What do you get when you cross a monkey with a donkey, robot, piñata, 38 kids and 64 adults? One hell of a party! You may remember the invitations I posted from earlier this month? In that post I also explain why the heck we threw a party like this for a 3-year-old! You can bet it wasn’t my idea! Anyway, I’m splitting this whole shebang into a 5 part series. (I cannot believe that this will take me a week to get through!) Today, I give you the overall details. The rest of the week will go like this: Tue – Food & Dessert, Wed – Photobooth, Thu – Games, Fri – Wrap up. Start your engines! Let’s roll!
Welcome to the party! Here was the sign that greeted you as you walked through the door. My mom whipped up that flag with some extra fabric we had from the tablecloths. Isn’t it cute? (I’m trying to force her into business so if you’re in the market for a flag like this, email me! Although she might kill me for writing that! Oops!) I ordered black and white chevron and blue and white chevron fabric from fabricguru.com for the party, and as you will see, we used the heck out of it. I honestly am at the point where zig zags make me want to throw up but if you’re seeing this for the first time, it might be pretty cute! 
I had 18×24″ posters made of the monkey, donkey, robot and piñata (MDRP) for our hallway through a company called Vivyx. I had a coupon so they ended up being pretty cheap and the quality is incredible! Highly recommend these guys if you’re printing anything big. The photo above isn’t the best but I do like how you can see the reflection of the piñatas in the monkey poster. The cool thing is that these are the colors in my son’s room so I am going to hang one of them in there this week. Which to pick?
Shoot out of the hallway and you’ll hit the living room. 
Once I decided to just go with this wacky theme, I got a little obsessed with searching for monkeys, donkeys and robots. I spent about 2 months looking for these suckers! I cannot even tell you how many “deals” I scored on ebay looking for these guys. And by deals, I mean that the robot may have been 99 cents, but the shipping was $15! Ridic and something I highly DO NOT recommend – but if you’re a nut like me, more power to you! Every day a new box would appear on my doorstep with another “treasure” inside. Such a hideous assortment of random ceramics I am now a proud owner of! Oh my goodness, ebay! You kill me! I love how some of these items smelled like smoke and I even got a donkey with a stronger, perhaps greener, smell surrounding it. Oh well! Can’t let a smelly donkey get you down when you have a party vision!
And let’s just talk about these guys for a second, shall we? Yarn balls. You come to every party on the blogosphere these days and you look so dang cute, and you seem so fun, and you appear to be so easy to make. Um… nope. I’d rather hunt for monkeys and donkeys than make another batch of these guys!
My 80-year-old, very grumpy, ex-marine neighbor calls his wife and his dog the same name: Pita. I shall call yarn balls this name as well. He says it stands for “Pain In The …” You get the picture. I tried about 4 different yarn ball recipes and ended up with sticky hands, sticky children, sticky floors, and a bunch of popped balloons and wet yarn. I finally found a way that worked for me best, but there is a reason these things are on the table and not hanging from the ceiling. Mine turned out so delicate and not stiff at all, so while they looked great, they were actually… well… a Pita. Okay… moving on.
Let’s go outside to the piñata shop! I was obsessed with turning our backyard into what I wanted to look like a piñata shop. I think it was accomplished thanks to my very fabulous, bilingual friend April whom I hoodwinked into taking a trip to Santa Ana with me to bargain for piñatas. She got me the best deal and I came away from our crazy trip with a car load of about 15 piñatas. Score! I wish I could tell you exactly where we got them, but I honestly don’t even think the store had a name. To keep things consistent, I covered the centers with wrapping paper to hide the Disney characters. The smaller piñatas with the shiny streamers were from the 99 cent store! Another total score! We filled the biggest piñata with candy… but we’ll get to that part of the party later this week.
The tables were a mash up of succulents in low boxes (boxes from the Container Store, succulents from the farmer’s market for $1 a piece.), the “Pitas”, and of course, the MDRPs. 
Are you thirsty yet? Because we had plenty to drink…
…and a drunk monkey to boot! Or maybe water is more your speed.
Belly up to the bar!
I had signs everywhere bossing people around.
Anyway, let’s start buttoning up this post…
For favors, I figured the kiddos could just take their piñata stash home, but I also wanted to leave them with something a little more memorable. I sent files to the fabulous Peter at KJW Buttons on Etsy. He was such a pro, made these guys so fast, and has great prices so if you’re in the market for favors like this, you should absolutely work with him!
I had no idea if buttons would be a good kid party favor but they were a total hit. I put them outside where they were readily accessible and everyone – adults included – wore them throughout the night. Out of 50 sets, we only had 2 left over! It was so cute! Everyone got so creative. My mom even made earrings and a bracelet out of them.
And look how cute they looked on the birthday boy!
Okay – phew! I honestly cannot believe how much more there is to write about! I’m stopping for the day but come back tomorrow for more!
If you’ve made it through MDRP Week, I salute you! Thanks for coming along as I dissected every last detail of this party. It was a blast at times. It was a Pita at times. The main thing is that my little boy turned 3 and I am ever thankful for every day I got to spend with him over the last 3 years. If a Monkey Donkey Robot Piñata party is what celebrates that fact best, so be it!
I leave you now with the thank you notes we sent out to all of our party peeps. I especially want to thank my insanely creative and helpful mom, Miss Crafty Jan for everything she did! I don’t think I mentioned this, but she printed and cut just about everything for me! (She has a laser printer and I don’t so I would shoot her a file and she’d print it.) It was SUCH a help! She was another set of stylish eyes, she sewed all the tablecloths, assured me that buying ceramic donkeys and tossing tortillas were totally great ideas, made all the fun paper wheel things (like what was on the front door), and even put all those teeny tiny buttons onto the paper favors. She and my fabulous dad watched my kids when I needed time to create and I honestly don’t know what I would do without their help. Also, thank you again to my friend Steph for taking such great photos! All the best ones are hers. A big thanks to my sister Ellie who is always such a help when it comes to party days – she was taking photos for me like it were her own kiddo’s birthday (and she feels like he is, which is even cuter!) A huge thank you to my mother-in-law Sally who restocked food all night when I was having too much fun to even notice it was empty. An enormous frickin’ gracias to my amazing huz Brett who not only puts up with this crazy train, but climbs on aboard. I love it and I love you! And finally, thanks to all of you for reading, for your kind comments, and for your fun enthusiasm this week. It’s been such a blast for me! (Whoa! Just got Oscar speechy there! Sorry!) Have a beautiful first weekend of summer!
So in thinking of random games to play at this random party, I thought, why not toss a tortilla? No real object to this “game” just a chance for the kiddos to chuck food into the sky!
It was hilarious!
cakes likes a party 
