Rainforest Party Pictures and Cake

This is the *only* slightly suitable picture I have of the cake I made for the Munchkins rain forest party. I (literally) finished decorating the cake as guests walked through the door. Not only am I Marvelously Messy....I am also Marvelously Unorganized. C'est la vie!!

This cake was totally fantastic. Easily the best Chocolate cake I have ever tasted. 

Here is the recipe (from About.com)

Prep Time: 25 minutes 

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Total Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup boiling water

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and dust with cocoa two 9" layer cake pans. Set aside. In large bowl, combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir with wire whisk until blended. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla and beat well with wire whisk or mixer until combined, about 2 minutes. While beating, heat water in microwave oven to boiling. Stir boiling water into cake batter.
Pour the thin batter into the two prepared pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until cake pulls away from sides of pan, top springs back when lightly touched, and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely on wire racks.

After the cake had cooled we made a really basic buttercream frosting and I frosted the cake smoothly. Then, I colored some fondant with food coloring, rolled it, and used some flower cookie cutters to make different layered flowers. I rolled out some green fondant for vines. Voila!!

The house was decorated with lots of green balloons and some rain forest games. This felt rain forest puzzle was a fun addition:

It is a flat (can be framed or unframed) painted felt panel with all kinds of felt rain forest animals to place all around the board. Too cute.

In one room of the house I used cardboard to make a tree shape and draped some green crepe ribbon around it for vines. As well as a "canopy" of green balloons:

I found some tropical card stock paper birds in iParty which I placed around the house. Cheap floral vines were draped around the furniture and on doorways. 

I was planning on using a sound machine to play a rain forest background noise....but amazingly enough we lost power right as the party started to about ten minutes before it ended. Good thing we hosted it during the day!!

If you would like to see the rest of the decorations for the party you can find the rain forest pinata HERE and the party hats HERE.

I linked this post up to these fabulous linky parties:

Show and Tell @ Blue Cricket Design

Make Your Own Party Hats

For the Rainforest Birthday Party I hosted, I decided to make these fun hats to go along with it. Super easy to make, too!!
 If you'd like to see what else I made for the rainforest party go HERE

Here's what you need:

large piece of posterboard

party hat template (printed out)

tissue paper (in a variety of colors)

paper letters (I found mine at the Dollar Store)

Glue/water mixture 50/50

paintbrush

tape

crepe paper streamers

Hot glue
Ribbon

~Print out the template in the size you would like and trace as many as you can fit onto the large posterboard. Trim them out and tape them into shape.

~With the glue/water mixture, paste on different colors of tissue paper (I used green to keep with my Rainforest theme). Let them dry (it doesn't take more than an hour).
*I added different layers of green to make stripes of lighter and darker green*
~Take your roll of crepe paper and pull out a longer piece (enough to go all the way around the wide brim of the hat). Fold it in half and take some scissors and make little cuts that go about 3/4 way to the middle of the folded half, don't trim all the way through. Once the whole strip is done, unfold it and hot glue the middle to the bottom of the hat. Fluff it out when it is dry.

 ~Use the same trimming trick to a smaller piece of crepe paper (folded in half) and this time wrap it around your pinky finger and then ease it off in that shape. Put a big dab of hot glue onto the tip of the hat and pop the center of the crepe spiral right on top of it. Add any extra hot glue you need to to keep the layers together. Once dry, fluff the top out.
~Use the glue/water mixture mixture to paste on the letters of children's names and let dry.

 ~Cut two pieces of ribbon (long enough to make it around the head to tie) and hot glue one end of each ribbon to opposite sides of the hat. Let cool and you're done!!

These are fairly easy to mass produce!!

 

I shared this post at the following funky linky parties:
Show and Tell @ Blue Cricket Design

Rainforest Party Pinata and Invitation

Don't forget to link up to my Marvelous Mess party.... I'll be choosing one project to feature on my sidebar for a week!!
My Munchkin chose a rain forest theme for a birthday party this year. It was funny that it was the theme....it happened this past Sunday when Irene came to visit us. We had a tropical rain forest party during a tropical storm.  :-) 

For the invitations I made something very simple using a leafy stamp and a butterfly stamp on some blank cards (one of my hobbies for a while has been to make my own invitations, fancy or not-so-fancy):

To match the card I made a Pinata with tissue paper and glue/water:

I was in love with this pinata. It was so simple to make....blue, green, and yellow tissue paper pasted onto the balloon with watered down glue. I'll tell you....this pinata was a tough one....it took 18 kids to bring it down. :-)

I shared this post at the following funky linky parties:

Show and Tell @ Blue Cricket Designs