funky monkey party

B5 turns eight on the 10th of January, but as we knew a few of his friends would be away on this date we decided we would have his party a little earlier.

B5 loves monkeys and is even called Cheeky Monkey by a couple of family friends, 

so he decided he wanted a monkey party.

Because it would be hot and because it was just after Christmas we decided to keep it fairly low key.

The only party game we did was a pass the parcel.

The kids played in the pool for most of the time before hopping out for some food and ice cream cake.

The palm tree I had bought for B3's 10th birthday so it was an easy centrepiece and the little monkey I picked up for $2 at Big W, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with until B3 put it on top- perfect!

We added some yellow (for bananas), green (for the jungle), and orange (B5's favourite colour) balloons  in bunches around our entertaining area, B1 was in charge of this.

I wanted to keep the food simple, but also worthy of a monkey theme.

Along with potato chips, corn chips and a homemade taco sauce dip (thanks B3) and banana muffins we also ate:

I saw the watermelon on a stick on pinterest, and thought it would be fun and as we had a pineapple in the fridge we made some pineapple ones as well.

The banana pops were also from pinterest, 

some were coated with crushed coconut chips and the others with crushed nuts.

They were seriously yummy!

Because it was a party we had some lollies,

 even though I wouldn't generally allow my kids to eat banana lollies  

(because years ago I was told the flavouring came from paint stripper) 

 I made an exception this time.

 I used my drink dispensers again (no photo of them in use - sorry!)

One with water and the other with jungle juice (lemonade, pineapple juice and mango nectar)

I also did up these little milk bottles, I think I have used them for 4 parties now.

This time we had banana milk made with the Vitarium banana drinking mix,

this stuff is made with stevia as the sweetener instead of sugar.

 The monkey cake was super easy.

I made ice cream the day before and set it in a round spring form tin and in a circle cutter I set some ice cream for the ears.

When it was set I took it out and put it on the plate and cut a little from the sides to get a more monkey shape, then I cut the smaller circle in half and put them on the side.

Next I cut out a piece of paper the shape I wanted for the face and stuck it onto the cake, then I added coco pops all around the rest of the cake, the paper protected the face from getting coco pops over the face part.

As it was getting a bit melty at this stage even though it was night I popped it back into the freezer until the next day.

Next morning before the party, I took it out and cleaned up the extra coco- pops around the edges and added them back on to any sparse bits, then I took the piece of paper off .

I forgot to buy some chocolate buttons for the eyes and was wondering how I could do the face.

Two cherries, two dried blueberries and a red snake came to my rescue.

 Because I didn't want wax all over the cake, I came up with the brilliant (even if I do say so myself!) idea of sticking the candles into a banana.

Blowing out his candles!

So glad you had a fun party with your friends B5!

Looking forward to more fun on your actual birthday next week!

To check out my monkey party pinterest board go here:

For his 5th birthday party B5 had a circus theme if you want to check it out go here