grateful to have such wonderful friends to share Ella and Aidan's special day with us each year!

Ella and Aidan patiently wait for the guests to arrive:






Patrick and Finnegan (Ella's "boys" as she calls them!) arrive:


Singing Happy Birthday:

Cupcake Faces:

Birthday Boy and Girl:


Enjoying the Party:




8 comments:

Juliane M. Kilcoyne said...

It was a ROARING good time!

Anonymous said...

Very cute! Looks like you all had a great time! I liked the theme too. Nicely done. -Dana

Jessica said...

Jen - these pics are great! What a fun party - I'm very impressed, but not surprised. You can pull off anything. :)

Russ and Peggy said...

Jen, We also have boy/girl twins and loved the theme (turning 2 in Oct). I can't seem to find matching plates and napkins to match the invitation...can you help?

Christine said...

Hi I'm a mother of twins turing two in Apirl and really liked your idea of the animals and was wondering where you got the blow up animals? you did an awesome job with that party

Cynthia said...

I have twin girls that are turning two in February and am planning to do a zoo theme also, I'd love to know where you got your invitations! I love the two by two zoo idea!!

Jennifer Parker said...

Hi Cynthia! I actually had a friend design the invitations, but the favor tags came from Etsy, and I am sure you can find something similar on there - Etsy is an incredible website for custom and personalized stuff!

Some of the other items (blow up animals, etc) actually came from Oriental Express...the animal plates and utencils are at Harris Teeter (our local grocery store) and Target in the paper plate section and I did all of the other signage and container labeling myself.

It was super fun! Good luck with your party - thanks so much for following my little blog!

Cynthia said...

Thanks for the info! I figure if nothing else I'll just whip out my scrapbooking supplies and come up with something for invitations! Though Etsy and Oriental Trading do tend to get me in lots of trouble! :) Love your blog! I stumbled across it while searching for "2nd birthday party ideas for twins" on Google! I'm definitely a devoted follower now! :)