E is for Ellora

It is about time that I posted about Ellora's 1st birthday and party.

We had guests of all ages. We invited all of our extended family and a couple close friends.

We wanted to do a Zoo theme. I saw some really cute zoo party favors that used the letters of the alphabet. They would have a tiger and say something like "T is for Thank you" or a parrot and say "P is for Party." We used this idea and personalized it. We printed off several pictures from our trip to the zoo. The main theme was the elephant; "E is for Ellora." We also had lions; "L is for Lovable," and girraffs; "G is for girlie."...etc.

In the drive way on the way back to the yard we drew with side walk chalk a big arch and "welcome to the zoo." Then we got all of our zoo-like stuffed animals and toys for other decorations.











I covered a long table with some white butcher paper that I had picked up at Partyland. I then drew in a zoo that was missing the animals. We put out a box of crayons and as guests arrived we had them color their favorite animal and it's habitat into our zoo as well as on their cups. This was a a fun activity even for the adults and coloring the cups made it easy to tell them  apart. I used white Styrofoam cups so that we could use crayons. I didn't want to worry about permanent marker with all the little kids.

The cake followed the same theme, "E is for Ellora," "H is for Happy" (the hippo) and "P is for Playful" (the polar bear.) I used soft bath toys that I bought at Wal-mart for the animals and the gate into the zoo came from a train toy we had. I put pretzels around the cake and each animal for the fence. Then, I used crunched vanilla wafers for dirt in the Elephants cage and white, blue and green frosting to make snow/ice, water and grass.


Here it is...

There it goes...

We had a lot of guests I also made jungle animal cup cakes that i found on the Betty Crocker website.

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One other activity we had was a frog and lizard hunt. I picked up a few packages of plastic frogs and lizards at the dollar store and we hid them in the grass. This activity was surprisingly very poplar with the kids. I wished I had gotten more than just a couple frogs/lizards for each child.

 Mom and Dad gave her Barn and farm animals

She of course likes the bag best.

A little bit about Ellora

E is for everywhere: Ellora loves to climb on everything. I have found her on the entertainment center a few times. She is also beginning to say a few words like ball and bath.

H is for hungry: Ellora likes to eat just about anything including toilet paper and wood chips, but her favorite thing to eat is anything that Chalyse left on her plate. Almost daily I get her down from breakfast, wash her off and turn around to do something only to find her a minute later standing on the table eating Chalyse's breakfast.

M is for Momma's girl: if mommy is not the first person she see's in the morning she will complain.

C is for cuddly: She likes to cuddle (when it's her idea) especially when she is tired. She gives great hugs. She also loves teddy bears (or anything soft) and puppy's. She likes to pant and bark like a dog. 

G is for girlie: The other day I put a flower in her hair. She was so proud of it and strutted around. Every few seconds she would reach up to her hair to make sure her flower was still there. She likes to play with dolls and thinks anything makes a good phone.

S is for silly: Ellora has such a fun personality. She likes to pull faces to make people laugh. Her favorite face to pull is a scowl but she is also very friendly and social and will wave and say, "haa," to everyone.

We love you Ellora and are so glad to have your bright smile and fun personality to bring us so much joy!