Woodland Animal Book Party

Our woodland animal book party was an adorable birthday party theme for our little ones! Check out the details of our party including food ideas, decorations, party games, party favors and more!

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Hello Crafty Friends! Today I’m excited to share pictures from our Woodland Animal Book Party. We recently celebrated our children’s birthdays with a cute family party. I had the chance to get crafty and make lots of different elements for the party including games, decorations, party favors and more!

My oldest chose the theme and it was a fun combination of two popular party themes, woodland animal party and book party. He couldn’t decide on just one and asked if we could do both. I told him of course! That’s one of the best parts of hand crafting your party decorations and games – you can customize them to any occasion or theme.

As with most of the birthday parties I’ve planned for our kids, I’ve made the food table the focal point of the party. I find food tables super fun to create and there are SO many fun ideas on Pinterest for themed party foods. Focusing the decorations on one specific area also helps me scale down my ideas so they are actually doable for the time and budget I have. I shopped our house and tried to use things we already owned to decorate.

Below are the party details from our Woodland Animal Book party! I’ve also linked to ALL of the DIY projects I made – many of them would work for more than just this theme and be cute for woodland parties, book-themed parties, baby showers and more!

The Invitation

Let’s start with the invitation! For this party I painted a woodland scene with cute woodland animals reading using watercolors and watercolor paper. I was really inspired by a painting I found from artist, Francesco Quatraro, which had a little library in the trunk of a tree with books everywhere! Once the painting was finished, I scanned it into Photoshop and added the invitation text. The small text above the banner reads, “Over the river and through the woods.”

The Woodland Animal Party Food Table

The food table was the star of our party and where I put the most energy into decorating. The backdrop was SO easy to make. I used one yard of fabric, from Robert Kaufman’s Sound of the Woods collection, and wrapped it around a large board using painter’s tape. The red polka dot balloons helped fill in the rest of the space and they matched our toadstools and cake stands.

The food for the party was inspired by woodland animal food ideas I found on Pinterest. I love the hedgehog cheese tray, and the veggie tray was a huge hit. We barely had any leftovers!

We also had woodland fruit and caprese toadstools. I labeled the food using food cards that matched the invitations and set them on twig place card holders leftover from our Winnie the Pooh party.

For dessert we had cupcakes and I made a small cake for both kids. My plans for the cake and cupcakes did not go as well as I’d hoped – they are FAR from perfect but I tried my best!

We’ve now started buying our cakes because I find cake decorating more stressful than it probably should be! I did enjoy making the cake toppers though. I used twigs pulled from a grapevine wreath and hung a little paper bunting between them. The cakes are topped with little woodland animal figurines I found in the fairy section of Joann Fabrics.

For the cupcakes I attempted to make hedgehog cupcakes but it didn’t go as planned, they were much harder than I thought. I ended up buying cupcakes at the grocery store and putting paper tree toppers in them which I think ended up being pretty cute. But overall, I definitely struggled with the desserts!

Woodland Animal Book Party Games

We played several games at the party which appealed to both kids and adults. Since our party was a family party, with more adults than kids, I tried picking games that everyone could participate in. We played Woodland BINGO using Cheerios as markers while everyone snacked on food. You can download my free Woodland BINGO game and use it for a party – or for a rainy day! :)

My favorite game was a Storybook Guess Who game. My son picked out all of the characters for guests to guess. This was a lot of fun because he helped create the game with me.

It was fun to see what the adults remembered and knew – some characters really stumped them! I created little library checkout cards for everyone to write their answers on. The one who guessed the most characters correct won a little fox notepad. Download my free answer sheets and check out how I made the Storybook Guess Who Game!

We also played a couple games for the kids like pass the fox (like hot potato but with a fox stuffed animal we already owned) and musical toadstools (musical chairs with woodland music). Winners of the games received little DIY fox notepads I made.

Book-Themed Party Favors

For party favors, guests chose woodland animal-themed bookmarks to take home with them. I made the fox and raccoon corner bookmarks and found the other free printable bookmarks online. I added ribbon and tassels to a few of them.

We also had a little coloring table set up with lots of cute woodland animal coloring pages I found for free online and printed. I covered two baby food canisters with scrapbook paper and used them to hold crayons.

The kids also also got a little blank book to take home with them. This table came in handy, especially at the beginning of the party. When everyone was arriving, the little ones had something to keep busy with before we started eating and playing games.

Party Wear

I made party hats for both of my kiddos following my paper party hat tutorial. To complete my daughter’s birthday look, I made her a woodland party dress and love the way it turned out!

Overall, this party was so much fun to put together and the kids had a great time! I really loved planning the party and figuring out different ways to DIY as much of the party as possible. Below is a list of some of the resources used for the party and links to all of the DIY tutorials I made.

My DIY Craft Tutorials for our Woodland Party

Resources:

Fabric for backdrop: Robert Kaufman Sound of the Woods
Fabric for Woodland Dress: Woodland Scene by Timeless Treasures
Red and White cake stands: Target Dollar Section
Brown Craft Paper for Covering Tables
Mini hedgehogs and porcupine cake toppers: Joann Fabrics but these from Fairy Deer are similar.
Red and White polka-dot balloons: Party City, these red polka dot balloons are similar
Paper used throughout the party decorations: DCWV My Sunshine Stack
Bulletin Board for Storybook Game
Woodland Animal Bookmarks