party: so easy even a caveman can do it

On my daily blog rounds I was pleasantly surprised to see my caveman party up at Frosted Events.  Thanks Kim for posting it.  Be sure to visit the Frosted Events blog for other great party ideas - she has a ton of them.

This party was done for a friend's 40th and was originally shared with the blog world over at At Home with Kim Vallee in  January 2008.  To this day this is one of my favorite parties and one that costs very little.  With so many watching their wallets now it's nice to be able to throw a fun party without breaking the bank.

Here is a bit of a breakdown on how to throw this party yourself...


Plate Chargers are stepping stones from Home Depot/Lowes's or whatever your local home improvement store is.  They cost right around $1 each.


I took some brown craft paint lying around my house (use whatever color you have) and painted some simple "cave drawings"  If you have kids get them in on this - they'll love it. 

Second step is to rub some good old backyard dirt all over the stone.  You can even use a rock to scratch up the stone a bit (see those white marks?)  Then take a hammer and chip away at some of the edges and corners (I started this step in the top left corner but hadn't finished when this picture was taken)

In this next picture you can see the roughed up edges - you don't want many straight lines, cavemen don't roll like that.  You also don't want every charger to look the same so take a hammer to the stone and break it up some.  As long as you keep each separate piece fairly close together your plate will sit on top perfectly.

You can see in this next picture some of the different charger shapes.

Some other details from this picture...


Dinosaur place cards - these little prehistoric guys came from my little guy's toy chest but they can be picked up cheap at a local dollar store.  I made simple labels on my computer using this font from Dafont.


Fur table cover and animal print chair backs - hit up a fabric store.  This stuff is always available and you don't need much.


I used terry washcloths instead of napkins since we went total caveman and ate with our hands.  The washcloths were picked up at my local Big Lots so check out your local discount stores.  Wrap those washcloths up with some twine from the garage and add a leaf picked from your backyard tree to complete the look.


Serving dishes were baskets and containers that I already had plus some brown paper grocery sacks.  I needed another serving dish and didn't have anything that fit the look so I ripped the top of a bag just a bit, folded it down and it made the perfect "serving bowl" for some roasted potato fries.  You can get a bit of a peek at my homemade bag bowl in the picture below.

The food was the centerpiece of the table but you can see that i threw in a few other things too...rocks from my yard, candles, moss and some strange dinosaur egg looking vases filled with succulents (can't find a similar "vase" try making them out of paper mache - they'll hold up for the night) 


My favorite part of the decor?

The jungle vines.  I hit up my local Army Surplus store and bought cheap camo netting.  If you don't have a surplus store near by you can find camo netting on the internet.  All you do is take scissors to the netting and start cutting away.  Vary the width and length of your strips (remember you are trying to imitate nature so don't make anything uniform in size)  The vines were hung from the top of the canopy. For lighting I added green paper lanterns purchased from Cost Plus.


This party was for a 40th birthday so the prehistoric man theme was rather appropriate and was much more appreciated than the standard over the hill theme.  The beauty of this theme is that it worked for my 40 yr old friend but would be a complete hit with kids as well.